ScienceDaily: Biotechnology News

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• Gut bacteria may affect whether a statin drug lowers cholesterol
• A step towards new vaccines for most important chicken parasite
• Preventing dangerous nonsense in human gene expression
• From blue whales to earthworms, a common mechanism gives shape to living beings
• How the zebra gets its stripes: A simple genetic circuit
• Scientists first to characterize barley plant-stem rust spore 'communication'
• Good genes yield high-quality meat products

Gut bacteria may affect whether a statin drug lowers cholesterol Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:48 PM PDT Statins can be effective at lowering cholesterol, but they have a perplexing tendency to work for some people and not others. Gut bacteria may be the reason.

A step towards new vaccines for most important chicken parasite Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:48 PM PDT Researchers have taken the first step in developing a new type of vaccine to protect chickens against coccidiosis, the most important parasite of poultry globally. A vaccine of this type -- based on proteins from the coccidiosis bug rather than being derived from a live parasite -- could be produced on a larger scale than is currently possible so could be used to provide much more widespread protection to chicken flocks.

Preventing dangerous nonsense in human gene expression Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:48 PM PDT Human genes are preferentially encoded by codons that are less likely to be mistranscribed (or "misread") into a STOP codon, according to a new study.

From blue whales to earthworms, a common mechanism gives shape to living beings Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:39 PM PDT Mice don't have tails on their backs, and their ribs don't grow from lumbar vertebrae. And for good reason. Scientists have discovered the mechanism that determines the shape that many animals take -- including humans, blue whales, and insects.

How the zebra gets its stripes: A simple genetic circuit Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:18 AM PDT Developmental processes that create stripes and other patterns are complex and difficult to untangle. To sort it out, a team of scientists has designed a simple genetic circuit that creates a striped pattern that they can control by tweaking a single gene. This genetic loop is made two linked modules that sense how crowded a group of cells has become and responds by controlling their movements.

Scientists first to characterize barley plant-stem rust spore 'communication' Posted: 13 Oct 2011 08:38 AM PDT Scientists have established that a barley plant recognizes an invader and begins to marshal its defenses within five minutes of an attack. The discovery, along with the scientists' successful cloning of disease-fighting genes and the pathogen signal recognized by the plant, could help to revolutionize the battle against cereal crop enemies, such as stem rust.

Good genes yield high-quality meat products Posted: 13 Oct 2011 06:11 AM PDT Gene technology can help farmers to selectively breed production animals for increasingly high-quality meat, eggs and dairy products.

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