In previous research (Nature, July 2013), UC Berkeley scientists Beatriz Vicoso, Ph.D., and Doris Bachtrog, Ph.D., determined that genes on the so-called "dot chromosome," or fourth chromosome, of the fruit fly Drosophilia melanogaster are X-linked in three other related fly species. These and other findings revealed that the fruit fly's "dot chromosome" had descended from a differentiated X chromosome and suggests that several of the chromosome's puzzling features are remnants of its heritage as a sex chromosome. For example, the expression levels of genes on the ...

Skeletal muscle cells with unevenly spaced nuclei, or nuclei in the wrong location, are telltale signs of such inherited muscle diseases as Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy, which occurs in one out of every 100,000 births, and centronuclear myopathy, which affects one out of every 50,000 infants. What goes wrong during myogenesis, the formation and maintenance of muscle tissue, to produce these inherited muscle diseases? Research using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has implicated the gene known as Sunday Driver (Syd) as a novel regulator of myogenesis. The ...

As Rachel Carson predicted 50 years ago in her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, crop pests are capable of outwitting the chemical compounds known as xenobiotics that are devised to kill them. This development of resistance to insecticides is a serious problem because it threatens crop production and thereby can influence the availability and costs of many foods as well as the economy. To understand the genetic mechanisms underlying insecticide resistance, University of Kansas scientists turned to the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and caffeine, a stimulant drug ...

Four years ago, University of Iowa scientists discovered that mutations in the prickle gene in Drosophila were responsible for much more than merely altering the bristles on the fly's body to point them in the wrong direction. Prompted by a colleague's finding that PRICKLE gene mutations were responsible for triggering a form of epilepsy in humans, John Manak, Ph.D., who led the fly research team, took a closer look at the Drosophila prickle mutants. (PRICKLE refers to the human gene, while prickle is the Drosophila form of the gene.) Through a series of experiments, ...

A Stanford University lab whose studies have advanced scientific understanding of resistance and tolerance defense mechanisms to bacterial and viral pathogens has now turned its sights on cancer. "Just as there are resistance and tolerance mechanisms that target invading microbes, we predicted that there are also resistance and tolerance mechanisms that control a host's response to cancer," David Schneider, Ph.D., who heads the lab, and postdoctoral researcher Adler R. Dillman, Ph.D., wrote in their GSA Drosophila Research Conference abstract. While resistance refers ...

Earlier this year, researchers in David J. Begun, Ph.D.'s lab at UC Davis reported that they had uncovered 142 de novo genes that originated in the ancestral non-coding DNA sequences and are segregating in Drosophila melanogaster populations. Dr. Begun and postdoctoral scientist Li Zhao, Ph.D., identified de novo genes by comparing the RNA transcripts of the testes of several wild-derived strains of D. melanogaster to the standard reference genome for this fly species and to the RNA transcripts and genomes of two other Drosophila species. Their results suggested that ...

Developing treatments that slow, if not halt, the neuronal loss and cognitive decline of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has proven to be a challenge. Among the scientists who have taken on that challenge are researchers at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute in Gainesville, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model. The scientists are investigating passive immunotherapy, one of the most promising approaches to blocking the amyloid-β42 (Aβ42) peptide, the main component of the amyloid plaques that damage the brain cells of patients with ...

A year after responsibility for public health was transferred from the NHS to local authorities, the BMJ found numerous examples of councils disinvesting in a wide range of public health services, including those for substance misuse, sexual health, smoking cessation, obesity, and school nursing. Much of this money is being used to support wider council services vulnerable to cuts, such as trading standards, domestic abuse services, housing, parks and leisure centres. The BMJ sent Freedom of Information requests to all 152 upper-tier local authorities in England, asking ...

On bmj.com today, Angela Coulter, Associate Professor at Oxford University and colleagues argue that this is "unethical" and call for a coordinated approach to use the information to help improve services. Their views follow recent news of hospital trusts "helping" patients to write favourable reports of their experience of their services – and a report by Healthwatch England warning that the complaints system for the NHS in England is "hopelessly complicated" and needs an overhaul. By April 2015, all NHS patients attending any type of healthcare facility in England ...

Armed with a ferocious pair of mandibles, male stag beetles appear well prepared to take on the world. 'Their jaws are not just for ornamentation, they really use them to fight', says Jana Goyens from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, adding that males grapple over the choicest patches of rotten wood for their mates to lay their eggs in. Describing a stag beetle battle, Goyens explains that one beetle grabs the other one around its body and then rears up in an attempt to hurl his opponent over his head and onto its back. 'It is clear which one is the loser', says Goyens. ...

March 26, 2014, Hong Kong, China –The international open-access journal GigaScience (a BGI and BioMed Central journal) today announces a major step forward for reproducible research and public data-sharing in the neurosciences with the publication and release of a huge cache of electrophysiology data resources. Important for studying visual development, many groups have been using multielectrode array recordings to look at developmental changes and the effects of various genetic defects on the spontaneous activity of the retina. In neuroscience, public sharing of data is ...

A large study of child growth patterns in 36 developing countries published in The Lancet Global Health journal has found that, contrary to widely held beliefs, economic growth is at best associated with very small, and in some cases no declines in levels of stunting, underweight, and wasting. This suggests that investment in interventions that directly impact health and nutrition are needed to tackle child undernutrition. Worldwide, malnutrition contributes to 2.6 million child deaths each year, or more than one in three of all child deaths. In 2011, an estimated 165 ...

Boston, MA —A large study of child growth patterns in 36 developing countries finds that, contrary to widely held beliefs, economic growth has little to no effect on the nutritional status of the world's poorest children. The study, from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), the University of Göttingen, Germany, ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, found that economic growth was associated with small or no declines in stunting, underweight, and wasting—all signs of undernutrition. "These findings represent a potentially ...

By reptile standards, alligators are positively chatty. They are the most vocal of the non-avian reptiles and are known to be able to pinpoint the source of sounds with accuracy. But it wasn't clear exactly how they did it because they lack external auditory structures. In a new study, an international team of biologists shows that the alligator's ear is strongly directional because of large, air-filled channels connecting the two middle ears. This configuration is similar in birds, which have an interaural canal that increases directionality. "Mammals usually have ...

Scientists monitored Cuvier's beaked whales' record-breaking dives to depths of nearly two miles below the ocean surface and some dives lasted for over two hours, according to results published March 26, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gregory Schorr from Cascadia Research Collective and colleagues. Distributed throughout the world's oceans, the Cuvier's beaked whales' frequent dives deep into the ocean make them difficult for researchers to study. Previous studies using short-term tags (~ 215 hours of data) have indicated that this deep-diving species might ...

VIDEO: This video shows example trials for each of the six experiments. Click here for more information. New Caledonian crows may understand how to displace water to receive a reward, with the causal understanding level of a 5-7 year-old child, according to results published March 26, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Sarah Jelbert from University of Auckland and colleagues. Understanding causal relationships between actions is a key feature of human cognition. However, ...

Humpback whales share a simplistic skin bacterial community across populations, according to results published March 26, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Amy Apprill from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues. The overall bacterial communities differ by geographic area and by metabolic state, such as feeding versus starving during migration and breeding. Bacterial communities living on mammal skin may play a role in their health; for humans, there is a relationship between skin bacteria and allergic or inflammatory conditions. While skin ...

Although the targeted cancer treatment drug crizotinib is very effective in causing rapid regression of a particular form of lung cancer, patients' tumors inevitably become resistant to the drug. Now a new drug called ceritinib appears to be effective against advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), both in tumors that have become resistant to crizotinib and in those never treated with the older drug. The results of a phase 1 clinical trial conducted at centers in 11 countries are reported in the March 27 New England Journal of Medicine. "Crizotinib ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Allen Institute for Brain Science have published a study that gives clear and direct new evidence that autism begins during pregnancy. The study will be published in the March 27 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers – Eric Courchesne, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Autism Center of Excellence at UC San Diego, Ed S. Lein, PhD, of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and first author Rich Stoner, PhD, of the UC San Diego ...

PHILADELPHIA (March 26, 2014) – Despite the popular conception of giant pandas as continually chomping on bamboo to fulfill a voracious appetite for this reedy grass, new research from the Monell Center reveals that this highly endangered species also has a sweet tooth. A combination of behavioral and molecular genetic studies demonstrated that the giant panda both possesses functional sweet taste receptors and also shows a strong preference for some natural sweeteners, including fructose and sucrose. "Examining an animal's taste DNA can give us clues to their past diet, ...

Infectious disease specialists at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center have identified a protein that regulates the body's immune response to cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common pathogen that causes lifelong infections and can lead to devastating illness in newborns and those with weakened immune systems. The protein — a cell receptor called NOD2 found in several types of immune cells — has long been known for its role in fighting off bacterial invaders by sensing their presence and alerting immune cells to release chemicals that weaken or destroy the harmful bacteria. That ...

RICHARDSON, Texas (March 26, 2014) — The legalization of medical marijuana has sparked debate across the nation for decades. Some opponents have argued that medical marijuana's legalization will lead to higher crime rates, but according to a new study at UT Dallas, legalization of medical cannabis is not an indicator of increased crime. It actually may be related to reductions in certain types of crime, said Dr. Robert Morris, associate professor of criminology and lead author of the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE. "We're cautious about saying, 'Medical ...

The architecture of the autistic brain is speckled with patches of abnormal neurons, according to research partially funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 27, 2014, this study suggests that brain irregularities in children with autism can be traced back to prenatal development. "While autism is generally considered a developmental brain disorder, research has not identified a consistent or causative lesion," said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of NIMH. ...

Bacteria are invisible to the naked eye, but they reside on nearly every surface humans encounter—including the skin. Uncovering the role these microorganisms play in human health is a major focus of research in skin microbiology, but little is known about the identity or function of skin bacteria in other mammals. In a paper published in the open access journal PLOS ONE, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues identified a core skin bacterial community that humpback whales share across populations, which could point to a way to assess ...

A smartphone application appears to help patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) reduce risky drinking days compared to patients who received usual care after leaving treatment in a residential program. Alcohol dependence is a lifetime psychiatric diagnosis with relapse rates similar to other chronic illnesses. Continuing care for AUDs has been associated with better outcomes, but patients leaving treatment for AUDs typically are not offered aftercare. The authors randomized 349 patients with alcohol dependence leaving three residential programs to treatment as ...