environment

Jump-starting T Cells In Skin Cancer

...d by the vaccine may change the local, suppressive environment of the tumor such that other T cells can snap out of their stupor and attack the tumor. ...

UCSB scientists probe sea floor venting to gain understanding of early life on Earth

...ons below the sea floor may most closely mimic the environment when life began. "There is a great deal of interest in the microbes of the Earth's crust because the strategies by which they survive may be similar to the earliest strategies of life on Earth, and perhaps also on other planetary bodies," said Rache...

It's not all genetic: Common epigenetic problem doubles cancer risk in mice

...t doesn't cause tumors directly, but it creates an environment which is ripe for cancer to start." Because precursor cells in the colon's lining had been identified as a likely starting point for tumors, Feinberg and his team tossed a cancer-causing genetic mutation into the mix. The IGF2 mice were crossed with...

Genome of deadly amoeba shows surprising complexity, evidence of lateral gene transfer

...genes that allow it to sense certain facets of its environment and respond to those cues," says Neil Hall, a TIGR scientist who is the senior author of the Nature study. He did most of his work on the E. histolytica genome while in his previous position at Sanger. Matthew Berriman of Sanger said, "The results g...

Anti-bacterial additive widespread in U.S. waterways

...ity, observed theoccurrence of triclocarban in the environment correlated strongly withthat of triclosan, another commonly used antimicrobial chemical thathas been studied in much greater detail because it is more easilydetectable.Using an empirical model and published data on the environmentaloccurrence of tric...

Inexpensive, mass-produced genes core of synthetic biology advances at UH

... efforts will improve health care,medicine and the environment at a fundamental level.Using current methods, programmed synthesis of a typical gene coststhousands of dollars. Thus, the prospect of creating the most primitiveof living organisms, which requires synthesis of several thousandgenes, would be prohibit...

Scientists find missing enzyme for tuberculosis iron scavenging pathway

...need to grow ?it is secreted out into the external environment where it scavenges iron and then (with iron bound to it) it is taken up by the bacterium again." Although Rv1347c is not involved in antibiotic resistance, it still remains a target for the design of new anti-TB drugs. "Enzymes that synthesize mycob...

The secret lives of whales

...s did not interrupt their lives. Living in a fluid environment they could move to new areas of productivity and find food even as the climate around them changed.?/p> Palumbi compares the ability to read genes to counting the rings of a tree ?but looking at the history of an entire population, not just an in...

Dinosaur DNA? New Patent Covers Degraded DNA recovery

...he traumatic circumstances of a crime scene or the environment has caused DNA samples to become degraded. "We hope this gives criminal investigators another tool to re-open cold cases or revisit crime scenes, stringing together strands of detached DNA into a genetic trail that could solve a crime or exonerate th...

Antibiotic Resistant Bacterium Uses Sonar-like Strategy to “See?Enemies or Prey

... ismade whenever there is another cell type in the environment near thebacterium, such as a human blood cell. The...Gilmore, “These bacteriaare actively probing their environment for enemies or food. Based onwhether or not they ‘see?other cells, they make the toxinappropriately....

Solution to Pollution: New Bacteria Eats Toxic Waste

... solution, said Sims. Bioremediation cleans up the environment by allowing living organisms to degrade or transfo...e the organisms to destroy PAH contaminants in the environment by applying engineering principles to microbial biotechnology, said Sims. “This research is extendin...

Elephants imitate truck noises, other animals

...o recorded sounds that were common in the auditory environment of the subjects of this study. Spectrogram analyses of the audio frequency of the imitations were nearly perfect matches to the original sounds. Mlaika, a ten-year-old adolescent female African elephant living in Kenya among a group of semi-captive ...

Elephants imitate sounds as a form of social communication

...o recorded sounds that were common in the auditory environment of the subjects of this study. Spectrogram analyses of the audio frequency of the imitations were nearly perfect matches to the original sounds. Mlaika, a ten-year-old adolescent female African elephant living in Kenya among a group of semi-captive ...

Highly adaptable genome in gut bacterium key to intestinal health

...o understand how gut microbes adapt to the dynamic environment of the gut and ensure the functional stability of the intestinal bioreactor, the researchers say. In addition, variations in the composition of gut microbial communities among different people may be an important factor that influences predisposition...

Ants Genetic Engineering Leads To Species Interdependency

...evelopment.In virtually all ant species, it is the environment in which a femaleis raised, rather than a genetic predisposition, that determines whichcaste she will adopt.However, in two harvester ant populations in southern New Mexico,queens and workers from the same colonies are genetically verydifferent; in b...

Scientists discover unique microbe in California's largest lake

...ea, with its highload of nutrients, may provide an environment that allows this novelphotosynthetic organism to l..., the host animal or plant provided anutrient-rich environment with relatively high amounts of infraredlight; in the Salton Sea, the waters themselves create a com...

International trial of two microbicides begins

...hat neutralizes the vaginal environment. An acidic environment inactivates HIV as well as other pathogens. Each woman in the trial will be placed at random into one of four equally sized groups. One group will use BufferGel before each act of sexual intercourse, one group will use PRO 2000, one group will use a...

MetaChip provides quick, efficient toxicity screening of potential drugs

...hat neutralizes the vaginal environment. An acidic environment inactivates HIV as well as other pathogens. Each woman in the trial will be placed at random into one of four equally sized groups. One group will use BufferGel before each act of sexual intercourse, one group will use PRO 2000, one group will use a...

Tiny scaffolding allows stem cells to become working fat cells

...maintain them for up to a year. "We know that the environment in which a community of cells finds itself has a great deal of influence on the biology underway within those cells," Kniss said. "And that biology is always translated into changes in gene expression and assemblies of proteins." That is why the thre...

NJIT Presidential Award winner takes stem cell research another step

... because she has had success in crafting the right environment for stem cells to grow into other cells," said William Hunter, chairman of the biomedical-engineering department at NJIT. "She is working in a brand-new world of medical therapy." Arinzeh's first stem-cell breakthrough focused on developing scaffold...

UF Researchers Map Bacterial Proteins That Cause Tooth Loss

... proteins are expressed when the organism is in an environment that closely mimics an oral situation.?/p> To ...he lab proved not to be when the organism is in an environment that mimics the oral cavity,?Lamont said. To put it simply, the behavior, or protein expression, of...

Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves

...assumption that Cyanobacteria came out of a marine environment ?after all, they are still important to marine environments today, so they must always have been," Blank said. "When Cyanobacteria started to appear, there was no ozone shield, so UV light would have killed most things. They either had to have come u...

Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate

...snails actually reveal clues about the climate and environment of western Egypt, lo those many years ago. They al...aradise," Smith said, "but enough to turn a barren environment into a classic savannah." Kieniewicz performed isotopic analyses of about 20 snails, all of them da...

A new study examines how shared pathogens affect host populations

...n. Studying only the target species or the abiotic environment would not reveal the cause of the epidemic. Their results have not only important consequences for understanding the role of pathogens in species interactions but also provide a potential mechanism linking host biodiversity and ecosystem functioning....

How the environment could be damaging men's reproductive health

...e quantities of local fatty fish." POPs enter the environment in a number of ways. Tarmo Tiido, co-author and Ph...r cancer in Lithuania may reflect the intrauterine environment situation more than 20 years ago. However, cryptorchidism can be detected immediately after birth an...

Scientists discuss improved biopesticides for locust control in West Africa

...he persistence of base biopesticides is low in the environment because of degradation from sunlight," Agblevor said. "We have developed coating technologies to improve on the environmental persistence of the biopesticide, specifically a lignin coating for the spores, which increases their resistance to ultraviol...

Low level of extinction during ice age linked to adaptability

...rming rate. It may be that humans have altered the environment so much that we are now causing the extinction of species that should be relatively immune. Though it's difficult to say exactly what the implications are for the world we live in, what I can say is that it is worrisome." Powell looked at extinction...

Researchers identify protein crucial for survival of Lyme-disease bacterium

...d to survive in ticks and why it has chosen a tick environment to be its natural vector in nature. "It potentially could give us a target for eradicating the bacterium, because if you understand what it needs to sustain itself, then in theory you could disrupt that cycle by blocking whatever that mechanism is,"...

Gene therapy promising for growing tooth-supporting bone

...o provide an interdisciplinary, research-intensive environment for those pursuing careers in the oral sciences, with a focus in the area of restoration of oral-craniofacial tissues. Co-authors on the paper include Courtney A. Dunn, adjunct clinical lecturer in orthodontics; Qiming Jin, research associate in per...

Computational Method Speeds Mapping of Cell Signaling Networks

...perly, cells must be able to detect changes in the environment and respond accordingly--usually by altering their behavior in some way. Cells are equipped with a sophisticated communications network that links surveillance with response, and allows the cells to perform a variety of tasks--such as growing in resp...

GeneNotes - A novel information management software for biologists

...about genes/ESTs. GeneNotes provides an integrated environment for users to surf the Internet, collect notes for genes/ESTs, and retrieve notes. GeneNotes is supported by a server that integrates gene annotations from many major databases (e.g., HGNC, MGI, etc.). GeneNotes uses the integrated gene annotations to...

Buying Time Through Hibernation on Demand

... diabetic's clot-resistant wound to an oxygen-free environment would speed the healing process. While the notion of putting a human or a human organ into an oxygen-free state of biological limbo and then reversing the process at will with no ill effects may sound like science fiction, dozens of documented cases...

U-M team recovers ancient whale in Egyptian desert

... diabetic's clot-resistant wound to an oxygen-free environment would speed the healing process. While the notion of putting a human or a human organ into an oxygen-free state of biological limbo and then reversing the process at will with no ill effects may sound like science fiction, dozens of documented cases...

Harmful chemicals may reprogram gene response to estrogen

... in which genetic predisposition and things in the environment interact to increase disease risk. Until now, scie...sts thought that exposure to harmful agents in the environment caused damage to the gene. This study, however, indicates that an environmental agent can actually c...

NASA study finds snow melt causes large ocean plant blooms

.... Oxygen-depleted waters also provide the perfect environment for the growth of a specialized group of bacteria called denitrifying bacteria. These bacteria convert a nitrogen-based nutrient readily consumable by plants in seawater, called nitrate, into forms of nitrogen that most plants cannot use. One form o...

Defenseless plants arm themselves with metals

...ost plants have mechanisms that keep metals in the environment out of their tissues. So what would have driven some plants to do just the opposite? "The existing explanation is that metal accumulation evolved to protect these plants from pathogens," Salt said. "Yet most other plants don't accumulate metals, and...

Emergence of cancer as major cause of childhood death in developing countries is not being adequately addressed

...tate studies of the roles that genetic background, environment and lifestyle play in susceptibility to cancer and pathogenesis of particular cancers. Such studies would be easier to conduct if pediatric cancer units are created in resource-poor nations and if their development promotes international cell and tis...

UNC launches study of liver injury caused by drugs

...er injury is an ideal model to study how genes and environment interact to produce disease in some but not all people. We hope the factors identified by DILIN research will provide clues to susceptibility to the many diseases that represent an interaction with the environment." ...

Study reveals new technique for fingerprinting environmental samples

...ordingly, can tell us about what's happening in an environment without knowing the identities of the microbes liv...ricate physical and biochemical details of a given environment without having to know the actual identities of the resident microbes. This finding is crucial for s...

Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication

...werful events. "Elephants may be able to sense the environment better than we realize," she says, pointing to earlier studies showing that elephants will sometimes move toward distant thunderstorms. "When it rains in Angola, elephants 100 miles away in Etosha National Park start to move north in search of water....

The evolutionary triumph of flower power

...to 113 men and women in a retirement community ?an environment in which memory is often a personal concern. All 113 got flowers, some at the beginning of the study with a follow-up bouquet a few days later, some only on the second round and others after the study. Everyone also received a decorative booklet for ...

Grizzlies set to invade high Arctic?

...y large and diverse, and this complex but exciting environment is just coming into focus for Canadians in general. It's now a mainstream issue." ...

Advancements In Genomics Foster Deep Sea Discoveries

... while some 20 percent exists in the shallow water environment and a mere half of a percent is on land. Extreme deep ocean conditions include near freezing temperatures and up to 15,000 pounds per square inch of “skull-crushing?pressure. Scientists say precious information lies in discovering how organisms have...

Changing ecosystems throw scientists mega-challenges

...t." The report also focuses on water as a complex environment system. "All human natural systems are influenced by the distribution, abundance, quality and accessibility of water," it says. With continued human population growth and the uncertain impacts of of environmental change, the report states, ensuring a...

Scripps scientists find potential for catastrophic shifts in Pacific ecosystems

...growth rules will apply in each different physical environment and that small, random physical changes can provoke an amplified response in the biology in ways that may not be easily or symmetrically reversed. These measurements show that asymmetrical and even irreversible ecological change is possible." Irreve...

Stealth Worms May Improve Insect Pest Control

...s and even digests its tissues, creating a perfect environment for the EPN to grow and multiply. One or more adult generations live entirely inside the decaying insect. The third stage infective juvenile is the only one that can live outside the insect host. Numbering about 150,000 strong or more, these juvenile...

New strategies to reduce hospital-aquired infections

...ungi and parasites --can enter into the healthcare environment in several ways: direct contact with or ingestion of drinking water or ice, breathing aerosols from showers and faucets and even from improperly reprocessed medical devices. As hospitals increasingly recognize the risks to patient health, they are em...

Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST)

...ungi and parasites --can enter into the healthcare environment in several ways: direct contact with or ingestion of drinking water or ice, breathing aerosols from showers and faucets and even from improperly reprocessed medical devices. As hospitals increasingly recognize the risks to patient health, they are em...

To Stop Evolution: New Way Of Fighting Antibiotic Resistance Demonstrated By Scripps Scientists

...micals) produced by other bacteria or fungi in the environment to kill off the competition. Scientists in the last century have discovered a number of these natural "antibiotic" products and have used them as the basis for treating bacterial infections. By the middle of the century, the threat posed by many typ...

Structure-building cell signals also may influence learning and memory

... bodies like viruses and toxins, from the external environment thus enabling the cell to store, transport or eliminate these materials. Synaptojanin-1 enables endocytosis when it disassembles a molecular coating on storage vesicles, which allows the cell to continue making new vesicles as needed. "This was a ne...

UN environmental agency steps up battle against marine pollution

...0 Parties and aims to protect human health and the environment from the inappropriate management of hazardous and other wastes. The Convention regulates the movement of hazardous waste and obliges its members to ensure that such wastes are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. It covers to...

Nanobacteria in clouds could spread disease, scientists claim

...epted as being widely prevalent in the terrestrial environment and that their evidence is compelling for the existence of these nano-organisms, even in the stratosphere. In humans, nanobacteria have now been identified on four continents, they add. Dr Sommer and Professor Wickramasinghe further suggest that nan...

Young Blood Revives Aging Muscles, Stanford Researchers Find

...in or brain-is a matter of the regenerative cell's environment rather than the cells themselves. Rando said that finding the youth-promoting factors in the blood is no small task. "It's as big a fishing expedition as you can possibly imagine," he said. With thousands of proteins, lipids, sugars and other small ...

Natural Killers Could Lead to New Hepatitis Treatments

...survival of these NKT cells when they get into the environment of the liver, and that's how the cells tend to accumulate there,?said Littman. “Our data don't support a critical role of CXCR6 in crawling behavior of the cells.?/p> Evidence for the role of CXCR6 in the survival of NKT cells ?as well as the cel...

Sponges as drugs

...t spatial competitors. This is important, as in an environment without spatial competitors, such as in a sponge culture, a lower concentration of the substances of interest to the pharmaceutical industry might be produced. Sponge culture The researcher tried to rear 9 of the 151 species of sponge observed but ...

Aircraft Cabin Ventilation Influences The Transmission Of Diseases In-flight

...ound that while commercial airlines are a suitable environment for the spread of pathogens carried by passengers or crew, the environmental control systems used in commercial aircraft seem to restrict the spread of airborne pathogens. Proper ventilation within any confined space reduces the concentration of airb...

Evidence of 600-million-year old fungi-algae symbiosis discovered in marine fossils

... where abundant algae lived in a shallow sub-tidal environment about 600 million years ago, Yuan and Xiao found three specimens that have evidence of two partners in a familiar relationship. "Enlargements of thin-section photomicrographs of the tiny specimens -- each of which was less than a millimeter in size -...

Life detection instrument passes key test on road to Mars

...isor. "We've shown on Earth, in the most Mars-like environment available, that this instrument is a thousand times better at detecting biomarkers than any instrument put on Mars before." The instrument has been chosen to fly aboard the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, now scheduled to launch in 2011. Th...

Understanding how bacteria communicate may help scientists prevent disease

...h, "we are trying to understand how changes in the environment are integrated and result in changes in behavior," he said. What was not known until recently is a crucial missing link in the network in each bacterium that results in the ability to change behavior. Just before he came to Virginia Tech in August 2...

Grass makes environmentally friendly biofuel

...that grass biofuel pellets are much better for the environment because they emit up to 90 percent less greenhouse gases than oil, coal and natural gas do. Furthermore, he says, grass is perennial, does not require fertilization and can be grown on marginal farmland. "Any mixture of grasses can be used, cut in m...