Skeletal remains found by an international team, in a cave about 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg South African cave may yield new clues to human development and answer key questions of the evolution of the human lineage. The team consisting of members from U.S., African, European and Australian universities, named the new species, Australopithecus sediba, in April 2010. They found skeletal remains in a cave of many individuals of Australopithecus sediba possibly belonging to a family group. They all seemed to have died suddenly in the same event about 1.9 million years ago, but the remains are in surprisingly good shape. The important aspect of these hominid fossils that show both human-like and ape-like characteristics and appear to be a transitional form of Australopithecus, intermediate between earlier australopiths and later Homo, the genus to which present-day humans belong. (more…)
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Archaeopteryx is considered by many to be the first bird
People have always wondered how traits or characters are transmitted from parents to their offspring.
Jatropha is a genus of succulent plants, shrubs and trees belonging to family Euphorbiaceae
Tiktaalik is a 375 million year old fossil discovered in Arctic Canada by a team of researchers led by Neil Shubin
The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), a team of scientists from institutions worldwide, including Virginia Tech, has published its findings in the Sunday July 10 online issue of the journal Nature.
The successful sequencing of the genome of the world’s third most important crop began when Richard Veilleux, who is the Julian and Margaret Gary Professor of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech, wondered if the then new applications of plant tissue culture could be used to develop parent lines for hybrid potatoes. The concept was developed from his doctoral research, completed in 1981 at the University of Minnesota. (more…)
A team of researchers from the Czech University of Life Sciences discovered four new species of jewel beetles (Buprestidae) from South-eastern Asia. This family of beetles is named for their particularly beautiful body and fascinating, shiny colours.
“All new species belong to the genus Philanthaxia. Before the publication of this study, 61 species had been known from this genus. Currently, it comprises of 65 species, with a primarily Southeast-Asian distribution, except for two species extending to the Australasian region”, said Oto Nakládal, a co-author of the study. (more…)
A newly synthesized protein is as fragile as a newborn baby. It could never fold into its correct three dimensional structure if it was not protected by chaperones within the densely populated cytosol. In case of membrane proteins chaperones do not only pre-vent their aggregation, but also escort them to their destination and aid in membrane insertion. The underlying molecular mechanism of how a certain family of membrane proteins is targeted and inserted into membranes has now been resolved by an international research team with participation of the Goethe University Frankfurt. These proteins are anchored within the membrane via a single helix and thus are called “tail-anchored” (TA) proteins. (more…)
A fossil discovered in Australia suggests that dinosaurs roaming Earth’s single supercontinent before the onset of Pangaean fragmentation, occupied a much larger geographical range than previously thought.
Paul Barrett at the Natural History Museum in London and his colleagues analysed a fossilized vertebra found in southern Australia and published the results in the recent issue of Biology letters. (more…)
Researchers from the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU) at the University of Melbourne have collaborated with scientists from the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Costa Rica, to develop new antivenom against the lethal Papuan taipan.
The preclinical studies of this antivenom have been published in the international journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
Around 750 people are bitten in PNG each year. PhD candidate David Williams from AVRU, who coordinated the project in PNG, said snakebite is a neglected public health problem compounded by antivenom shortages, poor infrastructure and inadequate health worker training in many of the world’s least developed countries, including PNG. (more…)
Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision.
An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.
This discovery will be published tomorrow (Thursday 30 June 2011) in the prestigious journal Nature.
The lead author is Associate Professor Michael Lee from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth & Environmental Sciences.
Compound Eyes
Modern insects and crustaceans have “compound eyes” consisting of hundreds or even thousands of separate lenses. They see their world as pixels – each lens produces a pixel of vision. More lenses mean more pixels and better visual resolution. (Each lens does not form a miniature image – a myth often perpetuated by Hollywood.) (more…)
Following fertilization, the single celled embryo undergoes a number of mitotic divisions to produce a ball of cells called a blastula or blastoderm. Although these cells are all genetically identical, they gradually begin to express different gene products that reflect the regions of the adult body they will form. In my first lecture I discuss how these initial patterns of gene expression arise. In Drosophila, a maternally supplied transcription factor called Bicoid plays a particularly important role. Bcd RNA is anchored at the anterior end of the egg but is only translated after fertilization. From that anterior source, Bcd protein is thought to diffuse through the egg, establishing a concentration gradient that activates different genes at different thresholds.
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