A team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Milan has discovered some unexpected forms of liquid crystals of ultrashort DNA molecules immersed in water, providing a new scenario for a key step in the emergence of life on Earth.
CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark said the team found that surprisingly short segments of DNA, life's molecular carrier of genetic information, could assemble into several distinct liquid crystal phases that "self-orient" parallel to one another and stack into columns when placed in a water solution. Life is widely believed to have emerged as segments of DNA- or RNA-like molecules in a prebiotic "soup" solution of ancient organic molecules.
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Some cool papers tonight in 4 out of 7 PLoS journals. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and…
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Here is the third BIO101 lecture (from May 08, 2006). Again, I'd appreciate comments on the correctness as well as suggestions for improvement.
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BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 1 - Part 3
The DNA code
DNA is a long double-stranded molecule…
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How long before AIG starts to twitter and fret about this?