DNA damage resets the circadian clock in mammals, researchers report in this week's online issue of linkurl:__Current Biology.__;http://www.current-biology.com/content/future Previous studies have shown that DNA damage affects circadian cycles in the fungus __Neospora__. Here, Malgorzata Oklejewicz at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues demonstrated the effect not only in mammalian cell lines, but also in mice in vivo. "This interaction between DNA damage respon

Some organisms adopt an unusual strategy to make sure the genetic code is translated accurately, according to study that will be published tomorrow in linkurl:__Molecular Cell.__;http://www.molecule.org/ These findings suggest that ancient organisms may have used different techniques to maintain accuracy in translation before settling on the predominant strategy. In most organisms, the start of translation is coded by the sequence AUG. This sequence triggers the binding of tRNA that carries t

In a time when all coral news is bad news, a new study that will be published online Saturday in __Geophysical Research Letters__ (read the press release linkurl:here);http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2008/coral.jsp suggests that areas of open ocean can act as a natural thermostat, protecting corals from bleaching by preventing surface water temperature from going up. (You can read more about coral bleaching and about the other effects of global warming on the biome in our linkurl:January iss

Free radicals are often blamed for causing cellular damage that promotes aging. A new study published today in linkurl:__Cell Metabolism__;http://www.cellmetabolism.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1550413107003683 suggests that they don't wreak cellular havoc, but plug into specific signaling pathways involved in linkurl:aging.;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/52925/ Gaelle Laurent at the Curie Institute in Paris and colleagues created knockout mice missing gene that protects cells

The first keynote presentation of this week's Keystone meeting on autoimmunity and transplantation tolerance ended in a rather surprising way -- the speaker was actually heckled during the question answer session for comparing autoimmunity to cancer. When the mechanisms that keep the immune system from attacking itself break down, diseases like diabetes type 1, lupus, and psoriasis can result. Many in the field have focused on how particular inherited mutations change the immunological landsca

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54205/54205.swf", width:"270", height:"150", majorversion:"9", build:"0", xi:"false"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Video: Asymmetric cell division at work in the T-cell In our February issue, Steven Reiner describes how lymphocytes make use of a highly unusual type of division to create two different kinds of cells: effector and memory. Here, you can see this asymmetric cell division at work i

If you thought that all it took to kick-start a signaling pathway was a ligand binding to a receptor, think again. How and when that binding occurs, it turns out, is what determines what happens inside the cell. In linkurl:a study;http://www.cell.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0092867408000470 published online in Cell today, Sherry LaPorte of Stanford University and colleagues describe the structure of the Interleukin-4 and Interleukin-13 (IL-4/13) cytokines and the complete set of recept

PhD students and postdocs who get training in responsible conduct in research (RCR) don't absorb the lessons, especially when they've seen others break the rules before, according to a recent linkurl:report;http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0898-9621&volume=15&issue=1&spage=30 in the journal __Accountability in Research: Policies & Quality Assurance.__ Main message: Getting rules in ethics classes is useless if the scientific community doesn't obey the rules, too. The auth

Drug companies should stop using a classic toxicity test, lethal dose 50 (LD50), to inform clinical trials, according to authors in an upcoming journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology linkurl:report.;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WPT-4R8WK2M-1-1&_cdi=6999&_user=10&_orig=browse&_coverDate=12%2F05%2F2007&_sk=999999999&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkWW&md5=db03ae20cfcfde5f302c238ad0633bbc&ie=/sdarticle.pdf Mouse data of a drug's LD50, the dose of a drug that kills 50%

Compromising Coral Immunity Increasing oceanic temperatures are driving epidemics of coral disease. By Edyta Zielinska Related Articles: Climate change focus Climate change and the biosphere A sensitive reaction Shielding from the storm Modeling with model organisms Compromising coral immunity Slideshow: Climate change and corals The hole is disease modeling Hot Papers: Climate change and frog deaths In the summer of 1983, hundreds of square meters of grac

var FO = { movie:"http://www.the-scientist.com/supplementary/flash/54070/54070.swf", width:"520", height:"580", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); Climate change and corals By Edyta Zielinska As part of our package on the effects of climate change on the biosphere, associate editor Edyta Zielinska took a look at coral disease. Ernesto Weil from the University of Puerto Rico has worked with coral reefs in the Caribbe

Credit: Courtesy of Fawzi Razem" /> Credit: Courtesy of Fawzi Razem The paper: F.A. Razem et al., "The RNA-binding protein FCA is an abscisic acid receptor," Nature, 439:290-4, 2006. (Cited in 82 papers) The finding: Scientists searched for the receptor for abscisic acid hormone in plants for almost 45 years until Robert Hill at the University of Manitoba and colleagues used antibodies to find it. They identified a candidate protein called