Hoxful Monsters

Genetic ablation system to study regeneration in Drosophila

Nagraj — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:12:31 +0000

Researchers have always puzzled for ages over how some animals can regenerate their lost or damaged body parts. It all began way back in 1740 when Swiss researcher Abraham Trembley observed that hydra-when chopped into two pieces could remarkably grow back into two complete, new organisms. However not all animals have same capacity of regeneration , for instance the planarians (flat worms) can be cut into 50 pieces and you will end up with 50 smaller worms and same can be said about beautiful star fishes, If an arm ...

Peter and Rosemary Grant bags Kyoto Prize for demonstrating rapid evolution in Darwin’s Finches

Nagraj — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:25:03 +0000

The script could not have got any better than this for the Grant’s who spent major part of their life studying Darwin finches evolutionary responses to environmental changes on islands of Galapagos. In this special year of evolution which celebrates 200th year of Darwin’s Birth and 150 years of publication of Darwin’s magnum opus “Origin of species”, Peter Raymond Grant and his wife Barbara Rosemary Grant won the prestigious Kyoto prize for their work “Demonstrating Rapid Evolution Caused by Natural Selection in Response to Environmental Changes”in basic sciences category. The ...

Post doc position in Juan Pablo Couso’s lab

Nagraj — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:43:56 +0000

Juan Pablo Couso’s lab have identified hundreds of noncanonical genes containing small, phylogenetically conserved, ORFs. Several are polycistronic and involved in cell signalling. The position is funded for up to 5 years and requires successful previous research experience in Genetics or Cell Biology. Full details will appear in Naturejobs.com and sussex.ac.uk/aboutus/jobs. Informal enquires can be made in advance to: j.p.couso@sussex.ac.uk Link to Juan Couso’s lan in Sussex : www.sussex.ac.uk/biology/profile114323.html

Beaked, bird-like dinosaur tells story of finger evolution

Nagraj — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:46:43 +0000

There is another amazing Dinosaur discovery featured in Nature journal ,which provides insights about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs. Today i dont have enough time to discuss about the article in detail , so just leaving the related press release here. Hope i find some time out tomorrow from my experiments to describe in more detail about the article published in Nature. Here goes the press release : Scientists have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China. The finding, they say, demonstrates that ...

New species of Dinosaur discovered in Gobi desert - Psittacosaurus gobiensis

Nagraj — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:29:43 +0000

A new species of Dinosaur was unearthed from the sands of Gobi desert,which is approximately 110 million years old, dating to the mid-Cretaceous Period. This new Dinosaur was discovered by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and his two colleagues from China. They’ve named it as “Psittacosaurus gobiensis”, which they found in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia in 2001, and spent subsequent years preparing and studying the specimen. Sereno and his colleagues published their result on the specimen in June 17 issue ...