Research Diary

Okay everybody is talking about Biofuels. All big companies are investing in biofuels. Some do it to look nice and use it as a PR stunt (most oil companies), knowing that the current attempts will not even make a dent in their market share or profits, some others do it because it might be profitable [...]

Operon: A unit of genetic material that functions in a coordinated manner by means of an operator, a promoter, and one or more structural genes that are transcribed together.
Sigma Factor: A sigma factor (σ factor) is a prokaryotic transcription initiation factor that must be part of RNA polymerase (RNAP) for specific binding to promoter sites [...]

The technique uses the relative position of the atoms in a molecule to
quickly match molecules of a similar shape. This is a crucial step in
modern drug discovery, since similarly shaped molecules are like to
have similar bioactive effects, such as being able to bind to the same
protein, triggering a similar medicinal effect in the human body.
Read [...]

Scientists at Harvard successfully managed to simulate Protein Folding process using a new technique. In 4000 simulations they correctly predicted the 3D structure…[more info]

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Pretty interesting work done in UK. Similar similations are done on viruses and some subcelluler structures. Read more on the BBC news site [click here]

This is a great animation going through various processes of a cell including translation and transcription, protein protein interactions etc… Very educational and fun to watch…There many different versions on the web but the best quality links is the following:Click here to watch the animation

An interesting site and associated blog on the less known and somehow lost work of Alan Turing. Especially interesting is the section on Turing’s work on mathematical biology. More can be found on the site. Here is the link.

Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.

Loren Williams/Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

In a living cell, the DNA double helix wraps around a nucleosome, above
center, and binds to some of its proteins, known as histones.

The genetic code specifies
all the proteins that a cell [...]

Researchers
at the University of California, San Diego have determined what
factors turn on protein production in bacteria, a finding that
[...]

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute launched on March 21st a search engine
that speeds up the hunt for important DNA sequences more than
100-fold. Just as important, the engine scans all known sequence
data from all available organisms, saving time for researchers, who,
until the release of TraceSearch, had to inspect [...]