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. (PhysOrg.com) -- In the quest for speed, olympic swimmers shave themselves or squeeze into high-tech super-suits. In the body, sperm are the only cells that swim and, as speed is crucial to fertility, have developed their own ways to become exceptionally streamlined. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg and Grenoble have been studying the secrets of speedy sperm. Their work, published today in Nature, shows how a protein only found in developing sperm cells, Brdt, directs tight re-packaging of sperm DNA. http://www.physorg.com/news173537545.html Biology Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:53:17 EST news173537545 Scientists in Taiwan said Thursday they have invented a male fertility home test kit that breaks new ground by measuring the efficiency of sperm cells -- a key factor in determining men's ability to father children. http://www.physorg.com/news172400660.html Medicine & Health Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:20:01 EST news172400660 An individual with Down syndrome and a male calico cat have one thing in common -- each has an extra chromosome. For animals, most instances of an extra chromosome result in birth defects or even death, but plants are another matter entirely. Many plants are able to survive the presence of an extra copy of their entire genome (known as polyploidy) and are often even more vigorous as a result. For plants, the process of polyploidy often results in a new species, making it an important mechanism in evolution. In fact, over 80% of plants may be a product of polyploidy. http://www.physorg.com/news172162573.html Biology Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:10:02 EST news172162573 Scientists at Leeds and Bradford have discovered a unique 'DNA signature' in human sperm, which may act as a key that unlocks an egg's fertility and triggers new life. http://www.physorg.com/news168510810.html Biology Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:34:29 EST news168510810 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have discovered that the sea lamprey, which emerged from jawless fish first appearing 500 million years ago, dramatically remodels its genome. Shortly after a fertilized lamprey egg divides into several cells, the growing embryo discards millions of units of its DNA. http://www.physorg.com/news167325215.html Biology Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:14:13 EST news167325215 The mystery of giant sperm present in some living animal groups today has now taken on a new dimension -- in one group of micro-crustaceans new evidence shows that it is a feature at least 100 million years old. http://www.physorg.com/news164553484.html Biology Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:18:24 EST news164553484 Jumping genes do most of their jumping, not during the development of sperm and egg cells, but during the development of the embryo itself. The research, published this month in Genes and Development, "challenges standard assumptions on the timing of when mobile DNA, so-called jumping genes, insert into the human genome," says senior author Haig H. Kazazian Jr., MD, Seymour Gray Professor of Molecular Medicine in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. http://www.physorg.com/news163989429.html Medicine & Health Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:00:01 EST news163989429 A new study reveals that - contrary to decades of evolutionary thought - chromosome regions that are prone to breakage when new species are formed are a rich source of genetic variation. http://www.physorg.com/news159715581.html Biology Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:26:44 EST news159715581 (PhysOrg.com) -- Understanding how living cells originated and evolved into their present forms remains a fundamental research area in biology, one boosted in recent years by the introduction of new tools for genomic analysis. Now, researchers at MIT and Boston University have used such tools to put what they say is "the last nail in the coffin" for one theory about the origin of a basic structure in the cell. http://www.physorg.com/news159635938.html Biology Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:19:47 EST news159635938 Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into plant sex - and discovered that a particular gene switches on 'the essence of male'. http://www.physorg.com/news156760544.html Biology Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:36:19 EST news156760544 In plant pollen grains, sperm cells, which carry the genetic material to be passed on to progeny, are cocooned within larger "companion" cells that are called pollen vegetative cells. These companions provide sperm with energy and nourishment, and push them towards their targets during fertilization. http://www.physorg.com/news153064281.html Biology Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:51:37 EST news153064281 Scientists at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), in Portugal, are to date the only research group in the world capable of isolating the sperm cells in the pollen grain of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This technique was crucial in a study to be published in the latest issue of the journal Cell, which describes how mobile sequences of DNA (called transposable elements) are silenced in the sperm cells, thus ensuring suppression of the mutagenic effects of these DNA elements. http://www.physorg.com/news153060044.html Biology Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:41:10 EST news153060044 An enigma - unique to flowering plants - has been solved by researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and POSTECH, South Korea. The discovery is reported in the journal Nature on 23 October 2008. http://www.physorg.com/news143899812.html Biology Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:10:12 EST news143899812 Proteins found in sperm are central to understanding male infertility and could be used to determine new diagnostic methods and fertility treatments according to a paper published by the journal Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (MCP). The article demonstrates how proteomics, a relatively new field focusing on the function of proteins in a cell, can be successfully applied to infertility, helping identify which proteins in sperm cells are dysfunctional. http://www.physorg.com/news142691016.html Biology Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:23:36 EST news142691016