Word: methyl
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...Ethanol is an ace in the political deck of cards; it is backed by a powerful agricultural lobby and grown heavily in the (usually) politically indispensable state of Iowa. Moreover, the infrastructure for distilling and mixing corn-based ethanol into our fuel had been in place since it replaced methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) as the fuel additive of choice early this decade...
...wetlands study darkened the picture further. Marshes in Alaska and northern Canada are natural sinks for mercury, which chemically adheres to damp peat and readily converts to the methyl form. That is not a problem as long as the mercury stays put. But increasingly frequent droughts--a likely consequence of global warming--have led to increasingly frequent wildfires, causing wetlands to release centuries' worth of collected mercury in one toxic breath. "There's mercury that's been accumulating since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution," says ecosystems ecologist Merritt Turetsky of Michigan State University, who has been studying the problem...
Most of the errors in reprogramming, scientists say, can be traced to a process known as DNA methylation. During normal development, molecules called methyl groups attach themselves to DNA in precisely timed patterns that regulate which genes are expressed at which times. During cloning, however, those patterns are not always reconstructed in exactly the same way. It's a bit like taking all the words in a novel, jumbling them up and then trying to re-create the original book, putting sentences, pages and chapters back in the right order. The chances of that happening with 100% accuracy are minuscule...
...tissue cell, but how they do so is not clear and is essential if treatments are to be developed from research. This process of activating master regulatory genes is facilitated by chromatin, a histone protein structure that contains a cell’s DNA. If there is a methyl group anchored in a certain place on one histone protein, the gene nearby is activated (known as the K4 state). Conversely, if the methyl group attaches itself to another part of the protein, the gene is deactivated (known as the K27 state). The study of mouse ES cells, published...
...poor on both sides are united by a struggle just to survive what most Americans can barely imagine. Mothers in the rural El Paso outpost of Revolucion cross into Juarez to buy methyl parathion, a pesticide so lethal it is banned in the U.S. They sprinkle it around their shanties, and it kills the roaches and tarantulas for a year. But their children play in the dust and dirt, and when they get sick, their parents take them to Juarez doctors, who are cheaper and stay open into the night. If the children die, they are buried across the border...