“THERE is not much point in being multicellular if all your cells are the same. It is division of labour and specialisation of cell function which gives animals and plants their edge in the struggle for life. How that specialisation comes about, though, is understood only hazily. Most cells in any given body have the …
“Several studies in the Nature family journals are offering a look at results from the National Institutes of Health’s Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium, an NIH Common Fund-supported effort to untangle regulatory features in human cells.” View more …
“More than 200 scientists working on an ambitious federal project have begun to understand the complicated system of switches that regulates genes, turning some on and others off, making some glow brightly while others dim. They hope these discoveries, described in two dozen papers released on Wednesday, will eventually lead to a deeper understanding of diseases …
“Boston scientists have developed a technique that can trace a cancer cell back to the tissue where it started, raising hope for one day improving treatment for mysterious cancers of unknown origin.” View more …
“If asked to make a comparison, most people would say that a human baby is more like a monkey than a songbird. But, when it comes to the ability to make sounds, we share more with songbirds than with our primate cousins …” View more …
“‘Studying fine motor behavior is vital for a lot of neurological disorders in humans, but traditional research subjects like mice are difficult to quantify for those kinds of actions,’ says Pfenning. ‘With birdsong, meanwhile, there are far more exact metrics, like the precision of the pitch, the timing/rhythm of the notes and even the higher-level …
“With chicks that have claws on their wings and a digestive system that resembles a cow’s, the pheasantsized hoatzin that roams the Amazon has always puzzled those trying to place it within the avian family tree. But now researchers believe they have pinned down the odd bird’s relatives—just one of the many findings revealed this …
“Scientists have produced a new family tree for nearly all species of birds alive today, drawing on a massive DNA analysis to gain insights into evolutionary history.” View more …
“What do a pigeon and a flamingo have in common? Quite a bit, according to a reordering of the evolutionary tree of birds. One of a series of studies published Thursday in Science is the latest step toward understanding the origins of the roughly 10,000 bird species that populate our planet.” View more …
“Stephen Richards, a genomicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who is leading an effort to sequence 28 insect genomes, praises the team’s decision to systematically select bird species so that one from each taxonomic order was represented, rather than picking scientists’ favourite species. ‘It’s a foundational work for the next century of biological …
“New research on the bird genome has revealed that the same genes that give humans the ability to speak give birds the ability to sing. Because of this similarity, researchers will be able to use birds as lab subjects to better understand how speech evolved.” View more …
“It’s not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that underpins human speech are also active in some songbirds. And knowing this suggests that birds could become a standard model for investigating the genetics of speech production – and speech disorders.” View more …
“Drugs such as heroin and cocaine may owe some of their addictive powers to an ancient instinct—our appetite for salt.” View more …
“Die Lust auf Salz ist ein Urinstinkt. Jetzt haben Forscher herausgefunden, dass er im Gehirn die gleichen Genmuster aktiviert wie die Drogensucht. Derweil streiten Mediziner weiterhin heftig, ob zu viel Salz wirklich krank macht – und ob ein Verzicht tatsächlich vor Herzerkrankungen schützt.” View more …
“AUSTRALIAN and US scientists have proved that the same area of the brain that is activated when the body craves salt ”lights up” in response to cocaine or opium, suggesting addictive drugs have hijacked a pathway of the brain used for instinctive behaviour.” View more …
“Researchers have gained new insights into the brain by decoding the genome of the zebra finch, a songbird whose males learn a single love song from their fathers that they repeat through life.” View more …
“Scientists have created a ‘blueprint’ of the genome of a songbird. The advance, described in the journal Nature, could reveal some of the evolutionary secrets of vocal learning in animals, including humans.” View more …
Neurogenomics Laboratory