The Human Dynasty

(Duke University Medical Center) In the fruit fly’s developing brain, stem cells called neuroblasts normally divide to create one self-renewing neuroblast and one cell that has a different fate. But neuroblast growth can sometimes spin out of control and become a brain tumor. Researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore have found a tumor-suppressing protein in the fly’s brain, with a counterpart in mammals, that can apparently prevent brain tumors from forming.

Researchers have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight.

(Carnegie Mellon University) A new algorithm developed by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists has revealed for the first time how genetic networks in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, evolve during the insect’s life cycle. The new algorithm, called Tesla, incorporates machine learning techniques that enable researchers to figure out how the rewiring of those networks takes place as the insect develops.

Scientists are reporting an advance toward development of a new generation of drugs that treat disease by orchestrating how genes in the body produce proteins involved in arthritis, cancer and a range of other disorders. Acting like an “on-off switch,” the medications might ratchet up the production of proteins in genes working at abnormally low levels or shut off genes producing an abnormal protein linked to disease. 

Loss of hair colour may be unwelcome to some, but the processes that produce it could be protecting us from damaged DNA

(Baylor College of Medicine) Rearrangements of all sizes in genomes, genes and exons can result from a glitch in DNA copying that occurs when the process stalls at a critical point and then shifts to a different genetic template, duplicating and even triplicating genes or just shuffling or deleting part of the code within them, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a recent report in the journal Nature Genetics.

Plants or meat: that’s about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur’s diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.

Scientists have shown that microorganisms can “learn” through evolution to anticipate upcoming events and prepare for them.

Scientists have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China. The finding, they say, demonstrates that theropod, or bird-footed, dinosaurs were more ecologically diverse in the Jurassic period than previously thought, and offers important evidence about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.

(University of Chicago) Plants or meat: that’s about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur’s diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.