Latest PLoS Biology Stories

Laboratory reports success in blocking the lethal effects of ALSBrandeis researchers have made a significant advance in the effort to understand amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by successfully reversing the toxicity of the mutated protein in the familial type of the disease.Currently there is no cure or prevention for the disease, which affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Most frequently referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, after its most famous victim, ALS typically...

Several genes have been linked to ALS, with one of the most recent called FUS. Two new studies in PLoS Biology, one from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the other from colleagues at Brandeis University, both examined FUS biology in yeast and found that defects in RNA biology may be central to how FUS contributes to ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. These findings point to new targets for developing drugs.Proteins aggregate to form insoluble clumps in the brain and spinal...

Intracellular transport mechanism dissectedIn a multicellular organism, different cells fulfill a range of diversified functions. Often such specialization depends on the delivery of molecular goods to distinct places within a cell. It ensures that particular functions only occur at defined cellular sites. This establishment of intracellular asymmetry in the otherwise fluid environment of the cell cytoplasm requires active transport processes. Messenger RNAs (mRNA) represent an especially...

A massive database cataloging the human genome's functional elements -- including genes, RNA transcripts, and other products -- is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers, and the public, thanks to an international team of researchers. In a paper published in the journal PLoS Biology on 19 April 2011, the project -- called ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) -- provides an overview of the team's ongoing efforts to interpret the human...

HudsonAlpha is part of international team releasing massive datasetThe international team of the ENCODE, or Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements project, has created an overview of its ongoing large-scale efforts to interpret the human genome sequence.The April 19 publication of "A User's Guide to the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE)" in the journal PLoS Biology provides a guide for using the vast amounts of high-quality data and resources produced so far by the project. All of the...

Scientists studied the global influence of human population on corals reefs and were surprised to find that highly diverse reef fish systems are the most vulnerable to human threatsIn an unprecedented collaborative analysis published in the journal PLoS Biology, scientists from 49 nations demonstrated that the ability of reef fish systems to produce goods and services to humanity increases rapidly with the number of species. However, growing human populations hamper the ability of reefs to...

In a large collaborative analysis publishing tomorrow in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, 55 scientists from 49 nations document that the capability of reef fish systems to produce biomass and deliver goods and services to humanity, is functionally linked to the number of species; functioning increases as biodiversity increases. However, mounting pressures from growing human populations is tampering with this functioning of the reef fish communities, especially in the most...

In the cerebral cortex, the balance between excitation (pyramidal neurons) and inhibition (interneurons) is thought to be mediated by the primary mode of neuronal communication: "all-or-none" action potentials, or spikes. However, Dr. Yousheng Shu's research group at the Institute of Neuroscience of Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered a new strategy by which the cortex can maintain this balance, by showing that the amount of inhibition depends on the membrane potentials (Vm)...

The zeta toxins are a family of proteins that are normally present within various pathogenic bacteria and can mysteriously trigger suicide when the cells undergo stress. A team led by Anton Meinhart at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg has now found the mechanism underlying this programmed bacterial cell death. Their paper, publishing next week in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, reports that zeta toxins convert a compound required for bacterial cell...

Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions, such as laundry detergent digesting protein stains, which are otherwise very difficult to remove. A research team led by Professor Kam-bo Wong of the Centre for Protein Science and Crystallography, School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong demonstrated a fundamental principle in changing the activity of enzymes by means of protein engineering. The findings provide potential insights into the future design of...