Latest LSm Stories

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The crystal structure of a molecule from a primitive fungus has served as a time machine to show researchers more about the evolution of life from the simple to the complex. By studying the three-dimensional version of the fungus protein bound to an RNA molecule, scientists from Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin have been able to visualize how life progressed from an early self-replicating molecule that also performed chemical reactions to one in...

For the first time, scientists have captured detailed images of life's essence. The dazzling pictures reveal a key step in the process of cell division, which all organisms must undergo to survive. The moment occurs deep within a cell, as two proteins work in concert to unzip a strand of DNA to create two new cells. But until now, scientists seeking to directly observe this essential process only could view fuzzy images taken by an electron microscope. A scientist at the University of Texas...

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have determined the three-dimensional structure of an RNA enzyme, or "ribozyme," that carries out a fundamental reaction required to make new RNA molecules. Their results provide insight into what may have been the first self-replicating molecule to arise billions of years ago on the evolutionary path toward the emergence of life.In all forms of life known today, the synthesis of DNA and RNA molecules is carried out by enzymes...

A new, sharper picture of the nano-machine that translates our genetic program into proteins promises to help researchers explain how some types of antibiotics work and could lead to the design of better ones.The high-resolution snapshots of the bacterial ribosome were captured by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with the lab's Advanced Light Source, which generates intense beams of X-rays that can reveal unprecedented...

PHILADELPHIA "“ The discovery in 1977 that the coding regions of a gene could appear in separate segments along the DNA won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Richard J. Roberts and Phillip A. Sharp. The active segments of a gene were termed exons, separated from each other within the gene by inactive introns. The research suggested the necessary existence of a number of biological processes and active entities, many of which have since been tracked down by other scientists....

CHAPEL HILL -- Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have identified an elusive protein that performs a necessary step in the production of human chromosomes. The new study appears in the most recent issue (Oct. 7) of the journal Cell. The study found that a protein called CPSF73 acts like scissors to cut strands of histone messenger RNA (mRNA) in the cell nucleus. This cutting action produces the mRNA needed to create histone proteins that combine...

DALLAS - Sept. 21, 2005 - By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts.In two papers appearing in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Rama Ranganathan, associate professor of pharmacology, and his colleagues detail a new...

In the primordial soup that produced life on earth, there were organic molecules that combined to produce the first nucleic acid chains, which were the first elements able to self-replicate. According to one of the more accepted theories, these molecules were ribonucleic acid (RNA) chains, a molecule that is practically identical to DNA and that today has the secondary role in cells of copying information stored in DNA and translating it into proteins. These proteins have a direct active role...

SALT LAKE CITY -- In a discovery that upends a longstanding tenet of human biology, University of Utah School of Medicine researchers have shown that a key process in gene regulation can occur in human platelets, unique cells that are unusual because they don't have a nucleus (anucleate). Scientists long have thought the transformation of pre-mRNA into mature mRNA--called splicing--happens only in a cell's nucleus. But using stem cells from human umbilical cord blood to engineer the precursor...

Biophysicists have developed a method for studying, in real time, a nanoscale "docking and undocking" interaction between small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a technique that may be broadly useful in studying structural changes in RNA that affect its function. The research at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado at Boulder, may have applications in the design of effective new drugs based on small RNA...