News by Subject Biology

By analyzing duplicates of thousands of genes, researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary events leading to the creation of eukaryotic cells, the precursors to virtually all life you can see with the naked eye. The evolutionary timeline from simple bacterial cells to complex eukaryotic cells progressed differently than previously thought. The study, a collaboration between the Comparative Genomics lab at IRB Barcelona and the University of Utrecht, has been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

To promote resource sharing and research cooperation for the synthetic biology and molecular breeding of industrial oil-producing microalgae, an international team led by Single-Cell Center (SCC), Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has released the "NanDeSyn Database" (http://www.nandesyn.org).

By examining the poop of the fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), a team at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) encountered surprising results about its eating habits and foraging abilities.

UC San Diego researchers use experimental artificial intelligence system called DrugCell to predict the best approach to treating cancer.

A team of Duke researchers has found that transcription factors have a tendency to bind strongly to "mismatched" sections of DNA, i.e. sections of the genome that were not copied correctly. The strong binding of transcription factors to these mismatched sections of regulatory DNA might be a way in which random mutations become a problem that leads to disease, including cancer.

Australian researchers have used powerful 'single cell multi-omics' technologies to discover a previously unknown ancestor of T and B lymphocytes, which are critical components of our immune system.