A new chemical messenger that is critical in protecting the brain against Parkinson's disease has been identified by scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the University of Dundee.

The research team led by Dr Miratul Muqit had previously discovered that mutations in two genes – called PINK1 and Parkin – lead to Parkinson's.

Now they have made a completely unexpected discovery about the way the two genes interact, which they say could open up exciting new avenues for research around Parkinson's and offer new drug targets. The results of their research are published in Biochemical Journal.

Geneticists and anthropologists previously suspected that ancient Africans domesticated cattle native to the African continent nearly 10,000 years ago. Now, a team of University of Missouri researchers has completed the genetic history of 134 cattle breeds from around the world. In the process of completing this history, they found that ancient domesticated African cattle originated in the "Fertile Crescent," a region that covered modern day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Israel.

The reason why some animals can regenerate tissues after severe organ loss or amputation while others, such as humans, cannot renew some structures has always intrigued scientists. In a study now published in PLOS ONE*, a research group from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC, Portugal) led by Joaquín Rodríguez León provided new clues to solve this central question by investigating regeneration in an adult vertebrate model: the zebrafish. It was known that zebrafish is able to regenerate organs, and that electrical currents may play a role in this process, but the exact mechanisms are still unclear.

NJIT Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences Bruce Bukiet has released his annual Major League Baseball projections and he doesn't say see good things for the Pittsburgh Pirates - the official baseball team of Science 2.0 - but at least his favorite team, the Mets, are going to stink too.

Well, in the world of Bayes projections anyway. They still have to play the games. 

Bukiet's model, published in Operations Research, can be used to project the number of games a team should be expected to win, the optimal batting order for a set of 9 batters, and how trading players will likely influence a team's number of wins.

An international team of scientists has synthesized the first functional chromosome in yeast, an important step in the emerging field of synthetic biology, designing microorganisms to produce novel medicines, raw materials for food, and biofuels. 

Over the last five years, scientists have built bacterial chromosomes and viral DNA, but this is the first report of an entire eukaryotic chromosome, the threadlike structure that carries genes in the nucleus of all plant and animal cells, built from scratch. Researchers say their team's global effort also marks one of the most significant advances in yeast genetics since 1996, when scientists initially mapped out yeast's entire DNA code, or genetic blueprint.

ANN ARBOR—You've switched to the night shift and your weight skyrockets, or you wake at 7 a.m. on weekdays but sleep until noon on weekends—a social jet lag that can fog your Saturday and Sunday.

Life runs on rhythms driven by circadian clocks, and disruption of these cycles is associated with serious physical and emotional problems, says Orie Shafer, a University of Michigan assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

Now, new findings from Shafer and U-M doctoral student Zepeng Yao challenge the prevailing wisdom about how our body clocks are organized, and suggest that interactions among neurons that govern circadian rhythms are more complex than originally thought.