Dissemination of Science Information
Researchers are using inexpensive components from ordinary liquid crystal display (LCD) projectors to control the brain and muscles of tiny organisms, including freely moving worms. Red, green and blue lights from a projector activate light-sensitive microbial proteins that are genetically engineered into the worms, allowing the researchers to switch neurons on and off like light bulbs and turn muscles on and off like engines.
Nature has a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with mercury, but researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have made a discovery that ultimately could help explain the split personality.
Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital report a gene therapy strategy that improves the condition of a mouse model of an inherited blood disorder, Beta Thalassemia. The gene correction involves using unfertilized eggs from afflicted mice to produce a batch of embryonic stem cell lines. Some of these stem cell lines do not inherit the disease gene and can thus be used for transplantation-based treatments of the same mice.
An unusual galaxy with gas jets could explain how starforming galaxies become red and dead. University of California, Berkeley, astronomers may have found the missing link between gas-filled, star-forming galaxies and older, gas-depleted galaxies typically characterized as "red and dead."
