Monthly Archives: February 2017

Anatomy

What makes up the anatomy of the perfect Hull City player? – Hull Daily Mail

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We at the Hull Daily Mail have been thinking about what makes the perfect Hull City player.

So we selected ten attributes and the idea was to name the player with the best; first touch, passing, finishing, tackling, heading, power, character, intelligence, leadership and speed.

Throw them all together and collectively you have the perfect Tiger.

To get us started football writer Will Jackson names his perfect player from the current squad and we want to hear from you about who you think would go onto the perfect City player of all time. For the next week we'll be opening the voting to find out who you think is the City player who has been the best passer of a ball that you've ever seen, or who is the quickest.

To whet your appetite for that, take a look at our perfect City player using the current squad.

First touch: Sam Clucas An unsung hero, Clucas has the ability to run a game on his day, and a cracking first touch is where that all starts.

Passing: Tom Huddlestone A candidate for a few of these categories but Huddlestone's passing is arguably the best we have ever seen in a Hull City shirt.

Finishing: Abel Hernandez When he's fit and firing, Hernandez is potent in front of goal, scoring 20 goals for Steve Bruce's Hull City last season.

Tackling: Harry Maguire 'Arry has become a cult hero at City and it's easy to see why. He doesn't take any nonsense at the back, tackling anything that moves.

More news: How do City compare in relegation battle? We ask the experts

Heading: Andrea Ranocchia The Italian is 6'5'' and it tells, dominating aerial challenges. He doesn't give strikers a sniff in the air.

Power: Alfred N'Diaye He's huge. From his bullying performances we have seen so far, this guy does not lack strength.

Character: Eldin Jakupovic Never seen a character like him. His enthusiasm is infectious and I'm sure that spreads throughout the team.

Intelligence: Curtis Davies He reads the game well, and rarely has a bad game. Also a candidate for a lot of these categories.

Leadership: Michael Dawson A true leader and fundamental to have at the back. He could have almost single handedly dragged the Tigers back up last season.

Speed: Moses Odubajo A toss up between him and Kamil Grosicki, but the right back nicks it out of sheer loyalty.

More news: Paul Merson refusing to change his mind about Hull City

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What makes up the anatomy of the perfect Hull City player? - Hull Daily Mail

Immunology

Study reveals new role for cancer drug in tumor immunology – News-Medical.net

February 13, 2017 at 2:23 AM

A drug first designed to prevent cancer cells from multiplying has a second effect: it switches immune cells that turn down the body's attack on tumors back into the kind that amplify it. This is the finding of a study led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and published recently in Cancer Immunology Research.

According to experiments in mice, macrophages - immune cells that home in on tumors - take in the drug nab-paclitaxel (brand name Abraxane). Once inside these cells, say the study authors, the drug changes them so that they signal for an aggressive anti-tumor immune response.

"Our study reveals a previously unappreciated role for Abraxane in tumor immunology," says corresponding author Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, Vice Dean for Science and Chief Scientific Officer at NYU Langone.

"In doing so, it suggests ways to improve the drug and argues for its inclusion in new kinds of combination treatments," says Bar-Sagi, also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone, and associated with its Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Abraxane over Paclitaxel

Abraxane is comprised of the decades-old cancer drug, paclitaxel, combined with nanoparticles of the protein albumin (nab). Paclitaxel alone is not effective against pancreatic cancer, but Abraxane (nab-paclitaxel) is part of a leading treatment for the disease. Why the albumin-bound form works better has been a major question in the field.

Paclitaxel prevents structures called microtubules inside cancer cells from breaking up, a required step if they are to multiply as part of abnormal growth. Many in the field assume that nab-paclitaxel too primarily targets microtubules in cancer cells, with albumin perhaps helping the drug to get inside cells, and with fewer toxic side-effects.

The new findings suggest that, on top of any effect on cancer cells, Abraxane's effectiveness may proceed from its impact on macrophages, which roam the bloodstream and build up in many tumors.

The study results revolve around the immune system, in which cells like macrophages trigger a massive attack on bacteria or other invading microbes. This system can also recognize and attack cancer cells. Factors secreted by tumor cells, however, dampen the immune response in part by switching macrophages from their immune-stimulating stance, termed M1, into an M2 mode that suppresses their immune function.

In experiments in macrophage cell lines, the study authors found that nab-paclitaxel is more effective than paclitaxel partly because albumin enables macrophages to take up the drug through a natural process called macropinocytosis.

Once inside macrophages, according to experiments in mice with pancreatic tumors, nab-paclitaxel causes the macrophages to switch from immune-suppressing M2 cells back into M1 cells that amplify the body's effort to kill cancer cells. Past studies had found that paclitaxel has a similar structure to substances given off by bacteria that trigger macrophage activation. The study authors show that the same pathway is evoked by nab-paclitaxel in pancreatic tumor-associated macrophages.

"Our findings argue that it may be possible to develop more treatments that selectively target macrophages by coupling albumin to immune-activating agents," said lead study author Jane Cullis, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Bar-Sagi's lab. "We may also be able to adjust albumin's structure such that drugs attached to it stay in macrophages longer, or combine Abraxane with T-cell treatments for greater therapeutic effect. In principle, such treatments should be useful against the many tumor types infiltrated by macrophages."

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Study reveals new role for cancer drug in tumor immunology - News-Medical.net

Immunology

Immunology Fair-Market Value Compensation Rates for US Health Care Providers: FMV/Fee Schedules for Thought … – Business Wire (press release)

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Fair-Market Value Compensation Rates for U.S. Health Care Providers: FMV/Fee Schedules for Thought Leaders/KOLs - Immunology" report to their offering.

Fair-Market Value Compensation Rates for U.S. HCPs - Immunology presents hourly and half-day flat compensation rates for four (4) Thought Leader levels based on degree of influence. The analysis includes rates for six (6) specific activities as well as for other non-specified activities. The findings presented in this report result from the input from executives at 16 life science organizations.

This study presents fair-market value (FMV) compensation rates by percentiles, with averages, for six (6) activities as well as for non-specific activities, for four (4) levels of Thought Leader influences (rare, international, national and local).

Payments made to physicians and thought leaders have been under scrutiny for a few years and companies have been working to adjust their rates to level with industry standards. Adjustments to market rates should be done periodically and are best done through 3rd party research, providing a fair and balanced assessment of rates.

The research findings deliver markets rates used in the conduct of exchanges with Thought Leaders from 16 life science organizations. These payment benchmarks help legal, compliance and medical affair executives refine and support the development of fee schedules that are aligned with market conditions.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Research Methodology

2. Definitions

- Therapeutic Area

- Thought Leader Levels

- Salary Data versus Market Rates

- Hourly Rates

- Flat Rates

3. Flat Rates

- Advisory Board Lead

- Advisory Board Non-lead

- Consulting Scientific / Clinical Content

- Consulting Commercial Content

- Speaking Scientific / Clinical Content

- Speaking Commercial Content

- Other Activities

4. Hourly Rates

- Advisory Board Lead

- Advisory Board Non-lead

- Consulting Scientific / Clinical Content

- Consulting Commercial Content

- Speaking Scientific / Clinical Content

- Speaking Commercial Content

- Other Activities

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9429rg/fairmarket_value

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Immunology Fair-Market Value Compensation Rates for US Health Care Providers: FMV/Fee Schedules for Thought ... - Business Wire (press release)

Human Behavior

Advice: Never Trust Anyone That Tells You They’ll Take a Bullet For You – Houston Press

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 7 a.m.

As our own Cory Garcia will attest, one of the things I actually do get paid for when working here is arguing on social media. It turns out one of the best ways to track and study human behavior in the online space is, well, to engage with people whose impulse control is poor enough that they let their unfiltered personality dangle out in the wind. Its not the healthiest way to spend ones time, but it does help you learn an awful lot about how people think and act online.

Recently I had a bad Internet dust-up with a local artist who has been on my friends list for years and a rather constant headache regarding his behavior involving women and minorities on my page, and it finally resulted in an unfriending and finally a block because boundaries were never his jam or jelly.

One of the gaslight-ier things he said to me before the blocking was Id take a bullet for you. Ive seen others say that to people who were trying to get them to modify their behavior and I now consider it a very red flag. Someone who says this to you, especially when its in response to a friendship being on the line because he acted in a way you asked him not to, is probably not your friend.

First, to get it out of the way, almost none of us need bullets taken for us. The odds, even in America, of me being in a situation where anyone would even have the chance to stop a bullet to save me are very small. Im not the President. Im not even a Nazi with a punchable face and a stupid frog pin. Offering to be my bodyguard for the fictional assassins out to get me is just dumb.

But lets get into the nitty-gritty of what the statement Id take a bullet for you as an accusation that youre being a bad friend actually says. It implies, for one, that the world is a dangerous place, that you are beset on all sides by dangers, and that the person saying it is the one you can really trust. Thats the sort of thing domestic abusers say to their significant others to alienate them from their friends.

More than that, though, its an attempt to instill a sense of obligation in the listener despite the fact that the person saying it hasnt actually done anything to earn the obligation. Its a case of I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, an emotional debt against a future act of ultimate selflessness that will almost certainly never come to pass. By saying it first, the speaker implies that you wouldnt do this same heroic deed for him, or maybe you just havent thought about your friendship like he has.

If youre one of the people saying this sort of thing to friends youre having an argument over, you need to stop. It doesnt actually come out as a nice thing to say, even if youre sure you meant it. It definitely isnt a good way to stop an argument when the subject under discussion is your behavior right now, not in the possible future.

Like most people, I dont really need someone to take a bullet for me. I need people to stop calling women whores and cunts around me. I need a lot less queerphobia and transphobia in the world. I need folks to stop sharing every half-cocked conspiracy theory that proves they need a gun in an elementary school. These are actually helpful, and they require work and learning restraint, which is probably why jerks prefer to offer a pointless, manipulative and hollow martyrdom fantasy instead.

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Advice: Never Trust Anyone That Tells You They'll Take a Bullet For You - Houston Press

Human Behavior

Dogs Judge Humans When They Are Behaving Badly – Regal Tribune

According to a new study, dogs judge humans too, especially when they are behaving rudely.

The human behavior has officially gained a new judge. According to a new study, dogs judge humans too, especially when they are behaving in an inappropriate manner.

Our canine friends are not the only ones to judge us. Another species of the animal world does so as well. Research confirmed the fact that primates judge our behavior.

And apparently, mans best friend does so too. Research on the matter was led by James Anderson. He is a comparative psychologist. Study results were released earlier this year. They were published in the Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews journal.

The study paper was titled as follows. Third-party social evaluations of humans by monkeys and dogs Initially, Anderson and his team started out by testing monkeys. More exactly, Capuchin ones.

Their initial experiment went as follows. An actor was asked to try and get a toy out of a box. A second actor was asked to respond in two ways to this event. At first, this second member helped open the box. But the other variant had the second actor completely ignoring the toy struggle.

At the same time, both actors were asked to offer food to the Capuchins. In the first scenario, the monkey accepted food from them both. But in the second case, they were more selective. The Capuchins took food from the actor struggling with the box. But they denied it when it was offered by the second actor, the unhelpful and rude one.

Tests also proved another fact. These monkeys also presented a sense of fairness and unfairness as well. This was shown through another test.

But the scientists also wanted to turn to another animal species. One that is closer to us. Which led to our canine friends. And also to a quite clear conclusion. Dogs judge humans based on their behavior.

They too were tested in a similar manner. But instead of using complete strangers, one study participant was their owner. They were also put in a struggling situation. More exactly, they were asked to try and open a container.

Two actors also joined the tests. And they were both presented with the box. Depending on the variant, one either accepted or declined to help. The other actor remained passive throughout both these scenarios.

As before, the actors were asked to offer them food. But this was no easy task. As the dogs judge humans too, they mostly did not accept any from the rude actor. Instead, they readily took food when the same participantwas helpful. The dogs response to the indifferent actor was somewhat neutral. Although they accepted the treats.

Just as with the monkeys, the dog tests showed the following. They too exhibit the ability to judge people based on their behavior. Essentially, they based their own response on the way the respective human acted.

Dogs were also noted to do the following. They seem to comprehend the differences between being rude or unpleasant and a helpful behavior. And they also seem to try and avoid the rude ones.

The tests, in general, pointed out an interesting fact. Both the monkeys and dogs recognized negativity. And also tried to shun it. As such, the researchers reached the following conclusion. These animals are socially aware of the behavior of both the humans and animals surrounding them.

As it is, you should remember this the next time someone asks for some help. Dogs judge humans and your canine friend may not be too happy if you deny it.

Image Source: Wikimedia

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Dogs Judge Humans When They Are Behaving Badly - Regal Tribune

Genetics

College of Medicine graduate student launches genetics research startup – Penn State News

HERSHEY, Pa. Olivier Noel is only 28 years old, but hes already changing the face of genetics research.

The Haitian native is in his sixth year of Penn State College of MedicinesMD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Programand was recently recognized by Forbes as one of the countrys brightest young entrepreneurs on its30 Under 30 list in the science industry. Hes the founder of DNAsimple, a startup aimed at accelerating genetics research by connecting DNA donors with research scientists. The company provides scientists with access to critically important samples, significantly speeding up the pace for genetics research.

People dont realize it can take years to get samples, but really only a month to get an assignment done which is a little bit ridiculous, Noel said. Its a problem for geneticists across the board. You can have a million dollars to do a study, but waste three years trying to get samples.

Noel explained a light bulb went off when he attended a genetics conference at the recommendation of Dr. Roger L. Ladda, whom he had been shadowing with the intent of focusing his residency on genetics.

The keynote speaker at the conference was talking about how he was studying a disease not really prevalent in the Western world, and the way they were able to get a DNA sample to validate was through Facebook. The joke at the time was that Facebook is the new way of doing genetics. I realized, wow, that worked well for one case but thats not the way science should get done, Noel said.

Noels big break was when the company was accepted into the Y Combinator program, which includes such notable alumni as Dropbox, Airbnb and Reddit. DNAsimple was one of 32 companies accepted from more than 6,500 applicants worldwide, he said. But he credits his doctoral advisors former Penn State faculty member Dr. Glenn S. Gerhard and Penn State College of Medicine Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular BiologyJames Broach for teaching him about genetics and exposing him to the Penn State Institute for Personalized Medicine.

Learn more about Noel and his work in this Penn State Medicine article.

Last Updated February 14, 2017

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College of Medicine graduate student launches genetics research startup - Penn State News

Genetics

Athletigen, Kinduct Technologies To Integrate Genetics With Athletic Performance Insights – SportTechie

Sports genetics company Athletigen Technologies is teaming up with Kinduct Technologies, a data and analytics software provider, to integrate genetics with athletic performance data.

Athletigen is known for analyzing an athletes genetic makeup and using that to help the athlete achieve his or her performance goals. Kinduct allows teams and organizations to look at data from multiple athletes and use that to make informed decisions to improve individual performance.

The partnership with Kinduct is an exciting opportunity, with both companies focused on pushing the limits of human performance, Athletigen CEO Dr. Jeremy Koenig said in a statement Tuesday. Clients will now have access to genetic markers combined with performance data, biometric scores and subjective inputs to provide a comprehensive view of the athlete to help understand and improve their in-game performance.

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Before teaming up with Athletigen, Kinducts products collected and analyzed data for a wide range of athletes. Now, there will be an added layer of genetics data.

For Athletigen, this partnership could be a way to expand the brand. Kinduct has established relationships inthe NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA, MLS and NCAA, and now, Athletigens insights in geneticscan reach teams in those leagues as well.

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Athletigen, Kinduct Technologies To Integrate Genetics With Athletic Performance Insights - SportTechie

Embryology

Does Abortion Really Prevent Child Abuse? – Mike Adams – Townhall – Townhall

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Posted: Feb 14, 2017 12:01 AM

I hear a lot of calloused arguments in favor of abortion. Most of them come from leftists. Unfortunately, I occasionally hear them coming from self-described libertarians and conservatives. Unlike leftists who are wrong on every issue, the person claiming to be conservative or libertarian is usually right on most issues. So it is worth trying to offer them a respectful and well-reasoned response. Below, I respond to just such a reader. Her words are indented and in italics, mine are not:

I ask pro-lifers: who will take care of all the unwanted babies if we were to ban abortion. (There is never an answer). Will we go back to building orphanages and institutions wherein we stick children until adulthood?

This is simply false. When you ask pro-lifers who will take care of unwanted babies we do have an answer, which is pretty straightforward: There is no such thing as an unwanted baby.

Put simply, those willing to adopt a child exceed the number of children aborted in this country every year. The logical error in the readers argument is that it is somehow worse to be placed in an orphanage than to be slowly and methodically dismembered. That logical error is compounded by the easily refutable assertion that such an outcome would be reasonably likely.

The evidence of a surplus of willing adoptive parents is not new. The National Committee for Adoption said in a 1990 press release that "infants who are legally free for adoption, regardless of their race or ethnicity do not have to wait for homes. In fact, there is a long waiting list of screened families who want to adopt even seriously disabled newborns, including babies born with Down Syndrome and spina bifida. An estimated two million families in the U.S. were interested in adopting a child even back in the early 1900s when between 1.5 and 1.6 million babies were being aborted in the U.S. annually. The children waiting to be adopted tend to be older. Babies do not wait to be adopted.

Who will be accountable for all the babies who will be beaten or worse; beaten to death by parents that never wanted them? CPS certainly has never gotten a real foothold in this country, they surely can't/won't help. So, I had this conversation with a friend of a friend just the other day, and when I asked who will be held accountable for the deaths or maiming of babies, her response was the parent of course. Indeed. But we still have a DEAD CHILD. Not just a dead child, Mike. A dead child who took how many very painful blows, how many kicks, how many head bangs? People who are beaten die a very painful, very slow death. Who will be held responsible?

This argument is even easier to defeat than the previous one. Simply look at the numbers. Those claiming that abortion is needed to reduce child abuse must contend with the empirical reality that child abuse increased by over 500 percent in the decade following Roe v. Wade. In fact, in less than a decade after Roe, child abuse had already risen by over 500 percent. These stats come right from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This should not come as a surprise. Roe v. Wade said that a woman could defeat the government interest in stopping third trimester abortions if she had a legitimate health interest in obtaining the abortion. On the very same day, the Court released the Doe v. Bolton decision saying that emotional and psychological factors count as legitimate health interests.

Let me translate that for you: If the prospect of having a child causes a woman emotional or psychological distress she may have the child slowly dismembered in the womb. It is no wonder that child abuse skyrocketed in the aftermath of those two decisions.

Of course, the greater error my reader has made is simply assuming that abortion is not child abuse. This requires rejecting the consensus of the science of embryology that tells us the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being from the point of conception. Ultimately, dismembering the unborn in order to prevent child abuse makes about as much sense as decapitating someone in order to prevent tooth decay.

During the early 1990s when our abortion rates peaked at around 1.6 million per year our homicide rates were also at their highest levels. At that time, the annual number of homicides approached 25,000. This means that there were over 60 abortions for every one murder or manslaughter. So the numbers would not justify keeping abortion legal even if it prevented every single homicide much less the rare parent-on-child homicide preceded by long term physical abuse. The only way the math works is if one engages in anti-science fundamentalism and pretends that the unborn is not a human.

Finally, it makes little sense to probe the readers implied assertion that the unborn child feels no pain during the process of dismemberment. It has never been our position that abortion is wrong because it hurts. It is our position that it is wrong because it unjustly kills an innocent human being. Those focusing on the issue of pain would never consent to decriminalizing the rape and murder of women provided that the victims were first drugged thus rendering the act painless.

In the final analysis, those who would use the welfare of children to justify elective abortion are guilty of both the abuse of logic and the neglect of facts. It is a crass rationalization for murder that is unworthy of conservatives and libertarians alike.

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Does Abortion Really Prevent Child Abuse? - Mike Adams - Townhall - Townhall

Cell Biology

Sperm-egg fusion proteins have same structure as those used by … – Phys.Org

February 14, 2017 by Kevin Hattori Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of Zika virus. Credit: Cynthia Goldsmith/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The protein that helps the sperm and egg fuse together in sexual reproduction can also fuse regular cells together. Recent findings by a team of biomedical researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Argentina, Uruguay and the U.S. show this protein is part of a larger family of proteins that helps other cells bind together to create larger organs, and which also allows viruses like Zika and Dengue to invade healthy cells.

For every sexually reproducing organism, sperm and egg fusion is the first step in the generation of a new individual. This process has been studied for more than 100 years in many organisms including humans, mice, insects, plants, sea urchins and even fungi. But the identity of the molecular machineries that mediate sperm and egg fusion remained unknown.

Now, the team led by Dr. Benjamin Podbilewicz, of the Technion Faculty of Biology, and Dr. Pablo S. Aguilar of Universidad Nacional de San Martin in Argentina, has demonstrated that the protein HAP2 a long known player in sperm-egg fusion is a protein that mediates a broad range of cell-cell fusion. Their findings were published recently in the Journal of Cell Biology.

HAP2 is found in plants, protists (e.g. algae, protozoa, and slime molds) and invertebrates, and is therefore considered an ancestral protein present at the origins of the first eukaryotic cells (cells with real nuclei). However, a closer look at HAP2 led the researchers to conclude that HAP2's roots are even older. Structural and phylogenetic analysis of HAP2 proteins revealed they are homologous to proteins used by viruses such as Zika and Dengue to fuse viral membrane to the membrane of the cell they invade.

According to the researchers, this means HAP2, FF and viral fusion proteins constitute a superfamily of membrane fusion proteins, which the authors named Fusexins (fusion proteins essential for sexual reproduction and exoplasmic merger of plasma membranes).

"Fusexins are fascinating machines that keep a structural core diversified to execute cell membrane fusion in very different contexts," says Prof. Podbilewicz. "Understanding the different structure-function relationships of fusexins will enable scientists to rationally manipulate cell-cell fusion in fertilization and tissue development. The added and very timely benefit is that it provides us greater understanding of how Zika and other viruses cause diseases in their target hosts."

The striking similarities between proteins that promote membrane fusion under very different contexts led the authors to dig into mechanistic details. Performing cell-cell fusion experiments, the researchers demonstrated that, like FF fusexins, HAP2 is needed in both fusing cells to promote membrane cell fusion. This bilateral requirement of HAP2 and FF fusexins differs from the viral mechanism of action, where fusexin is only present in the viral membrane (see figure).

The combined conservation of structure, sequence, and function imply that these proteins diverged from a common ancestor. Fusexins might have emerged 2-3 billion years ago to promote a primordial form of genetic material exchange between cells. Later, enveloped viruses took these fusion proteins to infect cells more efficiently. Finally, multicellular organisms adapted fusexins to sculpt organs like muscle and bone-repairing osteoclasts in vertebrates and skin and the vagina in worms through cell-cell fusion.

Explore further: Researchers Uncover Cell Fusion Mechanism

More information: Clari Valansi et al. HAP2/GCS1 is a gamete fusion protein homologous to somatic and viral fusogens, The Journal of Cell Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201610093

Journal reference: Journal of Cell Biology

Provided by: Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

In a study that could shed light on disorders that occur in skeletal muscles, bone, the placenta, and other organs where fused cells are common, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and at the US National ...

In order for cells to function properly, cargo needs to be constantly transported from one point to another within the cell, like on a goods station. This cargo is located in or on intracellular membranes, called vesicles. ...

The near-spherical outer structure of the dengue virus has been recreated in remarkable detail by a team of bioinformaticians in Singapore. The virtual model could show researchers how the virus fuses with and infects human ...

(Medical Xpress)Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified proteins that allow muscle cells in mice to form from the fusion of the early stage cells that give rise to the muscle cells.

Every time a hormone is released from a cell, every time a neurotransmitter leaps across a synapse to relay a message from one neuron to another, the cell must undergo exocytosis. This is the process responsible for transporting ...

Just as human relationships are a two-way street, fusion between cells requires two active partners: one to send protrusions into its neighbor, and one to hold its ground and help complete the process. Researchers have now ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences has found that rhesus monkeys can pass the mirror self-awareness test if they are first taught how mirrors work. In their paper published ...

University of Georgia researchers have confirmed that becoming a parent brings about more than just the obvious offspringit also rewires the parents' brain.

Male guppies pay a high cost for their sexual harassment of female guppies including much higher mortality rates a new study from Macquarie University has found.

Scientists at the University of Wrzburg have generated new insights into the intricate molecular underpinnings of ubiquitin signaling. Their results may provide new avenues for cancer therapy.

The protein that helps the sperm and egg fuse together in sexual reproduction can also fuse regular cells together. Recent findings by a team of biomedical researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Argentina, ...

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Sperm-egg fusion proteins have same structure as those used by ... - Phys.Org

Cell Biology

Mutant Maize Offers Key to Understanding Plant Growth – UCR Today (press release)

Live cell time-lapse imaging of maize mutant provides crucial details for UC Riverside researchers

By Sean Nealon on February 13, 2017

From left, normal and mutant maize plants.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) How plant cells divide and how that contributes to plant growth has been one of the longstanding unsolved mysteries of cell biology. Two conflicting ideas have fueled the mystery.

The first idea is that cells divide merely to fill space in plant tissue, and therefore the orientation of the division is unimportant to growth. In other words, the contribution of individual cell behavior to overall growth isnt very important.

The second idea is that individual cells are the basic unit of life and their individual programs eventually build an organism. In other words, each new cell created contributes to proper patterning of the tissue. In this case, the orientation of each cells division is critical for how the plant tissue is patterned and also impacts growth.

New findings by a University of California, Riverside-led team of researchers, lend support to the second idea, that the orientation of cell division is critical for overall plant growth. The work was just published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers, led by Carolyn Rasmussen, an assistant professor of plant cell biology at UC Riverside and Pablo Martinez, a graduate student working in Rasmussens lab, together with Anding Luo and Anne Sylvester at University of Wyoming, were working with a maize mutant, called tangled1, with known defects in growth and division plane orientation of cells. Division plane orientation refers to the positioning of new cell walls during division.

Scanning electron micrographs of maize epidermal cells. Left is the mutant variety. Right is the wild variety.

They used time-lapse live cell imaging that represented hundreds of hours of maize, (commonly called corn in the United States), cells dividing. The time-lapse of imaging allowed them to characterize a previously unknown delay during cell division stages in the maize mutant. This study clarified the relationship between growth, timely division progression and proper division plane orientation.

This study suggests that delays during division do not necessarily cause growth defects, but that improper placement of new cell walls together with delays during division causes growth defects. Therefore, division plane orientation is a critical but potentially indirect factor for growth.

The findings might have long-term implications for increasing agricultural production. For example, during the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century, researchers developed short-stature, or dwarf, wheat and rice varieties that led to higher yields and are credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of plant growth might contribute in the long-term to developing more suitable short-stature maize varieties.

The paper is called Proper division plane orientation and mitotic progression together allow normal growth of maize.

Archived under: Science/Technology, Carolyn Rasmussen, College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, Pablo Martinez, press release

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Mutant Maize Offers Key to Understanding Plant Growth - UCR Today (press release)