Section Head Ken Baldwin is a physiologist and biophysicist who studies the regulation of motor protein gene expression in muscle. Transcription of myosin isoforms is affected by exercise and hormones. Intriguingly, epigenetic mechanisms appear to be involved, and Ken is particularly interested in the effects of low gravity on the expression of heavy chain myosin…
There’s a bit of a holiday mood at F1000 Towers this week. A long Easter weekend with glorious weather (remind me to show you some photos of the vineyard in Surrey we visited), and another long weekend coming up thanks to the conjugation of a couple of fertility rites. What better time, then, to dust…
Today we have a meeting report from F1000 Member David Stephens, who is in the Department of Biochemistry at Bristol University. David went to the recent Biochemical Society/Wellcome Trust Focused Meeting on Cellular cytoskeletal motor proteins, held at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge. For a fantastic summary of the state of the art…
You might remember an interview with Desmond Julian here at NS. We talked to Desmond because it fitted well with the launch of the British Heart Foundation’s Mending Broken Hearts campaign complete with talking fish. Last month we also published the results of our Best Places to Work (Postdocs) survey, in which University College London…
If you’ve been keeping up with us on Facebook and Twitter, you might have seen a discussion on the concept of ecosystem-based fishery management, which includes a dissent from Nando Boero and response from the original evaluator, Chris Kennedy.
Professor Geoffrey Burnstock proposed the purinergic hypothesis, describing what is probably the most primitive (oldest) signalling pathway in the body. He cloned the first purinergic receptor in the early ’90s, and is now excited about the pathophysiology of these receptors, and especially their application to potential treatments for many diseases, including epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and cystic…
Please join us in congratulating two F1000 Members who have been awarded a 2011 Canada Gairdner Award. This award recognizes and rewards “the achievements of medical researchers whose work contributes significantly to improving the quality of human life.” Both were recognized for ground breaking discoveries and definition of the family of Toll like receptors and…
Determining the structures of neurotransmitter transporters is not only technically difficult (integral membrane proteins are notoriously recalcitrant subjects), but also the subject of much controversy. Knowledge of structure is essential to understanding mechanism, which can of course lead to more rational therapeutic design. Neurotransmitter transporters are important for the re-uptake of neurotransmitters after synapse firing:…
It’s a truism to say that diversity is important: Society places value on the multiple functions of ecosystems from soil fertility to erosion control to wildlife-carrying capacity, and these functions are potentially threatened by ongoing biodiversity losses. E. S. Zavaleta et al., 20101
My Culture Friday article on the Blackawton Bees paper attracted a fair amount of interest, and some comments. Such as
