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Garbage bug may help lower the cost of biofuel

Nature One reason that biofuels are expensive to make is that the organisms used to ferment the biomass cannot make effective use of hemicellulose, the next most abundant cell wall component after cellulose. They convert only the glucose in the cellulose, thus using less than half of the available plant material. "Here at the EBI and other places in the biofuel world, people are trying to engineer microbes that can use both," said Unive Read more...

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December 1st, 2012

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Garbage bug may help lower the cost of biofuel

Nature One reason that biofuels are expensive to make is that the organisms used to ferment the biomass cannot make effective use of hemicellulose, the next most abundant cell wall component after cellulose. They convert only the glucose in the cellulose, thus using less than half of the available plant material. "Here at the EBI and other places in the biofuel world, people are trying to engineer microbes that can use both," said Unive Read more...

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December 1st, 2012

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Microbes help hyenas communicate via scent

Nature Related images(click to enlarge) Photo courtesy of MSU Bacteria in hyenas’ scent glands may be the key controllers of communication. The results, featured in the current issue of Scientific Reports, show a clear relationship between the diversity of hyena clans and the distinct microbial communities that reside in their scent glands, said Kevin Theis, the paper’s lead author and Michigan State University postdoctoral researc Read more...

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September 4th, 2012

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Microbes help hyenas communicate via scent

MSU researchers show that microbes help hyenas communicate via scent. Bacteria in hyenas’ scent glands may be the key controllers of communication. The results, featured in the current issue of Scientific Reports, show a clear relationship between the diversity of hyena clans and the distinct microbial communities that reside in their scent glands, said Kevin Theis, the paper’s lead author and Michigan State University postdoctor Read more...

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September 1st, 2012

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Once again, Whitehead Institute is the best place for postdocs

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 29, 2012) – For the third time in the past four years, Whitehead Institute has been dubbed the best place in the United States for postdoctoral researchers to work. The honor was announced today by The Scientist magazine, which conducts an annual survey of postdocs at research institutions internationally. This year, more than 1,500 postdocs provided their input. In the survey’s 10 years of existence, White Read more...

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April 29th, 2012

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Social stress changes immune system gene expression in primates

Nature The ranking of a monkey within her social environment and the stress accompanying that status dramatically alters the expression of nearly 1,000 genes, a new scientific study reports. The research is the first to demonstrate a link between social status and genetic regulation in primates on a genome-wide scale, revealing a strong, plastic link between social environment and biology. In a comparison of high-ranking rhesus macaque females wi Read more...

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April 10th, 2012

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Early light refines the brain’s circuitry for vision

Nature Any parent knows that newborns still have a lot of neurological work to do to attain fully acute vision. In a wide variety of nascent animals, genes provide them with only a rough wiring plan and then leave it to the developing nervous system to do its own finish work. Two studies by Brown University researchers provide new evidence of a role for exposure to light in the environment as mouse pups and tadpoles organize and refine the circui Read more...

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June 6th, 2011

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Small molecules found to protect cells in multiple models of Parkinson’s disease

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Dec. 28, 2009) –Several structurally similar small molecules appear capable of protecting cells from alpha-synuclein toxicity in multiple models of Parkinson’s disease, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. Misfolded copies of the alpha-synuclein protein in brain cells are a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. “In this research, we used yeast as a Parkinson’s disease model system to identify th Read more...

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September 7th, 2010

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Chimp and human Y chromosomes evolving faster than expected

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 13, 2010) – Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually evolving quite rapidly through continuous, wholesale renovation. By conducting the first comprehensive interspecies comparison of Y chromosomes, Whitehead Institute researchers have found considerable differences in the genetic sequences of th Read more...

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September 6th, 2010

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Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research

A multidisciplinary research group at UCLA has now teamed up to not only visualize a virus but to use the results to adapt the virus so that it can deliver medication instead of disease. In a paper published in the journal Science, Hongrong Liu, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, and colleagues reveal an atomically accurate structure of the adenovirus that shows the interactions among its protein n Read more...

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September 4th, 2010

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