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Quick Hits |
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Movie: Transparent zebrafish
Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans and are good models for human biology and disease. Now, researchers have created a zebrafish that is transparent throughout its life. The fish allows scientists to view its internal organs and observe processes such as tumor metastasis. In this video clip, you can see the fish's heart beat.
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Image: Electrical activity of a sperm cell
Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have, for the first time, captured the electrical activity of a single sperm cell. The technically difficult maneuver, reported in the February 9 Nature, allows the first measurement of the currents that flow across the sperm's outer membrane.
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Movie: Tumor cell repelling endothelial cells
Michael Klagsbrun, PhD, has made major contributions to the field of growth factors and their receptors, particularly those that regulate the vascular system. This movie, captured by Diane Bielenberg, PhD, of Dr. Klagsbrun's Lab, suggests that semaphorin-3F is an angiogenesis inhibitor.
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Animated Illustration: Lung development
Organ development requires precise coordination and timing of cell growth in three-dimensional space to produce the correct anatomic form and shape. Dr. Ingber and colleagues have demonstrated that the process of budding and branching in the developing lung is driven by mechanical forces generated within individual cells.
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Animated Illustration: HIV protein changing shape
Researchers led by Stephen Harrison, PhD, and Bing Chen, PhD, have shown how a key part of HIV changes shape, triggering other changes that allow the AIDS virus to enter and infect cells. Their findings offer clues that will help guide vaccine and treatment approaches.
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Movie: Zebrafish with melanoma
Dr. Leonard Zon, along with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Elizabeth Tatton and collequges, genetically engineered this zebrafish to make the mutated form of human BRAF, which caused the fish to develop black-pigmented moles on its skin. When the fish were also made to be deficient of a gene called p53, which suppresses tumor growth, the moles developed into melanomas.
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Image: Adult heart cell replicating
Heart-muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, were previously considered incapable of replicating in mammals after birth. Dr. Mark Keating and Dr. Felix Engel now show that an enzyme known as p38 MAP kinase suppresses cardiomyocyte replication and that inhibiting p38 enables these cells to proliferate.
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