“French scientist wins the Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding ... - Genetic Engineering News” plus 4 more |
- French scientist wins the Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding ... - Genetic Engineering News
- A challenge to improve Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for structural ... - PhysOrg
- Visiting the Hill this Week - Tufts Daily
- A reductionist approach to HIV research - EurekAlert
- David P. Barash / No, monogamy isn't natural - but it's not impossible ... - Atlantic City Press
| French scientist wins the Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding ... - Genetic Engineering News Posted: 30 Nov 2009 07:15 AM PST Nov 30 2009, 10:20 AM EST French scientist wins the Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding Paper Prize 2009EUREKALERT Contact: Kathryn Knightkathryn@biologists.com 44-012-234-25525 The Company of Biologists Xavier Noblin wins JEB Outsanding Paper PrizeThe Editors of The Journal of Experimental Biology are pleased to announce that Dr Xavier Noblin from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in the Universit de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis is the winner of this year's JEB Outstanding Paper Prize. 'The prize is awarded in recognition of an outstanding achievement and is intended to encourage young scientists,' says Hans Hoppleler, the JEB Editor-in-Chief, and adds that 'we truly appreciate when authors submit their very best work to the JEB'. Explaining how the prize is awarded Hoppeler says 'Over the year, we note all the truly outstanding contributions, and the selection is then made by a vote of all of the Editors.' Noblin was the first author on the paper 'Surface tension propulsion of fungal spores.' (Noblin, et al., 2009) and admits that he was 'very surprised, but very happy and honoured' when he received the news. Reflecting on the qualities that made the paper stand out, Hoppeler says 'This paper gives a sound physical description of an exciting novel process and is an outstanding example of the type of paper that we like to see most at JEB, even though we are not a "botanical" journal.' Noblin's route into biology has been rather unorthodox. Gaining a degree in Physics from the Ecole Normale Suprieure in Lyon in 1998, Noblin moved north to Paris, where he joined the Institut Curie to work on the physics of surface wetting. 'I was looking at the statics and dynamics of wetting phenomena,' explains Noblin, 'in particular the vibration of droplets,' he adds. Noblin explains that the physics of droplet movement has intrigued physicists for decades and that vibrations can move drops that have stuck to surfaces. While at the Institut Curie, Noblin mixed with biologists, and at the end of his PhD decided to apply his understanding of fluid mechanics to biological systems. Knowing that Jacques Dumais' lab in Harvard was doing some interesting work in biomechanics, Noblin moved to Massachusetts to begin his postdoc. Dumais remembers that the idea of looking at fungal spore ejection came from his technician, Sylvia Yang, who had an interest in mycology. 'She proposed the problem and Xavier had the right background' remembers Dumais. When the team set out to solve the problem, they knew that a tiny droplet formed at the base of the spore and that the droplet's surface tension was sufficient to send the spore flying. But the team did not believe the evidence that had already been collected about the mechanics of fungal spore ejection. 'It was difficult to accept that water would be enough to eject spores,' Dumais explains. 'And it was hard to come to terms with how the momentum is transferred,' he adds. The team realised that they would have to find out what happened to the water droplet at the instant of take off. Filming the spores with conventional high speed cameras, the team realised that they would have to get their hands on the highest speed camera on the market. Borrowing an ultra fast camera for one night and working around the clock Noblin was finally able to capture the moment of ejection. 'It is that camera which gave us the best images. It gave us enough time resolution to really see the droplet and we got really excited. We thought it was amazing,' remembers Dumais. After enhancing the low-resolution images' contrast, Dumais and Noblin could finally see the condensing droplet's fate as it touched the spore, fused to a depression on the spore's surface and sent it tumbling off into the air at speeds of up to 2.3m/s. Next the duo had to measure the force required to rupture the contact between a spore and its sterigma (the spore's supporting structure), 'but it was not obvious that we could measure these forces because they are really small' remembers Dumais. The duo used an old trick, they pulled a glass pipette to a very thin gauge and calibrated the amount that the pipette deflected as they pushed it against a precise balance so that they could use the pipette as a force gauge. 'We brought those pipettes to the tip of the spore and pulled on them and if the spore came off the sterigma, we knew how much the pipette was bent and how much force was applied,' explains Dumais. Measuring the rupture force, the team found that a ripe spore required forces ranging from 0.08N to 0.3N to break the hilum (which attached the spore to the sterigma). But was there enough energy stored in the surface of the tiny droplet to send the pore flying? Calculating the surface tension energy released as the droplet fused to the spore's surface, Noblin concluded that there was enough energy to despatch the spore at speeds of up to 3.4m/s. There was enough energy in the drop, but how exactly is the energy converted from surface tension energy into ballistics? This is where Noblin's physics know-how came in. Puzzling over the problem, Noblin realised that the physics of fungal spore ejection was essentially the same as the physics of jumping. He explains that as we crouch down at the beginning of a jump, the ground pushes back against us. But as we unfold our crouched legs, moments at the knees are resisted by the ground, and it is this upward directed resistance force that gives us the push to lift off. In the case of the fungal spore, the lift force is generated by the sterigma supporting the spore. So fungi have evolved an elegant and inexpensive way to launch spores that is powered simply by the energy stored in the surface of a microscopic droplet of water. 'When I used to speak to colleagues and physicists, sometimes they did not believe me and they were really surprised and amazed that nature could invent this kind of mechanism,' says Noblin. Describing the time that Noblin spent in his lab, Dumais says 'Xavier is a wonderful person to work with, he is very meticulous. Physicists come with a tool kit that is amazingly broad. They can do math, they can do experimental work, they can work with computers, they can program devices to do work for them. You can let them free, they hit the ground running,' says Dumais. Noblin remembers that he was excited at the prospect of joining a biology lab. 'There is a need for people from different disciplines to work together to solve problems that mix these different sciences,' and suspects that his interdisciplinary training was strength when the time came for him to apply for jobs at the end of his postdoc in Harvard. Dumais says 'We are delighted by this award and that the long term investment has paid off'. Since leaving Dumais' lab in 2006, Noblin has taken a permanent research post in the CNRS at the LPMC lab in the Universit de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, France. Despite their locations on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and the duo is currently enjoying figuring out how ferns eject their spores. 'It is a nice collaboration,' says Dumais. Reference to the winning paper: Noblin, X., Yang, S. and Dumais, J. (2009). Surface tension propulsion of fungal spores. J. Exp. Biol. 212, 2835-2843. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| A challenge to improve Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for structural ... - PhysOrg Posted: 30 Nov 2009 04:31 AM PST A challenge to improve Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for structural biologyNovember 30, 2009(PhysOrg.com) -- In structural biology, the only technique available to predict the three dimensional structure of large complex molecules in solution, such as proteins and DNA, is NMR spectroscopy. To catalyze improvements in the techniques behind these predictions, the "eNMR" project has launched a new initiative. In September's Nature Methods the project issued an invitation to the entire biomolecular Nuclear Magnetic Resonance community to participate in a large scale test of modern computing algorithms. This community-wide "contest" will potentially improve efficiency, reproducibility and reliability of NMR structure determination. eNMR will be using the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE infrastructure to power their analysis. NMR spectroscopy is important in many different areas of science and is often used to determine the structure of complex molecules. The technique is particularly useful in biological sciences as it can predict the three dimensional structure of macromolecules in solution, including substances such as proteins and DNA that are key to understanding how the human body works. The analysis, however, is labour intensive and automation would accelerate the pace of research, helping scientists to identify molecules more quickly. "Insight into the shape of biomolecules is the starting point for designing new drugs," says Alexandre Bonvin, member of the eNMR project and one of the authors of the paper. "If we can improve this technology, it will help researchers in structural biology to be more productive. This could help shorten the whole process of designing new drugs." The small molecule ABT-737, for example, was found by screening a chemical library with NMR-based techniques. The discovery of ABT-737 was covered in the 2005 Nature paper "An inhibitor of Bcl-2 family proteins induces regression of solid tumours," as a promising cancer fighting compound. (Though it has not, as of yet, been marketed.) The eNMR project has worked to improve computational methods used for automation since late 2007, using EGEE's computational resources to calculate molecular structures from NMR data. Their next step is to involve all interested stakeholders in their efforts. Through this challenge - called "Critical Assessment of automated Structure Determination of proteins by NMR" or CASD-NMR - the team invites laboratory researchers to submit molecules (technically the spatial coordinates of the atoms in the molecule with their associated NMR data) to help improve the algorithms used by the global eNMR team. The CASD-NMR challenge will help computer scientists to automate NMR calculations and test them against blind datasets. The eNMR project and the National Institute of Health's (NIH) Protein Structure Initiative are providing data for this challenge, and the CASD-NMR team hopes that other researchers will provide additional data sets. In the future, automation in NMR will allow 'unsupervised' results to be accepted by the community as being correct and viable, ready for inclusion in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) straight away. The PDB is a database that stores macromolecular structural data that is freely and publicly available for further research (www.wwpdb.org). "At this time fully automated methods are not reliable enough to be used blindly; this CASD-NMR experiment will be a valuable tool to see where we stand in automation and improve our methods," says Bonvin. CASD-NMR is set up to give the various teams eight weeks to apply automated methods to generate structures at a level of quality comparable to that of structures deposited into the PDB. National Grid Initiatives BigGrid in the Netherlands and IGI/INFN have contributed CPUs to the project so far. An assessment meeting is planned for mid-2010 to look at the results. Data are made available for CASD-NMR participants through the e-NMR project's webpage (http://www.e-nmr.eu/CASD-NMR). More information: CASD-NMR: critical assessment of automated structure determination by NMR, Nature Methods, Vol.6 No.9 September 2009 625, doi:10.1038/nmeth0909-625 Provided by CERN This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Visiting the Hill this Week - Tufts Daily Posted: 30 Nov 2009 05:42 AM PST MONDAY "Managing South Asia's Waters" Details: John Briscoe, professor of the practice of environmental health and environmental engineering at Harvard University, will speak on his experience working with water issues throughout his career as an engineer, epidemiologist and teacher. When and Where: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Cabot Intercultural Center 7th floor Sponsors: The Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies WEDNESDAY Goddard Chapel Forum on Religion and Media Details: Marla Frederick, associate professor of African and African American studies and of the study of religion at Harvard, will deliver a lecture on the role of television ministries in shaping race and gender in the African Diaspora. When and Where: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.; Goddard Chapel Sponsors: Office of the University Chaplain, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts' International Center OneWorld Microfinance Speaker Series: Tryfan Evans Details: Tryfan Evans will speak about his role directing the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund, which in 2005 received a $100 million donation from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (E '88) and his wife Pam (LA '89) to provide loans for entrepreneurs in the developing world. When and Where: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Cabot 205 Sponsors: OneWorld THURSDAY Nuclear Night: Solution or Nightmare? Details: Nuclear engineer Gilbert Brown, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and James Moore, clean energy advocate for Vermont Public Interest Research Group, will debate on nuclear energy. Rusty Russell, a lecturer in environmental law and energy policy, will moderate the discussion. When and Where: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Barnum 008 Sponsors: Tufts Energy Forum FRIDAY Species Invasions, Climate Change and Species Extinctions Details: Brown University Assistant Professor of Biology Dov Sax will speak on alternative conservation strategies as part of the biology department's fall 2009 seminar series. When and Where: 4 p.m.; Barnum 104 Sponsors: Department of Biology OneWorld Microfinance Speaker Series: Tryfan Evans
THURSDAY
FRIDAY — compiled by Saumya Vaishampayan
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| A reductionist approach to HIV research - EurekAlert Posted: 30 Nov 2009 07:51 AM PST ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small} Public release date: 30-Nov-2009[ | E-mail |  Share ] Contact: Graeme Baldwin A major obstacle to HIV research is the virus's exquisite specialisation for its human host meaning that scientists' traditional tools, like the humble lab mouse, can deliver only limited information. Now, a team of researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Biology have made an ingenious assault on this problem by creating a mouse that has key features of HIV infection without being infected with HIV. George Kassiotis, from the Division of Immunoregulation at MRC National Institute for Medical Research, worked with a team of researchers to create mice whose CD4+ T cells, the cells eliminated by HIV infection, commit a kind of suicide upon activation. He said, "Although these mice do not fully reproduce every aspect of human HIV-associated immune dysfunction, they do approximate two key immune alterations - CD4+ T cell immune deficiency and generalized immune activation. Further definition of the precise balance between CD4+ T cell killing and immune activation and deficiency will be vital to our understanding of the pathogenesis of immune deficiency virus infection." The CD4+ T cells in the researchers' mice were engineered to express a toxin, diphtheria toxin A fragment, upon activation. This genetic self-destruct system causes the death of the cell within 48 hours. The resultant loss of activated immune cells caused the mice to exhibit symptoms with some similarities to those of immunodeficiency virus infection. There are clear differences between the mouse and a human infected with HIV, however, such as the fact that the ongoing depletion of nearly all activated CD4+ T cells in the mice does not result in the progressive erosion of nave and memory CD4+ T cells seen during HIV infection. None-the-less, insights gained from this reductionist model can only help our understanding of human disease. In a commentary on the work in the same issue of Journal of Biology, experts on T cells and HIV at the US National Institutes of Health comment that the mouse will be as useful for its differences from human infection as it will for its similarities. Notes to Editors: 1. Generalized immune activation as a direct result of activated CD4+ T cell killing
Article available at journal website: http://jbiol.com/content/8/10/93 Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy. 2. Journal of Biology is an international journal that publishes biological research articles of exceptional interest or importance, together with associated commentary. Original research articles that are accepted for publication are published in full on the web within two weeks, and are immediately made freely available to all. Articles from the full spectrum of biology are appropriate for consideration, provided that they are of substantial interest or importance, or are likely to have a significant and lasting impact on their field. 3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector. [ | E-mail | Share ]
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| David P. Barash / No, monogamy isn't natural - but it's not impossible ... - Atlantic City Press Posted: 30 Nov 2009 07:44 AM PST Right-wing pro-marriage advocates are correct: Monogamy is definitely under siege. But not from uncloseted polyamorists, adolescent "hook-up" advocates, radical feminists, Godless communists or some vast homosexual conspiracy. The culprit is our own biology. Researchers in animal behavior have long known that monogamy is uncommon in the natural world, but only with the advent of DNA "fingerprinting" have we come to appreciate how truly rare it is. Genetic testing has recently shown that even among many bird species - long touted as the epitome of monogamous fidelity - it is not uncommon for 6 percent to 60 percent of the young to be fathered by someone other than the mother's social partner. As a result, we now know scientifically what most people have long known privately: that social monogamy does not necessarily imply sexual monogamy. In the movie "Heartburn," the lead character complains about her husband's philandering and gets this response: "You want monogamy? Marry a swan!" But now, scientists have found that even swans aren't monogamous. (Nor are those widely admired emperor penguins, whose supposed march to monogamy was misconstrued from another popular movie; their domesticity lasts only for the current breeding season - next year, they'll find new mates.) For some, findings of this sort may mitigate a bit of the outrage visited on the current and future crop of adulterers du jour, recently including but assuredly not limited to Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Ensign and John Edwards. For others, it simply shows that men are clueless, irresponsible oafs. The scientific reality, however, is more nuanced, and more interesting, especially for those looking to their own matrimonial future. First, there can be no serious debate about whether monogamy is natural for human beings. It isn't. A Martian zoologist visiting planet Earth would have no doubt: Homo sapiens carries all the evolutionary stigmata of a mildly polygamous mammal in which both sexes have a penchant for occasional "extra-pair copulations." But natural isn't necessarily good. Think about earthquakes, tsunamis, gangrene or pneumonia. Nor is unnatural bad, or beyond human potential. Consider writing a poem, learning a second language or mastering a musical instrument. Few people would argue that learning to play the violin is natural; after all, it takes years of dedication and hard work. A case can be made, in fact, that people are being maximally human when they do things that contradict their biology. "Doing what comes naturally" is easy. It's what nonhuman animals do. Perhaps only human beings can will themselves to do things that go against their "nature." And finally, even though anyone aspiring to genuine monogamy will, on balance, have to swim upstream against the current of his or her evolutionarily bequeathed inclinations, there are also considerable biological forces supporting such efforts. Some animals manage to be monogamous. California mice (Peromyscus californicus), for example, pair up and remain paired, forsaking all others, largely because of the payoff derived from having two parents to care for offspring. Beavers establish lasting pair-bonds that enable them to cooperate in building a valuable, complex home site. The Malagasy giant jumping rat has evidently made the jump to monogamy because of the predator-fighting benefits thereby provided. And among pygmy marmosets, monogamy gives males unconscious confidence of their paternity, which in turn supports their inclination to be unusually paternal. And human beings? Our species benefits greatly from bi-parental care. We can profit from shared, reciprocated effort, especially when we're confident both partners will be around for the long term. In addition, human beings are endowed with an array of hard-wired traits that can be used to strengthen monogamy, among them a penchant (perhaps even a need) to attach and connect so-called mirror neurons that underlie empathy; hormonal systems, such as those involving oxytocin and vasopressin, that relate sexual satisfaction to pair-bonding; and neural plasticity that promotes the strengthening of brain circuits associated with repeated reward mechanisms - including, in all likelihood, those activated via interactions with the same individual. Add to this the fact that people have big brains, and hence, an ability to rescue monogamy from monotony, as well as the capacity to imagine the future and a visceral dislike of dishonesty, and the effect of biology on monogamy becomes complex indeed. Not to mention the adaptive significance of that thing called love. To be sure, monogamy isn't easy; nor is it for everyone. But anyone who claims that he or she simply isn't cut out for monogamy misses the point: No one is. At the same time, no one's biology precludes monogamy either. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously advised (albeit in a different context): "You are free. Choose." David Barash, an evolutionary biologist, is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington and co-author of "Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Connection Between Sex, Evolution and Monogamy." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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