Live 3-D X-ray video of a fly’s muscles in mid-flight

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by sedeer in Arthropods, Form, Insects

Tags

animals, biology, flies, flight, Insecta, muscles, P, Popular science, science, video

Flies are incredibly agile on the wing, pulling off twists and turns that outstrip anything we’ve accomplished. Their flight is powered by two pairs of large muscles in their thorax which contract rhythmically to make their wings beat anywhere between 100 and 1000 times per second. Power is transferfed from these muscles to the wings by a hinge made of an intricate collection of steering muscles. Although the steering muscles make up less than 3% of the flight muscle mass, they very effectively direct the force produced by the larger muscles, thus guiding the fly’s aerial acrobatics. In a paper appearing in PLoS Biology, a team of scientists from the UK and Switzerland used a particle accelerator to record high-speed X-ray images of blowflies (Calliphora vicina) in flight, producing a 3-D video of the inside of the fly showing the muscles moving as it manuevered. Continue reading →

DNA nanotechnology (Part II)

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by sedeer in Form

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

biology, biotechnology, DNA, DNA nanotechnology, drug delivery, Nanotechnology, origami, Popular science, science, Science fiction, shape, tetrahedron

In the previous post, I introduced DNA nanotechnology and talked a bit about some of the 2-D structures that researchers have devised. Scientists have also used these techniques to build a variety of 3-D shapes, some of which can be used as containers for drug delivery. In this post, I’m going to focus on the DNA tetrahedron, a four-sided pyramid made of DNA which is relatively easy to build and manipulate and has proven useful in several recent studies.
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DNA nanotechnology (Part I)

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by sedeer in Form

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

biology, biotechnology, DNA, DNA nanotechnology, Nanotechnology, origami, Popular science, science, Science fiction, shape

The phrase “DNA nanotechnology” has a thoroughly futuristic ring. It sounds like something from a science-fiction novel, but what does it actually mean? Nanotechnology just means manipulating stuff on the scale of atoms and molecules. DNA nanotechnology is an approach that harnesses the self-organizing properties of DNA. The idea is to use DNA to precisely position things or build structures and machines, ideally in a way that’s cheaper or more efficient than other techniques.
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New targets for HIV therapy

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by sedeer in Disease, Form, Humans

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

AIDS, biology, DNA, drugs, grid computing, HIV, Immune Disorders, Popular science, Protein, RNA, science

In a pair of studies published last year, researchers across Europe used computer simulations to make major advances in our understanding of HIV. Taking advantage of distributed computing networks, they simulated key processes and molecular interactions in the life cycle of the virus, identifying new targets for drug therapy. Continue reading →

Hsp90: translating environmental stress into evolutionary change

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by sedeer in Development, Evolution, Form, Insects, Plants

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

biology, Developmental biology, Drosophila, evolution, Genetics, Hsp90, Insecta, Mutation, Phenotype, Popular science, shape

In the 1990s, Suzanne Rutherford and Susan Lindquist were studying fruit flies with a mutated version of the Hsp90 gene and found that the absence of this single gene led to a wide range of developmental defects. This was surprising not only because Hsp90 isn’t directly related to development, but also because of the remarkable breadth of its impact. Uncovering how this gene affects so many aspects of development has led to an intriguing story linking responses to environmental stress with the evolution of developmental pathways.
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Telling left from right: which side gets the heart?

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by sedeer in Development, Evolution, Form, Genetics, Vertebrates

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

animals, biology, Cytoskeleton, emergence, Popular science, science, shape, symmetry, Tubulin

This was originally a guest post on The Trenches of Discovery. Thanks, Shaun!

One out of every 8,000 humans is born with some of their internal organs on the wrong side of their body, a condition which can have serious medical consequences. Although we’re usually described as symmetric, that’s only superficially true. Like other vertebrates, we look symmetric from the outside but our internal organs show left-right asymmetry; unless you happen to be a Time Lord, you have only one heart which is normally located on the left side of your chest. Changes to the organization of the internal organs can lead to cardiac defects, misalignment of the bowel and other serious problems. Many genes are known to play a role in establishing this asymmetry, but we still don’t fully understand its evolutionary and developmental origins. Earlier this year, a paper published in the journal PNAS described how this asymmetry is established by subcellular components early in embryonic development.