Category Archives: Biology

March 10, 2017 Drosophila suzukii, the spotted-wing Drosophila, on a wild cherry. Credit: Elora Gompel In contrast to other members of the Drosophila family, the spotted-wing fly D. suzukii deposits its eggs in ripe fruits. Biologists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have now elucidated the sensory basis of their ability to exploit a novel ecological niche. Unlike most species of the genus Drosophila, which deposit their eggs in fermenting fruits, the so-called spotted-wing Drosophila, D. suzukii, lays its eggs in ripe fruits. This apparently minor difference in behavior can have catastrophic consequences for commercial fruit-growers, and has made the species into a crop pest. For the puncture made by the female's ovipositor facilitates infections, while the hatched larvae feed on the fruit pulp. As a result, these infestations cause enormous damage to soft-fruit crops, such as cherries, raspberries, grapes and strawberries. LMU biologists led by Professor Nicolas Gompel, in a collaboration with the groups of Dr. Benjamin Prud'homme (CNRS, France) and Professor Ilona Grunwald Kadow (Technical University, Munich), have begun to explore the genetic basis for this unusual egg-laying behavior. Their findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology. The researchers combined behavioral tests and genetic methods … Continue reading →

Greater insight into basic biology of pain will reveal non-addictive remedies Science Daily The U.S. medical community needs a better understanding of the biology of pain and how it plays out in individuals to be able to combat the national epidemic of addiction to painkillers, according to researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at ... See the rest here: Greater insight into basic biology of pain will reveal non-addictive remedies - Science Daily … Continue reading →

March 9, 2017 Sacharomyces cerevisiae cells in DIC microscopy. Credit: Wikipedia. Led by Tianjin University Professor Ying-Jin Yuan, TJU's synthetic biology team has completed the synthesis of redesigned yeast chromosomes synV and synX with the two studies published in Science on March 10, 2017. The publications are part of the effort to chemically synthesize the designer yeast genome (Sc 2.0), in collaboration with NYU and John Hopkins in the US, Tsinghua University, BGI-Shenzhen in China, the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne Universits in France, as well as industry partners. TJU is keen to integrate frontier science into student training. During the synthesis of the designer chromosome SynV, the "Build-A-Genome (BAG) China" course played a crucial role. In this innovative educational course, sixty-one students participated in the construction of building blocks and minichunks for synthetic chromosome V, although the majority of the students had little or no experience in DNA synthesis before. Through the BAG training, they advanced experimental skills, and obtained first-hand experiences essential to promote their trouble-shooting ability. Several students became specialists in DNA synthesis and constructed DNA segments with significant complicated sequences. A selection of them went on to continue their … Continue reading →

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Evan Mills Namrata Udeshi knows how to globally analyze the proteomics of human cells. Youd be forgiven for having no idea what that means or why it mattersits a complicated technique that youd need years of post-graduate training to master. But for now, just know its important for disease research. Udeshi is a group leader in a proteomics lab at MITs Broad Institute, working long days to understand the intricacies of cellular life. Shes also the mother of two toddlers, with almost no free time. And yet, every day, she spends hours learning the programming language Python. Ever since I started my post-doc, I realized that it would be great to get data analysis automated, says Udeshi. But I didnt know how to program, so I would go and find someone who knew and ask them for help. That was annoying and limiting. Now, shes enrolled in an intro to programming class through Harvard Extension School. Udeshi is hardly alone: When I asked a handful of post-doc biologists eating brunch in Boston last week how many were teaching themselves to code, every hand went up. They all realized that their curriculum was missing a … Continue reading →

The first time geneticist Jef Boeke designed a synthetic chromosome, he sometimes wrote and edited its DNA sequence in a Microsoft Word document. His goal was to create a slightly altered version of yeast chromosome 9, the shortest of the 16 chromosomes that make up the organisms genome and contain all the operating instructions for life. He started with the short chromosomes right arm, but even this task was daunting. Its DNA code consisted of 90,000 letters, the molecules referred to as A, C, G, and T that are arranged in particular sequence to encode biological function. Painstakingly, Boeke went through the code, making changes that he thought would be scientifically interesting or that would make the chromosome more stable. This misery drove him to seek help from student Sarah Richardson in his neighbor Joel Baders lab, who wrote scripts to automate some of the most tedious steps. This was the embryonic beginning of what was to become the genome design software called BioStudio. Once Boeke finished his design, the synthetic chromosome was constructed by taking short snippets of manufactured DNA and stringing them together. Then Boekes team checked the design by taking a normal yeast cell, swapping out its … Continue reading →

Science Daily Behavioral biology: Ripeness is all -- ScienceDaily Science Daily In contrast to other members of the Drosophila family, the spotted-wing fly D. suzukii deposits its eggs in ripe fruits. Biologists have now elucidated the sensory ... and more » See the article here: Behavioral biology: Ripeness is all -- ScienceDaily - Science Daily … Continue reading →

March 9, 2017 Credit: CC0 Public Domain The U.S. medical community needs a better understanding of the biology of pain and how it plays out in individuals to be able to combat the national epidemic of addiction to painkillers, according to researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in Science this week. Specifically, they call for a shift in emphasis in drug development towards understanding how people differ in their response to pain medications to develop more precise, safer, and less addictive treatments. "Pain is a syndrome that is poorly understood and research on pain is poorly resourced relative to its prevalence and cost, especially in terms of shattered lives and lost productivity," writes Tilo Grosser, MD, an associate professor of Pharmacology, and Garret A. FitzGerald, MD, FRS, director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at Penn, along with Clifford J. Woolf, from the Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. This plan is especially urgent given no analgesic drugs directed at novel targets have been approved in the past five years. The authors reason that the opioid epidemic has attained the scale of the HIV/AIDS epidemic at its peak in the mid-1990s, … Continue reading →

For more than 50 years the Animal Behavior Society has endeavored to promote the study of animal behavior on a biological level. Every year a handful of scientists who have made distinguished contributions to the study of the subject are chosen to be fellows. This year, College of Science Professor of Biology Vladimir Pravosudov was one of the few. Pravosudov studies how small birds adapt to harsh environments. His current work focuses on chickadees, which can survive in the bleakest of wintery climates. "They've always been of interest to me because these birds can actually live very far north, so they can survive with only a few hours of light, and then the rest is all-day sleeping," he said. "they cache a lot of food when its available in the fall, and they recover it in the winter when it could be minus 40 degrees Celsius, which is very cold. These birds use spatial memory to find these food caches, so they have amazing memories." After comparing chickadees across a range of climates and geographies, Pravosudov has found that a chickadee's memory is adapted for its environment, and in more extreme circumstances - where food caching is necessary - the … Continue reading →

It would appear that, given the name of one of Shakespeares most recognizable female characters, director Desdemona Chiang was predestined for a life in the theater. Chiang, who directs Lydia Diamonds play Smart People, which begins performances Wednesday at Long Wharf Theatre, doesnt refute the theory when she explains that she landed in the theater by accident. I had no intention of going into theater, said Chiang before a recent rehearsal. Desdemona is actually my given name. But I went to Berkeley for my undergrad and was a molecular and cell biology major. I had planned to go to medical school. But during my first year of college I was told by my adviser that I would have to take an arts requirement class. I thought the easiest class to take would be an intro to acting class because it didnt have a lecture, it didnt have a paper. I would just show up and play improv games the whole semester. It was the easiest A I could take. If fate lured Chiang into a life in the theater with the prospect of an easy A, it locked her in with the promise of endearing friendships. The theater kids were … Continue reading →

Sophia Roosth University of Chicago Press: 2017. ISBN: 9780226440323 Buy this book: US UK Japan Alina Chan/Harvard Medical School A 'bionic leaf' that mimics photosynthesis. In 2000, two landmark papers started a revolution in our ability to design entirely new functions inside cells. The authors took two electronic circuits an oscillator and a switch and built the equivalent from living matter (M. B. Elowitz and S. Leibler Nature 403, 335338 (2000); T. S. Gardner et al. Nature 403, 339342; 2000). Life became a machine. To many, including me, this was a profound moment: the beginning of the field of synthetic biology. Now an international enterprise with the potential to transform our lives, synthetic biology crosses age and organizational boundaries, and involves large corporations, small start-ups, academics and tinkerers. In Synthetic, talented science historian Sophia Roosth describes her observations of the field's early evolution the fruit of embedding herself in the working lives of synthetic biologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She chronicles the adventures of players such as bioengineer Drew Endy and computer engineer Tom Knight, who championed the field. She covers highlights including whether we can patent new life and how automation is changing the way … Continue reading →