Juan Pablo Couso’s lab have identified hundreds of noncanonical genes containing small, phylogenetically conserved, ORFs. Several are polycistronic and involved in cell signalling.

The position is funded for up to 5 years and requires successful previous research experience in Genetics or Cell Biology.

Full details will appear in Naturejobs.com and sussex.ac.uk/aboutus/jobs. Informal enquires
can be made in advance to: j.p.couso@sussex.ac.uk (more…)

There is another amazing Dinosaur discovery featured in Nature journal ,which provides insights about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs. Today i dont have enough time to discuss about the article in detail , so just leaving the related press release here. Hope i find some time out tomorrow from my experiments to describe in more detail about the article published in Nature.

Here goes the press release :

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. (more…)

The 5th EuropeanMeeting on Vascular Biology and Medicine to be heldin Marseille, France, from September14th to 17th, 2009. The program includes some excellent speakers ,who will be covering topics in both basic and translational research. This scientific and biomedical event is a majorinternational reference highlighting the knowledge field of the VascularBiology, Vascular Physiopathology and Medicine. The Congress will include afull range of plenary sessions and workshops. In addition to selected oralcommunications, poster sessions are being organised. (more…)

Hugo bellen’s lab generated Drosophila melanogaster bacterial artificial chromosome libraries with 21-kilobase and 83-kilobase inserts in the P[acman] system. P[acman] was developed by Koen Venken in Bellen’s laboratory,which allows scientists to study large chunks of DNA in living flies.Cloning huge fragments of DNA is not possible in classical P-elements and this has been over come in P[acman] that allows modification of cloned fragments by recombineering and germline transformation of genomic DNA fragments up to 133 kilobases. (more…)

Foxp2 gene was identified as gene involved in speech and language disorders, after studying an extended family referred to as KE. Over three generations of this family, about half the family members suffer from a number of problems, the most obvious of which is severe difficulty in speaking. The scientists could narrow down to Chromosome 7 by studying members of KE family ,but it was the comparison of the KE family data with that of another patient outside the family led them to discovery of Foxp2 gene. These findings of Lai et al; were published in Nature journal on October 4, 2001. (more…)

Saw this video of amazing Cnidarians at PZ Myers blog . Video originally uploaded by Eugenia Loli-Queru watch this mesmerizing video.

Drifters of the deep from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.

It looks like primates are ruling the science world these days, last week it was famous primate fossil “IDA” made headlines and now Japanese scientists succeeded in generating transgenic primate marmoset . This research might go a long way in use of Marmosets as an alternative disease model to rhesus macaques.Erika Sasaki and her colleagues at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki injected viral vectors with green fluorescent protein (GFP) into 91 marmoset embryos and successfully shown passing of a transgene a primate to its offspring.Transgenic primate was reported last year ,when scientists in United states generated transgenic monkeys as a model of Huntington’s disease , but in these animals, the gene did not fully integrate into the monkey’s own DNA and was not passed down to their offspring. To be a successful model for human diseases ,this criteria of passing the genes to next generation should be passed. This amazing research of passing the foreign gene to offspring was reported in the May 28 Nature. (more…)

A PhD position on Wnt signalling in heart muscle development is up for grabs. This project in the lab of Stefan Hoppler is funded by the British Heart Foundation . This project investigates the role of a molecule called FrzA, which is present where the heart normally forms. We think FrzA functions to inhibit Wnt signalling and thereby to promote the formation of heart muscle.

For more details contact the supervisor Dr Stefan Hoppler @ s.p.hoppler@abdn.ac.uk.

Further Details on the PhD programme and how to apply on
<http://www.abdn.ac.uk/clsm/graduate/themelist.php?id=7>.

Further Detail of the research laboratory and the Institute on
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ims/staff/details.php?id=s.p.hoppler. (more…)

Ida, a 47-million-year-old primate fossil from Messel, Germany , was grabbing headlines in press and television last week . But things doesn’t seems to be going fine for poor ida and extensive media hype has played a major role.
Darwinius , famously called as Ida is an amazing fossil discovery ,which is not only complete but also extraordinarily preserved. One can also see parts of her last meal preserved inside ida’s stomach. But media is more interested in the missing link factor ,which according many experts in the field is extensively hyped. One can also see major differences in original article published in Plos One and media release.

But the fossil is wonderful ,images of ida are awesome ( both in article and webpage) Hope it gets the credit it deserves .
(more…)