All articles starting with M

Microplastics and human health

Microplastics and human health concerns the effects of microscopic plastic particles, which humans ingest and inhale and which have been detected in blood, lungs, placenta, and arterial plaque.

Microplate

A microplate is a small, relatively rigid block of lithosphere that moves independently of the major tectonic plates, with oceanic examples like the Easter microplate.

A microplate reader, also called a plate reader, is a laboratory instrument that detects biological, chemical, or physical events in microplate wells, quantifying absorbance, fluorescence, luminescence, and turbidimetry in one run.

Micropogonias furnieri

Micropogonias furnieri, the whitemouth croaker (corvina), is a Sciaenidae fish from Yucatan to Argentina, key to southwestern Atlantic fisheries, with multiple Brazilian stocks and a 46,000-tonne TAC.

Micropogonias undulatus

Micropogonias undulatus, the Atlantic croaker, a demersal sciaenid fish from the Gulf of Maine to Argentina, named for spawning croaks; estuarine nursery, fast growth, major US Atlantic recreational and commercial fishery.

Micropore Filters

Micropore filters (microporous membrane filters) are 0.01-to-several-micrometer pore membranes of MCE, PVDF, PES, or PTFE that retain bacteria by sieve retention and adsorption; sterilizing grades retain 10^7 Pseudomonas diminuta per cm², though Acholeplasma and Leptospira can penetrate.

MicroPort MedBot

MicroPort MedBot, formally Shanghai MicroPort MedBot (Group) Co., Ltd., is a Chinese surgical robotics company in Shanghai, majority-owned by MicroPort Scientific and known for its Toumai laparoscopic robot.

Microprocessor

A microprocessor is a general-purpose central processing unit on a single integrated circuit or a small set of them, relying on external memory; the first, the Intel 4004, was introduced in 1971.

Microprocessor complex

Microprocessor complex: the nuclear DROSHA-DGCR8 (Pasha) heterotrimer of animals that cleaves pri-miRNA hairpins into 60-70 nt pre-miRNAs, the first step of canonical microRNA biogenesis; plants use DCL1 instead.

Microprocessor complex subunit DGCR8

DGCR8 (Pasha), DiGeorge syndrome critical region gene 8, is the RNA- and heme-binding subunit of the Drosha Microprocessor complex that cleaves pri-miRNAs; its haploinsufficiency underlies 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

Micropropagation

Micropropagation is large-scale clonal plant production via aseptic tissue culture from a small explant, in four stages (establishment, multiplication, rooting, acclimatization); commercial since about 1965 with orchids, labor is roughly 60% of cost, and somaclonal variation is the main genetic risk.

MicroProse

MicroProse Software, Inc., American game developer and publisher founded 1982 in Hunt Valley, Maryland by Sid Meier and Bill Stealey; known for flight sims, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, X-COM; sold to Spectrum HoloByte 1993, Hasbro 1998, ended 2001; brand revived 2019.

Micropylar cell

Micropylar cell (plug cell): a specialized teleost follicle cell at the oocyte animal pole that drills the micropyle, the single sperm-entry pore in the chorion; Taz specifies it in zebrafish.

MicroPython

MicroPython is a lean implementation of Python 3 written to run on microcontrollers and other constrained environments, fitting within 256 KB of code space and 16 KB of RAM.

Microquasar

A microquasar is a binary star system with a black hole or neutron star that accretes matter and ejects it in relativistic jets, like a miniature quasar.

Microradiography

Microradiography is an X-ray imaging technique producing magnified images of small specimens, used to reveal microstructure and measure mineral content in bone and dental tissue.

Microraptor

Microraptor (Chinese four-winged dromaeosaurid, Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation, ~120 Ma) had flight feathers on arms and legs, glided at 9-15 m/s, and its gut contents show fish, birds, lizard, and mammal prey.

Microreactor

A microreactor is either a miniaturized chemical reactor with micron-scale channels carrying out continuous-flow reactions or a very small nuclear reactor built and transported as a unit.

Microresonator frequency comb

A microresonator frequency comb, also called a Kerr comb or microcomb, is an optical frequency comb generated on a chip by a single continuous-wave laser.

Microrheology

Microrheology is a family of soft matter techniques that measures viscoelastic properties by tracking microscopic probe particles, needing only microliter samples and reaching megahertz frequencies.

MicroRNA

MicroRNA (miRNA): ~21-23 nucleotide non-coding RNAs regulating gene expression post-transcriptionally via the seed region and RISC; first found as lin-4 in C. elegans by Ambros and Ruvkun, honored by the 2024 Nobel Prize.

MicroRNA (miRNA) biogenesis

miRNA biogenesis and processing is the pathway converting primary microRNA transcripts into mature ~22-nucleotide miRNAs, through nuclear Drosha cleavage, Exportin-5 export, and cytoplasmic Dicer cutting.

MicroRNA sequencing

MicroRNA sequencing (small RNA-seq, miRNA-seq) is next-generation sequencing of ~20-nucleotide microRNAs and their isomiRs. Distinguished by adapter ligation bias, UMI-based correction, and liquid biopsy biomarker applications.

Microsatellite

A microsatellite, also known as a short tandem repeat or simple sequence repeat, is a short, repeated DNA stretch whose variable length serves as a genetic marker.

Microsatellite analysis

Microsatellite analysis is a genotyping method that amplifies short tandem-repeat loci by PCR and sizes the fragments to assign codominant genotypes, underpinning forensics, linkage mapping, and parentage testing.

Microscale thermophoresis

Microscale thermophoresis (MST) is an optical biophysical method that measures biomolecular binding in free solution by moving fluorescently labeled molecules in a laser-induced temperature gradient, yielding affinities in about 10 minutes without surface immobilization.