Category: Cell biology
Remarkable vid of a mouse embryo developing
| December 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Embryology, Video |
This series of videos from McDole et al. shows the development of a mouse embryo, captured using adaptive light-sheet microscopy, and highlights cell division (part A), cell movements (part B) and tissue dynamics (parts C, D) during embryogenesis. Paper. McDole, K., Guignard, L., Amat, F., Berger, A., Malandain, G., Royer, L.A., Turaga, S.C., Branson, K., […]
At Oscillations: How we go from a sphere to a torus
| December 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Embryology |
At her blog, Oscillations, Suzan Mazur reports on the lecture series Simons Center for Geometry and Physics has been hosting at Stony Brook University, on Nonequilibrium Physics in Biology: Among the more interesting presenters is Kim Sneppen, a professor of complex systems and biophysics at Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, who addresses the diversity of […]
Should we revise evolution theories for the microbes that form so much of an “animal”?
| November 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution |
Does the interaction between individual animal and microbes form something greater the sum of each, considered separately? Vital functions like digestion and immunity were long assumed to be under the purview of individual organisms, as capabilities developed and were refined through evolution by natural selection — the differential survival and reproduction of individuals. But if […]
Wouldn’t you know, jumping “junk DNA” can be lethal too
| November 20, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Cell biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
Researchers Nigel Goldenfeld and Thomas Kuhlman noticed that “half of the human genome is made up of retrotransposons [jumping genes, “junk DNA”], but bacteria hardly have them at all” and wondered what would happen if they just inserted some: “We thought a really simple thing to try was to just take one (retrotransposon) out of […]
The term “mechanome” is catching on, but slowly
| November 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
At her blog, Suzan Mazur interviews neuroscientist Medha Pathak on the recent Mechanome in Action symposium she chaired at UC-Irvine. Pathak “is currently a professor of physiology and biophysics at UCI and heads the Pathak Lab’s investigation there into “how mechanical forces modulate neural stem cell fate in development and repair.” Suzan Mazur: If you […]
Researchers: Ribosome translational system dates back to earliest Earth
| November 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From ScienceDaily: So audacious was Marcus Bray’s experiment that even he feared it would fail. In the system inside cells that translates genetic code into life, he replaced about 1,000 essential linchpins with primitive substitutes to see if the translational system would survive and function. It seemed impossible, yet it worked swimmingly, and Bray had […]
John Sanford on claims about brand new nylonase genes
| November 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
Recently, we noted that John Sanford was speaking at NIH on human health and mutations. Philip Cunningham writes to mention a 2017 paper by Sanford and S. T. Cordova, Nylonase Genes and Proteins – Distribution, Conservation, and Possible Origins on whether the ba cteria that digest nylon evolved new genes: We began this work hoping […]
Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne denounces Michael Behe’s forthcoming book unread
| November 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Cell biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
Of course, just now, one suspects that it is mainly the editors in Frisco who have pored over it. But now, Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne tells us,l Michael Behe, author of the intelligent-design (ID) creationist books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution, has a new book coming out next […]
Huge study shows yeasts evolve by reducing their complexity
| November 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Not by adding to it. Everyone seems to be talking about devolution (“reductive evolution”) these days. From ScienceDaily: “This is the first large genome project like this that actually looks at hundreds of different eukaryotic species, not different individuals or isolates of the same species,” says Chris Todd Hittinger, a UW-Madison genetics professor and one […]
Suzan Mazur asks: How far have we gotten in understanding the mechanome?
| November 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Biomimicry, Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
The mechanome is the underresearched “ the set of proteins or molecular entities that sense or respond to forces” within the cell (Allen Liu). Our earlier stab at the subject here at UD garnered 354 comments, so there’s no shortage of interest. The mechanome (and mechanobiology in general) plays a key role in research into artificial […]
Researchers: Reproductive stem cells have system to fight off jumping genes
| November 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Whose triumph would create “catastrophic genomic instability”: Since Carnegie Institution’s Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize on her discovery of jumping genes in 1983, we have learned that almost half of our DNA is made up of jumping genes—called transposons. Given their ability of jumping around the genome in developing sperm and egg cells, their […]
Quantum biology: Did researchers produce quantum entanglement in living organisms?
| October 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Physics |
The researchers claim it is a first: … a new paper from a group at the University of Oxford is now raising some eyebrows for its claims of the successful entanglement of bacteria with photons—particles of light. Led by the quantum physicist Chiara Marletto and published in October in the Journal of Physics Communications, the […]
Researchers: An anti-cancer kill code is embedded in every cell
| October 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Design inference, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: A kill code is embedded in every cell in the body whose function may be to cause the self-destruction of cells that become cancerous, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. As soon as the cell’s inner bodyguards sense it is mutating into cancer, they punch in the kill code to extinguish the mutating […]
Probability of a single protein forming by chance
| October 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Origin Of Life, Probability |
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham April 7, 2017
Stephen Meyer’s approach in Darwin’s Doubt vindicated in recent fruit fly study
| October 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Design inference, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, is thought to be vindicated by a paper published in 2017, “Experimental test and refutation of a classic case of molecular adaptation in Drosophila melanogaster” (Nature Ecology and Evolution). The paper “begins with a perceptive statement about what ought to be required when establishing some genetic evolutionary pathway: Identifying […]
“Incredibly surprising”: New structure in human cells discovered
| October 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: The cells in a tissue are surrounded by a net-like structure called the extracellular matrix. To attach itself to the matrix the cells have receptor molecules on their surfaces, which control the assembly of large protein complexes inside them. These so-called adhesion complexes connect the outside to the cell interior and also signal […]
Researchers: Diatoms demonstrate “behavioral biology”
| October 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Cell biology, Design inference, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Unicellular diatoms are able to adapt their behavior to different external stimuli based on an evaluation of their own needs. This was discovered by scientists of the Friedrich Schiller University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, together with partners from Belgium. The algae depend on nutrients in order […]
Oldest evidence for animals found at 635 mya
| October 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Instead of looking for fossil at that age, the researchers looked for biomarkers: Rather than searching for conventional body fossils, the researchers have been tracking molecular signs of animal life, called biomarkers, as far back as 660-635 million years ago during the Neoproterozoic Era. In ancient rocks and oils from Oman, Siberia, and India, they found a […]
Researchers: Life forms display an “optimal tradeoff between stability and instability”
| October 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From ScienceDaily: Biologists know a lot about how life works, but they are still figuring out the big questions of why life exists, why it takes various shapes and sizes, and how life is able to amazingly adapt to fill every nook and cranny on Earth. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University […]
Cell behaviour can show “purposeful inefficiency”? What next?
| October 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Design inference, Intelligent Design |
We thought “purposeful efficiency” was enough to get a researcher fired, but read on: From ScienceDaily: The steps cells take in response to challenges are more complex than previously thought, finds new research published in the journal eLIFE. The study investigates a system relevant to cancer, viral infection, and diabetes as well as Parkinson’s and […]
