Category Archives: Biology

The Cancer Epigenome: Biology's New Frontier Medical oncologist Omar Abdel-Wahab explains the role of the epigenetic code in cancer development and treatment. By: mskcc … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 26-Jun-2014 Contact: Chris Bunting c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk 44-113-343-2049 PLOS A new data analysis technique could radically improve monitoring of kidney transplant patients, according to new research published this week in PLOS Computational Biology. The research, carried out by a team comprising physicists, chemist and clinicians at the University of Leeds, provides a method for making sense out of the huge number of clues about a kidney transplant patient's prognosis contained in their blood. By applying a sophisticated "big data" analysis to the samples, scientists were able to process hundreds of thousands of variables into a single parameter to indicate how a kidney transplant was faring. This allowed them to predict poor function of a kidney after only two days in cases that may not have been previously detected as failing until weeks after transplant. These extra few days are vital in the early stages after transplant and would give doctors a better chance to intervene to save the transplant and improve patient recovery periods. In some cases, the team were able to predict failure from patients' blood samples taken before the transplant operation. Dr Sergei Krivov, in the University of Leeds' Astbury Center, said: "If you put a blood … Continue reading →

Natural Science Biology Lecture CH 5 Part 4 Translation By: Amy B Hollingsworth … Continue reading →

The U.K.s national synchrotron now has a complete cryo-EM workflow for integrative structural biology to explore essential biological questions at the atomic and molecular scale. Hillsboro, Ore. and Oxfordshire, U.K. FEI (NASDAQ: FEIC) today announced its largest order for Life Sciences - Diamond Light Source, one of the most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world, has ordered two Titan Krios cryo transmission electron microscopes (TEMs), a Scios DualBeam FIB/SEM (focused ion beam/scanning electron microscope) and a Talos cryo-TEM. These microscopes form the core of the electron biology facility (EBIC) that will provide Diamond with a complete cryo-electron microscopy (EM) workflow that will be used in conjunction with other structural biology techniques to enable new insights into viruses and cellular proteins. Professor David Stuart, director for Life Sciences at Diamond Light Source, states, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) are extremely powerful techniques that can resolve atomic-scale structure, but can only be applied to a subset of biological molecules and complexes. Cryo-EM can resolve structures down to the sub-nanometer, molecular-scale, and can look at just about anything, including large multimolecular complexes. In the simplest sense, integrative structural biology uses cryo-EM to provide the overview, and XRD and NMR … Continue reading →

Students enrolled in Advanced Placement Biology at Tarboro High School had the opportunity to visit the laboratory facilities at Vidant Edgecombe Hospital in Tarboro. These students were able to see the jobs related to health occupations and to understand what actually happens to the blood donated at blood drives. I took this class on a trip to Vidant Edgecombe Hospital to tour the laboratory facilities and observe the application of these concepts in a real-world setting, said Deneasha Strother, AP Biology Teacher at Tarboro High. They visited the microbiology, chemistry, hematology, and blood/plasma labs so they could see the potential jobs available if they were to obtain a Biology or related science degree. Strother said although this is the first year she has coordinated this trip, she was amazed at how much the tour grabbed the attention of the students who attended. Students became interested in pursuing a career in these fields, she said. They were able to ask the staff about the educational requirements of the job. They were also able to ask the staff about the stresses of each of these jobs and about the common salary. AP Biology students are second-year biology students who have taken Honors … Continue reading →

Participatory Biology Just as the Internet leveled the playing field for entrepreneurship, politics and social engagement, recent advances are leveling it for biological progress. Processing power, the cloud and... By: Techonomy Media … Continue reading →

Natural Science Biology Lecture CH 5 Part 8 Genetically Modified Foods By: Amy B Hollingsworth … Continue reading →

Engineering Biology to Address Global Challenges In this video from our June 17 Techonomy Bio conference, Nancy J. Kelley, former founding executive director of the New York Genome Center, gives a presentation of the economic, social, and... By: Techonomy Media … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 12-Jun-2014 Contact: Dr. Esti Yeger-Lotem estiyl@bgu.ac.il 972-864-28675 PLOS A new study published in PLOS Computational Biology shows that genes associated with hereditary diseases occur throughout the human body. The study, by Esti Yeger-Lotem et al., used network biology to model the interactions between proteins associated with diseases such as Parkinson's in different tissues. Using these networks, they show that proteins carrying the disease are found throughout the body. In tissues vulnerable to hereditary diseases, the networked proteins had unique interactions relevant for the mechanism of the disease. Disease causing genes tend to be more highly expressed. The authors demonstrated through several examples that tissue-specific protein interaction can highlight disease mechanisms, and thus, owing to their small number, provide a powerful filter for interrogating the origins of disease. These results offer a powerful filter that can enhance the search for new therapeutic targets for many hereditary diseases. ### All works published in PLOS Computational Biology are open access, which means that everything is immediately and freely available. Use this URL in your coverage to provide readers access to the paper upon publication: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/pcbi.1003632 Contact: See more here: Hereditary disease genes found throughout the human body … Continue reading →

A boat ride for summer school students in the Kansas City area isn't a break from class. Students from Independence are going out on the Missouri River for a lesson in marine biology. It's a component of a wider biology class the students are taking this summer. Part of the lesson included doing some cleanup work along the river's edge. The students are also learning how interconnected streams, rivers and oceans truly are. "It affects us not only on the coast, but it affects us in the middle (of the country)," said student Mya Coen. "It opens your eyes to everything around you, everything that happens. There is litter everywhere." The instructor, Leslie Mallinson, is a marine biology master student who brought back a plastic crate that she found on an Australian beach. Markings on the crate indicated it had been in the Kansas City area. She said she's been to Australia many times and has never seen anything like it before. She said she has no idea how the crate made its way from Kansas City to the other side of the world. Follow this link: Students get marine biology lesson on Missouri River … Continue reading →