http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology have pinpointed two groups of neurons in fruit fly brains that have the ability to sense and manipulate the fly's fat stores in much the same way as do neurons in the mammalian brain. The existence of this sort of control over fat deposition and metabolic rates makes the flies a potentially useful model for the study of human obesity, the researchers note. http://www.physorg.com/news169818724.html Medicine & Health Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:52:58 EST news169818724 Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that the circadian rhythms or biological "clocks" in some insects can make them far more susceptible to pesticides at some times of the day instead of others. http://www.physorg.com/news169299983.html Biology Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:47:19 EST news169299983 The promise of stem cell therapy may lie in uncovering how adult cells revert back into a primordial, stem cell state, whose fate is yet to be determined. Now, cell scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have identified key molecular players responsible for this reversion in fruit fly sperm cells. Reporting online this week in Cell Stem Cell, researchers show that two proteins are responsible redirecting cells on the way to becoming sperm back to stem cells. http://www.physorg.com/news168788764.html Biology Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:00:01 EST news168788764 Carbon nanoparticles are widely used in medicine, electronics, optics, materials science and architecture, but their health and environmental impact is not fully understood. http://www.physorg.com/news168689442.html Nanotechnology Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:11:10 EST news168689442 Almost all organisms evolve from a single cell, a fertilised egg. In the first hours after fertilisation, the fate of its future development is determined. It is dictated by the separation of cells that will become sperm and ovules - germ cells-, from the remaining cells, which will be responsible for forming the body -organs and tissues -, and that comprise the somatic cell line. http://www.physorg.com/news168510493.html Biology Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:30:15 EST news168510493 Parkinson's disease is well-known for impairing movement and causing tremors, but many patients also develop other serious problems, including sleep disturbances and significant losses in cognitive function known as dementia. http://www.physorg.com/news168327087.html Medicine & Health Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:32:13 EST news168327087 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have developed a new technique that allows them to make a movie of bacteria infecting their living host. http://www.physorg.com/news167918449.html Biology Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:01:28 EST news167918449 (PhysOrg.com) -- There she is again: the cute girl at the mall. Big eyes. Long legs. She smiles at you. You're about to make your move… but wait! What's she wearing? It's a letterman jacket, one clearly belonging to a hulking football player named "Steve." This girl is taken. Wisely, you move on. http://www.physorg.com/news166969409.html Biology Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:23:51 EST news166969409 Ten articles describing how a universal language to describe genes is bringing benefits to the study of the microbial world have been published in a special issue of Trends in Microbiology, co-edited by Virginia Bioinformatics Institute professor Brett Tyler. The Gene Ontology is a powerful language that gives researchers a shared vocabulary to describe disease-related and beneficial interactions between a microbe and its host. By allowing scientists to link experimental results to a computer-readable language, the Gene Ontology provides scientists with an important bridge between specific experiments that characterize gene function and larger-scale, systems biology efforts to provide a global picture of host-microbe interactions. http://www.physorg.com/news166808777.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:46:55 EST news166808777 They're called "fruit flies" for a reason, and it sure isn't for lack of appetite. But like most animals, the pests typically lose their appetite when they get infected. We humans go them one better: Even when bug-free and hungry, some of us are tempted to do some serious fasting, in hopes of living longer, healthier lives. http://www.physorg.com/news166769297.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:40:04 EST news166769297 Many plants protect themselves from hungry animals by producing toxic chemicals. In turn, animals rely on detecting the presence of these harmful chemicals to avoid consuming dangerous plant material. A paper, published in this week's issue of PLoS Biology, investigates the response of an insect to a common plant weapon - the toxin L-canavanine. http://www.physorg.com/news165566601.html Biology Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:20:01 EST news165566601 A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, Katholeike Universiteit Leuven, and the University of Antwerp, Belgium, among other institutions, has created a genetically modified fruit fly that mimics key features of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a common neurodegenerative disorder that strikes about one out of every 2,500 people in the United States. http://www.physorg.com/news165067856.html Biology Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:10:01 EST news165067856 A new study at the University of Leicester aims to investigate the DNA of sleep. http://www.physorg.com/news165055510.html Medicine & Health Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:45:39 EST news165055510 Belgian scientists have successfully introduced genes coding for a variant of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, into fruit flies. CMT is one of the most common hereditary disorders of the peripheral nervous system. VIB research -- directed by Albena Jordanova, Patrick Callaerts and Vincent Timmerman -- shows that the flies recapitulate several symptoms of the human disease. http://www.physorg.com/news164915181.html Medicine & Health Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:50:55 EST news164915181 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. http://www.physorg.com/news164909744.html Biology Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:16:11 EST news164909744 Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have created a line of fruit flies that may someday help shed light on the mechanisms that cause insomnia in humans. The flies, which only get a small fraction of the sleep of normal flies, resemble insomniac humans in several ways. http://www.physorg.com/news163182399.html Medicine & Health Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:27:21 EST news163182399 Proteins are the executive agents that carry out all processes in a cell. Their activity is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to and removed from the protein. 25 years after its first discovery, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now gained insight into the role of one of these tags, a small sugar residue, that is found on many different proteins across species. In the current online issue of Science they report that the addition of this sugar tag to proteins in the nucleus of a cell is vital for normal development in fruit flies. http://www.physorg.com/news162814249.html Biology Fri, 29 May 2009 11:11:29 EST news162814249 (May 24, 2009) -- Using a specially adapted tool called P[acman], a collaboration of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine has established a library of clones that cover most of the genome of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) and should speed the pace of genetic research. http://www.physorg.com/news162394868.html Biology Sun, 24 May 2009 14:43:59 EST news162394868 It is the concentration of a few signaling molecules that determines the fate of individual cells during the early development of organisms. In the renowned journal Current Biology, a team of molecular biologists led by Pia Aanstad of the University of Innsbruck reports that a variety of molecular mechanisms accounts for the interpretation of the concentration of the signaling molecule Hedgehog. http://www.physorg.com/news162215335.html Biology Fri, 22 May 2009 12:49:30 EST news162215335 A class of drugs already approved as cancer treatments might also help to beat alcohol addiction. That's the conclusion of a discovery in flies of a gene, dubbed happyhour, that has an important and previously unknown role in controlling the insects' response to alcohol. http://www.physorg.com/news162132556.html Medicine & Health Thu, 21 May 2009 13:49:56 EST news162132556 For years, genes have been considered the one and only way biological traits could be passed down through generations of organisms. Not anymore. http://www.physorg.com/news161864762.html Biology Mon, 18 May 2009 11:26:52 EST news161864762 A team of University of Oregon biologists, using fruit flies, has created a way to isolate RNA from specific cells, opening a new window on how gene expression drives normal development and disease-causing breakdowns. http://www.physorg.com/news161861163.html Biology Mon, 18 May 2009 10:27:44 EST news161861163 A popular view among evolutionary biologists that fundamental genes do not acquire new functions was challenged this week by a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news161280793.html Biology Mon, 11 May 2009 17:13:54 EST news161280793 A new study published online on May 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has found the source of silkworms' attraction to mulberry leaves, their primary food source. A jasmine-scented chemical emitted in small quantities by the leaves triggers a single, highly tuned olfactory receptor in the silkworms' antennae, they show. http://www.physorg.com/news160921154.html Biology Thu, 07 May 2009 13:20:44 EST news160921154 (PhysOrg.com) -- Even the most alluring scent can turn repellant when the smell is too strong, but how that switch between attraction and aversion gets flipped in the brain was unknown. http://www.physorg.com/news160762519.html Biology Tue, 05 May 2009 17:16:07 EST news160762519 The Stowers Institute's Hawley Lab and Molecular Biology Facility have developed a "whole-genome sequencing approach" to mapping mutations in fruit flies. The novel methodology promises to reduce the time and effort required to identify mutations of biological interest. The work was published in the May issue of the journal Genetics. http://www.physorg.com/news160751592.html Medicine & Health Tue, 05 May 2009 14:16:47 EST news160751592 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered a new protein complex operating in fruit fly circadian clocks, which may also help to regulate our own biological clocks. http://www.physorg.com/news160215248.html Biology Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:14:51 EST news160215248 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stress can be adaptive. It can make you sharper, help you focus and it can even improve your performance. But too much of it can tax cells to the point where they can no longer cope and slowly self-destruct. Scientists at Rockefeller University now show that when the protein-making factory of the cell is exposed to moderate stress, neurons in the fruit fly retina and other cells not only resist death but also shore up their defenses against damaging free radicals and ultraviolet radiation. http://www.physorg.com/news160159407.html Medicine & Health Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:43:48 EST news160159407 A new study challenges long-standing expectations that men are promiscuous and women tend to be more particular when it comes to choosing a mate. The research, published by Cell Press in the April issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, suggests that human mating strategies are not likely to conform to a single universal pattern and provides important insights that may impact future investigations of human mating behaviors. http://www.physorg.com/news159799620.html Biology Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:47:42 EST news159799620 By painstakingly silencing genes one at a time, scientists at Duke University Medical Center have identified dozens of proteins the dengue fever virus depends upon to grow and spread among mosquitoes and humans. http://www.physorg.com/news159626121.html Medicine & Health Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:35:46 EST news159626121