Tag: biology
The world’s strongest MRI machines are pushing human imaging to new limits – Nature
How to build a human cell atlas – Nature

photo by Casey Atkins for Nature
Aviv Regev likes to work at the edge of what is possible. In 2011, the computational biologist was collaborating with molecular geneticist Joshua Levin to test a handful of methods for sequencing RNA. The scientists were aiming to push the technologies to the brink of failure and see which performed the best. They processed samples with degraded RNA or vanishingly small amounts of the molecule. Eventually, Levin pointed out that they were sequencing less RNA than appears in a single cell.
To Regev, that sounded like an opportunity. The cell is the basic unit of life and she had long been looking for ways to explore how complex networks of genes operate in individual cells, how those networks can differ and, ultimately, how diverse cell populations work together. The answers to such questions would reveal, in essence, how complex organisms such as humans are built.
Fish fossil upends scientists’ view of jaw evolution – Nature

Dinghua Yang
A fossil fish found in Yunnan, China, has filled in a gaping hole in how researchers thought the vertebrate jaw evolved.
The 423-million-year-old specimen, dubbed Qilinyu rostrata, is part of an ancient group of armoured fish called placoderms. The fossil is the oldest ever found with a modern three-part jaw, which includes two bones in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw. Researchers reported their find on 20 October in Science.
The nose knows how to kill MRSA – Nature
If you give a mouse a menstrual cycle – Nature
Biological specimen troves get a reprieve

The bones of the goliath frog help scientists to study modern populations of this species, which is threatened by hunting. Marc Schlossman/Panos
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has quietly reinstated its programme to support biological specimen collections that are important for studying disease, invasive species, climate change and conservation. Scientists had protested against the agency’s decision, announced in March, to suspend the programme pending an evaluation that is due later this year.
Scientists track last 2,000 years of British evolution

Kurt Hutton/Getty Images
Humans may be members of an advanced species, but we haven’t stopped evolving. Over the past 2,000 years, British people have adapted to become taller and blonder, more likely to have blue eyes and better able to digest milk, according to researchers who have developed a technique to track very recent changes in the human genome.
Plant protein behaves like a prion

Kristopher Grunert/Corbis/VCG
Prions, the misfolded proteins that are known for causing degenerative illnesses in animals and humans, may have been spotted for the first time in plants.
Researchers led by Susan Lindquist report that they have found a section of protein in thale cress (Arabidopsis) that behaves like a prion when it is inserted into yeast.
Why Preprints in Physics, But Not Biology? – Undark

Scientific journal policies, along with differences in the history and culture of the disciplines, may play a role.
In a piece published in the New York Times last month, Amy Harmon wrote about “rogue” biologists publishing their research directly to the Web. But as Harmon noted, this kind of activity is hardly news for physicists, who have been publishing these so-called “preprints” — that is, research published digitally, prior to appearing in a formal, peer-reviewed journal — on the website arXiv.org since 1991.