News for Africa Doc

Nitric oxide is shown to control the pro- and anti-inflammatory functions of surfactant protein D by altering its quaternary structure via S-nitrosylation.

New neurons are born throughout life in the hippocampus. Cell-type-specific, single-gene ablation in newborn neurons reveals that the kinase cdk5 regulates growth of neuronal processes, identifying a key mechanism of neuronal integration within the adult brain.

An approach to induce specific tolerance--an important application for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and transplant rejections--uses polyclonal T cells transduced with an inducible form of Foxp3.

Transcription from within open reading frames in S. cerevisiae, which is normally repressed by many chromatin- and transcription-related factors, has the potential to be widespread and to express alternative genetic information.

Can organic farming and genetically engineered crops coexist in an agriculture of the future? Tony Trewavas reviews the new book Tomorrow's Table.

The few animals capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror have advanced social cognition related to adopting the perspective of someone else.

The European magpie, a bird with a large brain and highly developed perspective-taking skills, shows evidence of mirror self-recognition.

A conserved protein kinase, Cbk-1, produces different gene expression programs in cytoplasmically connected cells by directly blocking nuclear export of the transcription factor Ace2.

We show that the mitochondrial DNA mutation rate in D. melanogaster is 10X higher than the nuclear mutation rate, and that major-strand G-->A hypermutablity explains the extremely biased base composition of the mitochondrial genome.