News by Subject Biology

The effectiveness of current treatments for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, could be improved by using approaches that wipe out the 'survival system' of cancer cells according to a study published in Nature Communications today. Researchers from the Babraham Institute, AstraZeneca and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre have demonstrated an approach, used in parallel with existing treatments, which is effective at triggering tumor cell death and delaying treatment resistance.

Research involving several teams at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK, has shown that cellular recycling (autophagy) is repressed during the process of cell division, and how repression of autophagy during mitosis utilises a different master regulator. The findings address a long-standing point of contention in biology.

A recent Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions article studies chitin-binding proteins from a soilborne fungus (Verticillium nonalfalfae) that causes vascular wilt in plants. This fungus binds a particular protein (VnaChtBP) to chitin in order to abolish the host plant's chitin-triggered burst of reactive oxygen species and shield the fungus from being digested by the plant.

Microbiologists at the Max Planck Institutes in Marburg and Bremen have discovered a new metabolic process in the ocean. Ranging from molecular structures of individual genes and detection of their global distribution, their results give insight into the pathway process and its degradation products and thus provide valuable information for future calculations of the ocean`s carbon dioxide balance.

A collaborative research group has succeeded in identifying an important transcription factor, GCAM1, which allows liverwort plants to asexually reproduce through creating clonal progenies (vegetative reproduction). Furthermore, this transcription factor was revealed to have the same origin as those which regulate secondary bud formation in angiosperms. It is hoped that these discoveries will lead to the development of technologies to increase the cultivation rate of a variety of plants in agriculture and horticulture.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in reconstructing the evolutionary relationship between a two million year old giant primate and the living orangutan. It is the first time genetic material this old has been retrieved from a fossil in a subtropical area. This allows the researchers to accurately reconstruct animal, including human, evolutionary processes way beyond the limits known today.