Human aging -- body deteriorating, muscle atrophy, thinning bones -- can be traced to the FoxM1B gene, which University of Illinois Chicago research Robert Costa says simply retires. The FoxM1B gene is found on human chromosome number 12 and is critical for tissues to heal and replenish themselves. If the gene is defective or just tires out, as in old age and rare genetic disorders, Costa says DNA cannot duplicate and cells cannot divide and multiply normally. Costa discovered the whole family of Fox genes in 1993 and research shows the genes, found in animals from insects on up through mammals, are involved in the entire life cycle of a cell. Costa's team created genetically altered mice with liver cells lacking the FoxM1B gene. Rates of regeneration were measured in these mice and others whose FoxM1B gene was intact. Without FoxM1B, regeneration of cells was slow.

COMPLEX LIFE COMES AFTER SNOWBALL

Canadian researchers say complex animals appeared very soon after the meltdown of the most severe ice age on Earth. Writing in the January issue of Geology, from the Geological Society of America, the Queen's University team says the oldest known animal fossils were believed to be the Ediacara biota, soft-bodied animals preserved as impressions on sandstone beds during the Mistaken Point Formation some 565 million years ago in southeastern Newfoundland. Their new search for Ediacara fossils below this level has extended their range nearly 1.2 miles downward to the upper part of the Drook Formation. The large fossils there probably are about 570-580 million years old, the oldest known evidence of megascopic life after the meltdown of the "snowball" glaciers on Earth. The researchers say the unexpectedly large size and complexity of the fossil fronds implies complex animals appeared very soon after the meltdown.

A MODEL FOR COMPLEX ORGAN STUDY

University of California-Riverside researchers have created a model for studying the evolution of complex organs, focusing on the placenta, which provides nutrients for the fetus and eliminates its waste products, in the fish genus. They wanted to see all the steps involved with complex adaptation and evolution, a difficult task because organs require many individual genetic adaptations. The researchers chose guppy-like fish in the genus Poeciliopsis, finding placentas have evolved independently three times in closely related species. Other species in the genus lack placentas and some have partial maternal provisioning via tissues that may be precursors of placentas. The fish, therefore, present the full trajectory of steps involved in the evolution of the organ, allowing a model to be created of what's been added or changed so genes associated with the evolution of each trait can be identified.

CREATING A MATH-FRIENDLY INTERNET

The National Algorithms Group, an international company that develops software to solve complex mathematical problems, is beginning a 2-year investigation into mathematical Web services. It is being funded by the Information Society Technologies program of the European Union's Fifth Framework. The goal of the MONET project is to develop an infrastructure to deploy mathematical services -- remote autonomous servers that can solve mathematical problems -- on the next generation of the Internet. The Web is sprawling collection of hyperlinks, which is fine for human surfers who can filter out excess noise and understand natural languages. That is a problem, however, for machines that need to process and understand information. The development of a "semantic Web" is an evolution where information is encoded into defined vocabularies designed to make the meaning of data explicit and unambiguous. The MONET project is developing such vocabularies to allow a mathematical Web service to describe precisely what it does so it can be discovered and used by another program running anywhere in the world without human intervention.

(EDITORS: For more information about FOXM1B, Contact Sharon Butler at (312) 355-2522 or e-mail sbutler@uic.edu. For FOSSIL, e-mail Joan Manly at jmanly@geosociety.org, for COMPLEX ORGAN, Iqbal Pittalwala, (909) 787-2645 or iqbal@citrus.ucr.edu, and for WEB MATH, Alexa Prescott, 01772 767522 or ukis@glasgows.co.uk)