How does damaged DNA repair itself? Scientists used computer modeling and a technique called X-ray crystallography to figure out how a protein called MutY repairs the most sensitive of the four DNA bases, called guanine, when rogue oxygen compounds from the environment attack it.

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Our DNA is a crucial part of creating every cell in our bodies. It is the instruction manual our cells read to know exactly what to do and how to act. But how do our bodies proofread these instructions and know how to fix them if something goes wrong? Biochemists at the University of Utah are seeking to answer this…

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    Why your body thinks that spicy food is “hot” Dr. David Julius and Dr. Ardem Patapoutain were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology for their discoveries of the proteins responsible for sensing temperature and pain.

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    It’s the start of November, which means another year of Nobel Prizes have been awarded! This year, the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology went to Dr. David Julius of University of California in San Francisco and Dr. Ardem Patapoutain of Scripps Research Institute for their discovery of the receptors in the…

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      Mosquitos are more common in poorly kept-up neighborhoods Researchers find that poorly maintained neighborhoods in cities tend to have more of the mosquito Aedes aegypti, the carrier of the yellow fever virus. This is a vector-borne disease risk for these communities that needs further investigation.

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      The team concluded, based on their data, that socioeconomic status is related to Aedes aegypti abundance within Puerto Rico’s urban landscape. The presence of Aedes aegypti was most closely linked to the presence of litter and median household income for the neighborhood. There were more mosquitos in the poorest…

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        Is your child a picky eater? In an effort to find out if breastfeeding was related to eating behaviors during childhood, researchers studied a group of children for 6 years. So far, the association is not very clear.

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        In an effort to find out if breastfeeding was related to eating behaviors during childhood, researchers studied a group of children for 6 years. So far, the association is not very clear.

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          Editing genes before birth as a new therapy Editing the PCSK9 gene in mice resulted in reduced cholesterol levels, a heart disease risk factor. After modification of a gene Hpd involved in hereditary tyrosinemia mice developed with no signs of the disease.

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          Although the term ‘gene editing’ may sound like science fiction, it isn’t! CRISPR-mediated gene editing is a technology first developed in the 1990s that enabled scientists to target and modify particular genes without damaging the whole genome. For example, they could modify crops to make them more resistant to…

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            Using Reishi mushrooms to filter methane out of the atmosphere Both living and dead fungi were tested for their ability to capture methane from the atmosphere. Surprisingly, dead fungi performed the best and have high potential for reducing methane levels.

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            Could dead or living #fungi be used as a biofilter to trap and remove #methane, the potent #greenhousegas, from the atmosphere? Researchers including @shroominn from @UMNews tested both living and dead fungal biomass to determine their ability to capture methane.

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