Most of us know that at some point in our evolutionary history around 600 million years ago, single-celled organisms evolved into more complex multicellular life.
But knowing that happened and actually seeing it happen in real-time in front of you is an entirely different matter altogether.
The idea that breastmilk has a microbiome (or microbiota)—a community of bacteria living within it—is relatively new and has sparked debate about where breastmilk bacteria come from. Some scientists believe breastmilk bacteria originate in the mother’s gut while others believe they are transferred to the mother from the infant’s mouth during breastfeeding.
New research from the CHILD Cohort Study—an ongoing birth cohort study involving thousands of Canadian children and their families—has shed some light on this question by highlighting the importance of the infant’s mouth as a source of breastmilk bacteria.
The study, published today in Cell Host & Microbe, found that among the many factors examined, the method of breastfeeding—whether mothers fed their infants directly at the breast or fed them pumped breastmilk from a bottle—was the most consistent factor associated with the milk microbiota composition.
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Try as you might, some events cannot be remembered. Known in psychology as memory blocking, the phenomenon has remained elusive since first described more than half a century ago. Now Donnelly Centre researchers have found that blocking is not due to problems with forming memories, as previously thought, but with memory recall—in worms at least.
By studying this process in the C. elegans worm, a creature only one millimeter long but whose biology has been studied so extensively that the position of all of its 302 nerve cells in the body is known, the researchers think they’ll be able to pinpoint the cells and molecules at play during learning and memory.
The findings are described in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
A newly discovered species of lichen from Ecuador that contains both tryptamine and psilocybin has recently been discovered, dispelling the belief that the infamous ‘magic mushrooms’ are the only plant species containing this hallucinogenic compound.
Lichens are of particular interest to biologists because of their symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi. The fungus creates the network that sustains, hydrates, and protects the algae, which in turn generates the sugars necessary to feed it through photosynthesis. While they both exhibit plant-like characteristics, neither are actually plants — they are composite organisms. This makes the psychedelic lichen even more intriguing.
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It is the first such research to be undertaken at the university.
IBRO is the global federation of neuroscience organizations that aims to promote and support neuroscience around the world through training, teaching, collaborative research, outreach and advocacy.
The research will be carried out at Sahu’s Cell Biology and Molecular metabolism lab at the Vikram Sarabhai Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, which is headed by Professor Sarita Gupta.
Continue reading “Ahmedabad: MSU researcher gets global grant for vesicular trafficking study” »
Plants are master chemists, and Michigan State University researchers have unlocked their secret of producing specialized metabolites.
The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined plant biology and machine learning to sort through tens of thousands of genes to determine which genes make specialized metabolites.
Some metabolites attract pollinators while others repel pests. Ever wonder why deer eat tulips and not daffodils? It’s because daffodils have metabolites to fend off the critters who’d dine on them.
Continue reading “Machine learning unlocks plants’ secrets” »
