Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most serious infectious disease concerns worldwide. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control...
A new study, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, challenges claims that early humans slaughtered mammoths, mastodonts and prehistoric...
The question of how the human brain recognizes the faces of familiar individuals has been important throughout the history of neuroscience. Cells linking...
A duo of researchers in Spain has examined the acute effect of compounds found in cocoa and red berries on retinal functions in healthy eyes.
In healthy...
The genomes of multiple East Asian populations bear the signature of a viral epidemic that occurred approximately 900 generations, or 25,000 years (28...
Homo longi is phylogenetically closer to Homo sapiens than to Neanderthals or other archaic humans, according to new research described in The Innovation.
A...
The Nesher Ramla hominins lived between 420,000 and 120,000 years ago in the Middle East and had a distinctive combination of Neanderthal (especially the...
A new study, led by Brigham and Women’s Hospital scientists, suggests that having chocolate in the morning or in the evening/night results in differential...
Chronic stress, which involves a pathway called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease,...
In a study involving almost 500,000 adults from the United Kingdom, a team of scientists from the University of Southampton and the University of Edinburgh...
Artificial lighting was a crucial physical resource for expanding complex social and economic behavior in groups of Paleolithic humans. Furthermore, the...
Xanthohumol, a prenylated flavonoid produced by hops (Humulus lupulus), and its synthetic derivative, tetrahydroxanthohumol, can mitigate the diet-induced...
A team of researchers from Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, the University of Southern California, the Beckman Research Institute of the City...
A new study, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that within the same society, adolescent students who specifically...
In a new study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, researchers took a closer look at the functions of different sensory neurons in the control center...
A new study, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests that dogs’ social skills emerge early in development and are under strong genetic control.
Genetic...
Archaeologists have obtained radiocarbon dates for the faunal bones excavated from Coxcatlan Cave, a dry rock shelter located within the southern portion...
Each human cell, at metaphase, normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, or 46 in total. Within these are four copies of 3.5 billion base pairs of DNA....
In new research published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, low socioeconomic status infants were randomized to either five years of cognitively...
In a new meta-analysis of previous studies, a team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand found that people who regularly drank...
![Ternary structure of Polθ on a DNA/RNA primer-template: (A) Polθ polymerase; (B) DNA/RNA extension by Polθ and PolθΔL; (C) structure of Polθ:DNA/RNA:ddGTP; (D) superposition of Polθ:DNA/RNA (marine) and Polθ:DNA/DNA (orange, 4x0q); the fingers and thumb subdomains undergo reconfiguration; (E) superposition of Polθ:DNA/RNA (marine) and Polθ:DNA/DNA (orange, 4x0q) highlighting a 12-Å shift of K2181 (blue box; thumb) and a 4.4-Å shift of E2246 (gray box; palm); (F) superposition of nucleic acids and ddGTP from Polθ:DNA/RNA:ddGTP and Polθ:DNA/DNA:ddGTP structures; (G) top: electron density of ddGTP and 3′ primer terminus in Polθ:DNA/RNA structure; bottom: zoomed-in image of the superposition of active sites, illustrating a different conformation of ddGTP in the Polθ:DNA/RNA (blue) and Polθ:DNA/DNA (salmon) complexes; (H) interactions between ribose 2’-hydroxyl groups of the RNA template and residues in the Polθ:DNA/RNA structure; red dashed lines, hydrogen bonds; (I) DNA/RNA used for cocrystallization with Polθ and ddGTP (top); strong electron density is present for four base pairs [nucleotides located at positions 2 to 5 (underlined) of the DNA/RNA] and two base pairs resulting from an incorporated ddGMP (2’,3’ dideoxyguanosine monophosphate) (green; position 1) and a bound unincorporated ddGTP (red; position 0) in the active site (top); interactions between Polθ and nucleic acids in Polθ:DNA/RNA:ddGTP (bottom); interactions between residues and phosphate backbone, sugar oxygen, or nucleobase are shown in blue, yellow, and green, respectively; hydrogen bonds between Polθ and ribose 2’-hydroxyl groups are indicated (boxed residues); (J) interactions between Polθ and nucleic acids in Polθ:DNA/DNA:ddGTP (4x0q); color scheme identical to (I). Image credit: Chandramouly et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1771.](https://cdn.sci.news/images/2021/06/image_9759-Polymerase-Theta-195x110.jpg)
