9 Articles with the topic: Methodology of Basic Research


Drilling Holes Through Deadly Bacteria's Kevlar-like Hide
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 4 days (www.sciencedaily.com)
To protect themselves from human defenses, disease-causing bacteria have evolved a cell wall made from a nearly impenetrable tangle of tightly woven strands. That’s made it difficult for scientists to see what goes on inside these potentially deadly organisms. But that era is now over. Rockefeller University researchers have now figured out how to drill holes through the Kevlar-like hide of gram-positive bacteria without obliterating them, and in doing so, they’ve made it possible to study, from the inside out, most of the known bacteria on the planet.
The work, led by Vincent A 


Researchers Develop a Technique for Counting Messages Made by Single Genes
piggy submitted, created time 3 weeks 6 days (www.sciencedaily.com)
Researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have described a technique for looking more precisely at a fundamental step of a cell's life — a gene, DNA, being read into a message, mRNA. The technique could provide a window into the process by which genes are switched on inappropriately, causing disease.
The new technique provides a detailed look into processes that until now were proven but never visualized 


Nanotubes Sniff Out Cancer Agents in Living Cells
piggy submitted, created time 3 weeks 2 days (www.sciencedaily.com)
MIT engineers have developed carbon nanotubes into sensors for cancer drugs and other DNA-damaging agents inside living cells.
The sensors, made of carbon nanotubes wrapped in DNA, can detect chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin as well as environmental toxins and free radicals that damage DNA.
"We've made a sensor that can be placed in living cells, healthy or malignant, and actually detect several different classes of molecules that damage DNA," said Michael Strano, associate professor of chemical engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing in the Dec 


Researchers advance knowledge of little nano-machines in our bodies
piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 6 days (www.eurekalert.org)
A discovery by Canada-U.S. biophysicists will improve the understanding of ion channels, akin to little "nano-machines" or "nano-valves" in our body, which when they malfunction can cause genetic illnesses that attack muscles, the central nervous system and the heart.
As reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from the Université de Montréal and the University of Chicago have developed a novel method to detect the movement of single proteins that control the ion exchange between the cells and their environment 


New technique is quantum leap forward in understanding proteins
piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 1 day (www.eurekalert.org)
In this ongoing quest, a group of Scripps Research Institute scientists, along with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) have borrowed from physics to deliver one of those research rarities—an unmitigated success. The group has devised a computational method that, with remarkable accuracy, predicts how bacterial proteins fold and interact 


Fusing Embryonic Stem Cells with Adult Cells Using Highly Efficient New Fusing System
piggy submitted, created time 3 days 21 hours (www.sciencedaily.com)
MIT engineers have developed a new, highly efficient way to pair up cells so they can be fused together into a hybrid cell.
The new technique should make it much easier for scientists to study what happens when two cells are combined. For example, fusing an adult cell and an embryonic stem cell allows researchers to study the genetic reprogramming that occurs in such hybrids 


Data organization and the modern laboratory
Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 weeks 1 day (judson.blogs.nytimes.com)
This is a New York Times blog post with lots of advice about how to organize data for presentation. Specifically, it's a review of the computer programs Zotero (which is basically Pandora but for scientific papers) and Papers.
Frankly, I don't see the big deal. The writer is talking about how organization got much harder after the journals all went digital. This isn't a new problem. When I was in elementary school, my teachers told me, "When I was a kid, the problem was finding the information. Yours is organizing it 


New embryonic stem cells ratted out
sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 7 hours (www.sciencenews.org)
Scientists have finally succeeded in deriving embryonic stem cells from rats, providing the research community with a new tool for modeling human disease. The method used may prove to be a general recipe to create stem cells from many different animals, the researchers say. The findings appear in two companion papers in the Dec. 26 Cell. 


Recipe for capturing authentic embryonic stem cells may apply to any mammal, study suggests
piggy submitted, created time 1 week 6 days (www.eurekalert.org)
Researchers have what they think may be a basic recipe for capturing and maintaining indefinitely the most fundamental of embryonic stem cells from essentially any mammal, including cows, pigs and even humans. Two new studies reported in the December 26th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, show that a cocktail first demonstrated to work in mice earlier this year, which includes inhibitory chemicals, also can be used to successfully isolate embryonic stem cells from rats.
Authentic rat embryonic stem cells had never before been established 
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