This week, Louise Brown, the first person born after conception by in vitro fertilization (IVF), celebrates her 40th birthday. Thanks to assisted reproductive technologies like IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection and to new techniques developed in laboratory animals, researchers are able to uncover new details about the processes of fertilization and reproduction in mammals. This...
How do jumping genes cause disease, drive evolution?
Allmost half of our DNA sequences are made up of jumping genes -- also known as transposons. They jump around the genome in developing sperm and egg cells and are important to evolution. But their mobilization can also cause new mutations that lead to diseases, such as hemophilia and cancer. Remarkably little is known about...
Lectins help social amoeba establish their own microbiome
People are not the only living organisms that carry a microbiome, that is, good bacteria living on and in the body. The social amoeba, a soil-dwelling organism, also carries its own microbiome, and researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered that sugar-binding proteins called lectins are essential for amoebas and bacteria living together. The...
Night-time lighting changes how species interact
Night-time lighting from streetlights and other sources has complex and unexpected effects on communities of plants and animals, new research shows. Previous studies have shown that artificial lighting affects a wide variety of individual species, including many moths and bats.
But little has been known about how the feeding links between different species -- known as...
Removing malaria-carrying mosquitoes unlikely to affect ecosystems, says report
By combining studies on one species of malaria-carrying mosquito, researchers found that no other animals rely solely on them for food.
The study, by Imperial College London researchers, suggests the mosquito can be reduced or even eliminated in local areas without impacting the ecosystem.
Locally eliminating this one species of mosquito could drastically cut cases of malaria,...
Engineers track neural activity, muscle movement in ageless aquatic creatures
Just because an animal is soft and squishy doesn't mean it isn't tough. Experiments at Rice University show the humble hydra is a good example.
The hydra doesn't appear to age -- and apparently never dies of old age. If you cut one in two, you get hydrae. And each one can eat animals twice its...