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Michael D. Shaw is a biochemist and freelance writer. A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and a protégé of the late Willard Libby, winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Shaw also did postgraduate work at MIT. Based in Virginia, he covers technology, health care and entrepreneurship, among other issues.
Principles of game theory offer new ways of understanding genetic behavior, a pair of researchers has concluded in a new analysis appearing in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Its work opens the possibility of comprehending biological processes, and specifically biochemistry, through a new scientific lens.
The exploration considers signaling game theory, which involves sender and receiver interactions with both seeking payoffs.
“The view of genes as players in a signaling game effectively animates genes and bestows simple utilities and strategies—thus, unique personalities—on them,” explains Bhubaneswar “Bud” Mishra, a professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, who co-authored the analysis with Steven Massey, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico. “In this view, the genome possesses characteristics of a molecular society, complete with deception, imitation, cooperation, and competition—not unlike human society. This adds a grandeur to a traditional view of life and the interactions it is made up of.”
Continue reading “Researchers outline game-theory approach to better understand genetics” »
How did life arise on Earth? Rutgers researchers have found among the first and perhaps only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts—essential for cells, the building blocks of life, to function—may have existed when life began.
Their study of a primordial peptide, or short protein, is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the chemist Günter Wächtershäuser postulated that life began on iron- and sulfur-containing rocks in the ocean. Wächtershäuser and others predicted that short peptides would have bound metals and served as catalysts of life-producing chemistry, according to study co-author Vikas Nanda, an associate professor at Rutgers’ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s contribution is from Michael Poland, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Norris Geyser Basin is one of the most dynamic geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park. It frequently experiences “disturbances” when thermal activity waxes and wanes and water chemistry changes over the course of a season.
Earthquake swarms are common nearby, and the surface moves up and down with some regularity. This dynamic behavior was emphasized by the 2003 disturbance, which was associated with an increase in ground and water temperatures, the formation of new springs, mudpots, and geysers, an uptick in overall geyser activity, and an expansion of areas of heated ground.
Continue reading “The Norris temperature network monitors Yellowstone’s thermal features” »
A new study carried out by an international team of researchers, using the chemistry of ocean sediments has highlighted a widespread picture of Atlantic circulation changes associated with rapid climate change in the past.
The new integrated dataset, published today in the journal Nature Communications, provides new insights into the interactions of melting ice, ocean circulation and climate change, with potential implications for future long-term changes in the Earth systems with global climate change.
Dr. Hong Chin Ng from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, is the study’s lead author.
Continue reading “Deglacial changes in western Atlantic Ocean circulation” »
From liquid laundry detergent packaged in cardboard to compostable plastic cups, consumer products these days are increasingly touting their sustainable and renewable origins.
Now researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have created a material derived from crab shells and tree fibers that has the potential to replace the flexible plastic packaging used to keep food fresh.
The new material, which is described July 23 in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, is made by spraying multiple layers of chitin from crab shells and cellulose from trees to form a flexible film similar to plastic packaging film.
A glimpse at the coming AI researchers. (AI’s that do research).
A new type of artificial-intelligence-driven chemistry could revolutionise the way molecules are discovered, scientists claim.
In a new paper published today in the journal Nature, chemists from the University of Glasgow discuss how they have trained an artificially-intelligent organic chemical synthesis robot to automatically explore a very large number of chemical reactions.
Continue reading “Robot chemist discovers new molecules and reactions” »
In a new study published in “Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems” an international team of scientists explain that there may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamonds scattered throughout the Earth, buried in ancient slabs of rocks known as cratonic roots. They came across these by studying seismic wave movement.
Groundbreaking research shows that neurological health depends as much on signals sent by the body’s large, leg muscles to the brain as it does on directives from the brain to the muscles. Published today in Frontiers in Neuroscience, the study fundamentally alters brain and nervous system medicine — giving doctors new clues as to why patients with motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy and other neurological diseases often rapidly decline when their movement becomes limited.
“Our study supports the notion that people who are unable to do load-bearing exercises — such as patients who are bed-ridden, or even astronauts on extended travel — not only lose muscle mass, but their body chemistry is altered at the cellular level and even their nervous system is adversely impacted,” says Dr. Raffaella Adami from the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy.
The study involved restricting mice from using their hind legs, but not their front legs, over a period of 28 days. The mice continued to eat and groom normally and did not exhibit stress. At the end of the trial, the researchers examined an area of the brain called the sub-ventricular zone, which in many mammals has the role of maintaining nerve cell health. It is also the area where neural stem cells produce new neurons.
Continue reading “Leg Exercise is Critical to Brain and Nervous System Health” »
“Every time you miss a protein crystal, because they are so rare, you risk missing on an important biomedical discovery.”
- Patrick Charbonneau, Duke University Dept. of Chemistry and Lead Researcher, MARCO initiative.
Protein crystallization is a key step to biomedical research concerned with discovering the structure of complex biomolecules. Because that structure determines the molecule’s function, it helps scientists design new drugs that are specifically targeted to that function. However, protein crystals are rare and difficult to find. Hundreds of experiments are typically run for each protein, and while the setup and imaging are mostly automated, finding individual protein crystals remains largely performed through visual inspection and thus prone to human error. Critically, missing these structures can result in lost opportunity for important biomedical discoveries for advancing the state of medicine.
Continue reading “Automating Drug Discoveries Using Computer Vision” »
