Biology, life sciences

Signal transduction is the fundamental mechanism for regulation of cellular activities by environmental cues and regulatory signals, and is particularly important for plants, whose survival requires proper physiological and developmental responses to the environmental changes.

Fundamental to the development and vital functions of organisms, the migration of motile cells due to the detection of shallow gradients of specific chemical signals in their environments, or chemotaxis, can be clearly seen as a major force in cell biology.

Carotenoids are a family of yellow to orange-red terpenoid pigments synthesized by photosynthetic organisms and many bacteria and fungi.

All three peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) subtypes share a high degree of structural homology but differ in function, tissue distribution and ligand specificity.

With many recent advances, cancer cell culture research is more important than ever before.

Viruses and RNAi share an intricate relationship at many levels.

Over the past decade, there has been an explosive development of research of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which are also known as unfolded proteins.

Rapid advances in computer science, biology, chemistry, and other disciplines are enabling powerful new computational tools and models for toxicology and pharmacology.

In the last few years, technologies that allow for monitoring and manipulating neuronal networks at a single cell resolution have been rapidly expanding.

Now recognized as a reservoir for growth factors and cytokines modulating cell activation status and turnover, proteoglycans have stimulated great amount of interest and research.

As the presence of genetically modified animal models in research laboratories has multiplied, the role of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of brain disorders has become particularly important.

A DNA barcode in its simplest definition is one or more short gene sequences taken from a standardized portion of the genome that is used to identify species through reference to DNA sequence libraries or databases.

Legionnaires' disease is a severe form of pneumonia that can occur in epidemics of several hundred cases.

Given the vital importance of immune system research, the gathering of clear, consistent, and informative protocols involving the study of dendritic cells is paramount.

Non-coding, inhibitory microRNAs have emerged as important modulators of cellular gene expression, through a process called RNA interference (RNAi).

Glycosylation is the most abundant post-translational modification of proteins.

Estimation of the metabolite complement of plant material involves a wide range of techniques and technologies and that breadth continues to increase.

Recent improvements in the efficiency, quality, and cost of genome-wide sequencing have prompted biologists and biomedical researchers to move away from microarray-based technology to ultra high-throughput, massively parallel genomic sequencing (Next Generation Sequencing, NGS) technology.

New high throughput techniques in neuroscience and psychiatry have enhanced the development of experimental, customizable animal models that are predictive of human neuropsychiatric pathology and give vital insights on the mechanisms and pathways involved.

Whether the question is one of basic cell survival, or whether it is being used to correlate cell number to some other factor such as matrix synthesis, an estimate of cell viability is universally required.

Cytogenetic studies of malignancy have become an essential tool in the clinical management of cancer patients.

Deficiencies in sperm function are usually the result of spermatogenic defects.

Quantitative elucidation of structural, energetic and dynamic aspects of macromolecular interactions is indispensable for understanding the functional activities of biomolecules and their interactions.

Through the rapid development of proteomics methods and technologies, an enormous amount of data was created, leading to a wide-spread rethinking of strategy design and data interpretation.

Blood science has become a cornerstone of multiple disciplines, including clinical chemistry, disease diagnosis, and therapeutic monitoring.

Despite being known and studied for years, peptides have never before attracted enough attention to necessitate the invention of the term "e;peptidomics"e; in order to specify the study of the complement of peptides from a cell, organelle, tissue or organism.

Chemogenomics aims toward the systematic identification of small molecules that interact with the products of the genome and modulate their biological function.

Together with early theoretical work in population genetics, the debate on sources of genetic makeup initiated by proponents of the neutral theory made a solid contribution to the spectacular growth in statistical methodologies for molecular evolution.

Due to their novel concepts and extraordinary high-throughput sequencing capacity, the "e;next generation sequencing"e; methods allow scientists to grasp system-wide landscapes of the complex molecular events taking place in various biological systems, including microorganisms and microbial communities.

Chemical library technologies have brought about dramatic changes in the drug discovery process, and, though still evolving, they have become an integral part of ongoing drug discovery research.

Phytoplasmas are a group of bacteria that are capable of multiplying and causing severe diseases in a wide range of plant species and are transported between plants by insect vectors in which the bacteria can also multiply.

Cultured cells have combined accessibility and the ability to expand a homogeneous cell population from a relatively limited source, thus opening up a wealth of possibilities for researchers.

Transcriptomics and proteomics, studying the profile of the expression of nucleic acids and proteins respectively, are increasingly applied to gain a mechanistic insight into a wide spectrum of investigation, and the use of expression profiling studies for the central nervous system and brain function aids in the understanding of neurodegenerative disorders and tumor development mechanisms.

Although embryonic stem cells currently enjoy the public limelight and show great pr- ise for cell based medical therapies, it is the adult stem cells which are responsible for the body's natural ability to fght disease, heal and recover, or fail and succumb to various maladies.

Protein microarrays have been used for a wide variety of important tasks, such as identifying protein-protein interactions, discovering disease biomarkers, identifying DNA-binding specificity by protein variants, and for characterization of the humoral immune response.

Planar cell polarity (PCP), or the alignment of a collection of cells within a cell sheet, has proven, over time, to be vital in not only normal development but also in disease states.

Developed for a range of tissues where the culture environment takes into account the spatial organization of the cells therein, 3D cell culture models serve to bridge the gap between in vivo studies at one extreme with that of simple cell monolayers at the other.

Lipases are the most applied enzymes in organic synthesis due to their broad substrate acceptance and because of the availability of the molecular, biochemical, themodynamical and solvent engineering tools, which allows the optimization of lipases and lipase-catalyzed reactions.

With the rapid proliferation of RNAi applications in basic and clinical sciences, the challenge has now become understanding how components of RNAi machinery function together in a regulated manner.

Unlike detecting constitutively expressed targets, immunohistochemical detection of labile, low abundance, and short-lived signal transduction molecules can be a very difficult task.

The discovery of wide-spread RNA-based regulation in bacteria has led to new evaluations of the importance of bacterial regulatory RNA in every aspect of bacterial physiology.

Stem cells are found in almost all organisms from the early stages of development to the end of life.

With an ever-increasing elderly population and the resultant rising levels of dementia-related disorders, preclinical research based on animal models is pivotal to our knowledge of underlying molecular mechanisms and drug discovery aiming at the development of therapeutic strategies alleviating or preventing the neurological devastation.

Knowledge about protein tertiary structure can guide experiments, assist in the understanding of structure-function relationships, and aid the design of new therapeutics for disease.

Societal, ethical, and cost-related issues, not to mention the need for sound scientific methods, have led to new and refined methods for the evaluation of health risks associated with neurotoxic compounds, relevant and predictive of exposure, relatively inexpensive, and ideally amenable to high throughput analysis and a reduction in animal use.

Over the course of evolution, fungi have adapted to occupy specific niches, from symbiotically inhabiting the flora of the intestinal tract of mammals to saprophytic growth on leaf litter resting on the forest floor.

The post-genomic revolution is witnessing the generation of petabytes of data annually, with deep implications ranging across evolutionary theory, developmental biology, agriculture, and disease processes.

Essential in biological functions like cell signaling and, when disturbed, a likely cause of disease, lipids have proven to be a vital force in cell biology.

As a model organism, zebrafish (Danio rerio) offer an opportunity to perform steadfast scientific investigations in a robust and high-throughput manner.

The genomes of cellular organisms are organized as double-stranded DNA, a structure that must be unwound to provide DNA replication, recombination, and repair machinery access to genomic information.