Basic Biology News Today

INTERVIEW 13 Yoshinori Ohsumi, Ph.D. Chairman, Ohsumi Frontier Science Foundation Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Future of Basic...

<p>Salk scientists discovered a pathway from mitochondrial DNA replication stress to immune system activation and inflammation, finding that endosomes responsible for disposing of dysfunctional mitochondrial DNA were leaking mitochondrial DNA into the cell and prompting the inflammatory immune response. The pathway provides new targets for therapeutics that disrupt inflammation during aging and disease.</p>

Cells in the human body contain power-generating mitochondria, each with their own mtDNA-;a unique set of genetic instructions entirely separate from the cell's nuclear DNA that mitochondria use to create life-giving energy.

At about the size of a pinkie nail, the jellyfish species Cladonema can regenerate an amputated tentacle in two to three days -; but how? Regenerating functional tissue across species, including salamanders and insects, relies on the ability to form a blastema, a clump of undifferentiated cells that can repair damage and grow into the missing appendage.

Japanese scientists have uncovered that Cladonema jellyfish regenerate tentacles using stem-like proliferative cells, offering new insights into the blastema formation process and its evolutionary parallels in other species like salamanders. At about the size of a pinkie nail, the jellyfish speci

Anti-wrinkle creams, superfoods that keep you young, dietary supplements that promise improved memory, "immortal" cells that can renew themselves forever-;in our stores and media, claims about aging abound.

Researchers may have solved the mystery of how caterpillars got their chubby abdominal "prolegs."

Adult insects, including butterflies and moths, typically have only three pairs of legs. But the existence of extra legs in caterpillars – chubby abdo....

The existence of extra legs in caterpillars has long posed an evolutionary mystery to biologists. A recent study by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) linked this novel trait to crustaceans.

Relationship patterns among flightless stick insects suggest that birds disperse the eggs after eating gravid females. Lab experiments previously suggested the possibility, but a new genetic analysis of natural populations in Japan by Kobe University researchers now supports the idea.