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NEW PHASE OF RESEARCH OPENS. "Moreover, this memory survives long enough to allow full regeneration after amputation. Remarkably, headless fragments, regenerated from original environment-familiarized worms, display significant environmental familiarity in a savings paradigm." http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/20/3799 View in LinkedIn

EMPIRICAL METHOD. "Most protein structures are so complex that it’s nearly impossible to predict how altering their structure will affect their function. So the trial-and-error approach of directed evolution is usually the fastest way to come up with a new protein with desirable traits." https://lnkd.in/dQTrNcQ View in LinkedIn

CREATING NOVEL MOLECULES. "The approach is called “directed evolution,” and scientists are using it to generate proteins that do not occur in nature — for example, cancer drugs, new microbial enzymes for converting agricultural waste to fuel, or imaging agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)." https://lnkd.in/dQTrNcQ View in LinkedIn

ACCELERATING EVOLUTION. "In nature, evolution takes place over eons: A slow accumulation of adaptations gradually produces new traits and species. But evolution can also happen on a small and fast scale in the laboratory." https://lnkd.in/dQTrNcQ View in LinkedIn

AFFINITY GAME. "Many chemicals are valuable because they bind to other molecules. Chemical theory cannot directly design “binders.” However, we might recreate in the laboratory the Darwinian processes that nature uses to create binders." https://lnkd.in/dX4ydjX View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR EVOLUTION. "Molecules crafted in the laboratory can make copies of themselves, "Mutate", compete for resources and assemble, giving a paradigm for life." https://lnkd.in/djCifdK View in LinkedIn

PRIONS AND DNA. "Recent results show that PrP binds to nucleic acids in vitro and is found associated with retroviral particles. These findings suggest that PrP could be involved in nucleic acid metabolism in vivo." ( PrP = cellular prion protein). https://lnkd.in/dfswmuf View in LinkedIn

MODIFIED DNA IN CELLS. "Guanine-rich DNA sequences that can adopt non-Watson-Crick structures in vitro are prevalent in the human genome. Whether such structures normally exist in mammalian cells has, however, been the subject of active research for decades. (We show that) Small-molecule–induced DNA damage identifies alternative DNA structures in human genes." https://lnkd.in/dj3aJwZ View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE DNA IN NATURE. "Local structural transitions from the common B-DNA conformation into other DNA forms can be functionally important. Such transitions within certain sequence elements of DNA can be induced by changes in environmental conditions, protein binding and superhelical tension. Several lines of evidence indicate that alternative DNA structures may exist in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The data on their involvement in replication, gene expression, recombination and mutagenesis continues to accumulate." An excellent review. https://lnkd.in/dPQHwzR View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE deals with culturally confined knowledge, often due to language barriers. Think: 100 years of phage antibiotic therapy in Russia; think: surgery under accupuncture for centuries; and now, think: Mugifumi, or the beneficial aspects of touch in plants. Language is not the only barrier to knowledge diffusion: scientific resistance to new ideas is perhaps more impeding. View in LinkedIn