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Securing Australia’s offshore oil and gas industry, literally
How do you secure a ship 500 metres long and six times heavier than an aircraft carrier to the seafloor for 25 years?
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Your memories in DNA?
A Queensland researcher thinks that long-term memory could be stored in DNA. It’s a radical concept that he’s going to test over the next year.
Unwrapping brain development
Not satisfied with transforming plant biology and stem cell science, The University of Western Australia’s Ryan Lister is also tacking the human brain.
Reprogrammed stem cells ‘remember’ past life
Stem cells generated from adult cells still retain a memory of their past despite being reprogrammed, Australian scientists have found. Now scientists think they can teach the cells to forget their past.
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Why are cells different?
Genes are not enough to explain the difference between a skin cell and a stem cell, a leaf cell and a root cell, or the complexity of the human brain. Genes don’t explain the subtle ways in which your parents’ environment before you were conceived might affect your offspring.
Another layer of complexity—the epigenome— is at work determining when and where genes are turned on and off.
Ryan Lister is unravelling this complexity. He’s created ways of mapping the millions of molecular markers of where genes have been switched on or off, has made the first maps of these markers in plants and humans, and has revealed key differences between the markers in cells with different fates.
A microscope in a needle
A microscope that fits inside a hypodermic needle is the latest surgical tool in the fight against cancer.
Better tasting bread for China
Murdoch University researchers have discovered how to produce better tasting and higher quality bread using new genome data for wheat grown in Australia.
Bypassing genetic ‘spelling errors’ in muscular dystrophy
A promising treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) could open the way to therapies for cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and other disorders.
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An auto-correct system in plants could fix human gene faults
An auto-correct system for genetic errors in plants is helping plant breeders grow robust hybrid crops more efficiently. It also offers new tools for modifying human and animal proteins without modifying their genomes.
Continue reading An auto-correct system in plants could fix human gene faults