Business booms for guides to biology's moral maze
Article Abstract:
Bioethics has become a mainstream academic discipline, and bioethicists are now playing a key role on government panels advising on many different issues. However, some observers continue to question the extent to which bioethicists have influenced science and politics. In the US, Republican presidents and Congress have since the late 1980s mainly failed to act on the relatively liberal recommendations of bioethicists. It is likely that the role of bioethics will remain uncertain while society continues to seek to resolve issues by lawmaking, instead of by setting ethical standards of behaviour.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1997
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Rhodopsin guides fungal phototaxis
Article Abstract:
Rhodopsins guide green algae towards or away from light, and a study shows how rhodopsins guide the zoospores of Allomyces reticulatus fungus towards the light. A. reticulatus lives in the soil, and absorption of light from outside the zoospores is increased by constructive interference. Rhodospins act as visual pigments in multicellular animals, and the threshold intensity for zoospores moving towards different coloured lights was measured, to test whether rhodopsin could be the visual pigment in fungal photoreceptors.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1997
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Eyes viewed from the skin
Article Abstract:
Provencio and colleagues have shown that melanophores, the light-sensitive pigment cells in frog skin, express melanopsin, a molecule similar to rhodopsins that detect light in the eye. Melanopsin is more closely related to rhodopsins in invertebrate eyes than vertebrate, and if pigment cells are photoreceptor cells are evolutionarily related, they may share proteins other than rhodopsins, such as regulatory, structural and signalling molecules.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1998
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