Scientists lead by Ben Wen, Ph.D., vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y has devised a much economical method for producing Bio diesel from Algae oil. This eco friendly method is considered to be 40 percent cheaper than that of others now being used and can be real boon for many nations as Supply of algae will not be a problem (limitless amount of algae growing in oceans, lakes, and rivers, throughout the world) .
“It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a …

Considering huge diversity in number and form among various living beings (plants and Animals) on our planet , its rather impossible to study them in detail, unless divided into different categories based on the differences and similarities between them. As many of you are aware that classification of plants and animals is not something of recent times , evidence from the days of Aristotle is available for Classification. ( For more details on classification of animals refer to previous blog post on “Biological classification of Animals” )
The scientific study …

Today in the third and last part of “Top 15 articles on Hox function” series ( In case if you are new here ,the first two parts can be read here and here ),we see five outstanding articles related to Hox function. So here it goes:
11) Study by Passner et al determined the crystal structure of an Ultrabithorax-Extradenticle-DNA complex at 2.4A° resolution, using the minimal polypeptides that form a cooperative heterodimer. It was first of its kind, where crystal structure of proteins was determined on physiological target. The HD …

Vienna Drosophila Research Center (VDRC) recently announced availability of a new large-scale collection of transgenic RNAi lines. These lines have been created using the phiC31 integrase system to target RNAi transgenes to a specific landing site on the second chromosome. This landing site (VIE-260b) was selected from an initial set of 59candidate landing sites, based on its low level of basal expression and consistent high level of GAL4-dependent expression across a range of different tissues. The RNAi transgenes consist of inverted repeats of typically 300-700bpthat were designed to reduce the …

Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE 2009) will be held in IOWA on the campus of the University of Iowa, from June 3-7, 2009. The theme of the year is “Darwin to the Next Generation”, to commemorate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th publication anniversary of On the Origin of Species. The society also acknowledge both the human creativity and technological innovations that are revolutionizing our understanding of the evolution of genes, genomes and organisms.

Symposium on the “Origin and Evolution of animal genomes” :
Multicellular …

In its centennial year , Burgess shale has added one more wonderful chapter to the history of life on Earth. A team of Paleontologists from Canada,UK and Sweden has discovered a new animal from Cambrian age ,which was lying in the fossil collection of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for many years. The group has published a description of the 500-million-year-old Hurdia victoria the new issue of Science journal based on the several specimens from the Burgess Shale.
Hurdia victoria was an underwater predator with segmented body ,a general body …

In the year 1909 , An American invertebrate paleontologist Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered a fossil paradise ,which completely change the way we look at the history of life on earth. This place is now very famous Burgess Shale formation in Canada, which celebrates 100 years of discovery in 2009.The Burgess Shale is famous for the exceptional preservation of the fossils found within it, in which the soft parts are also preserved,providing valuable evidence of the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion refers to the sudden proliferation of diverse animal life …