Latex in Biological News

Milkweed's evolutionary approach to caterpillars: Counter appetite with fast repair

... in their tissues and milky-white toxic latex that pours from the plants' tubes. A caterpillar's bite into a milkweed leaf leads to a flood of latex that is "like getting a gallon of sticky paint ... a circle and then eating in the middle where the latex doesn't flow. Also, the monarch caterpillar has ...

Healing power of aloe vera proves beneficial for teeth and gums, too

... vera tooth gel was just as effective, and in some cases more effective, than the commercial brands at controlling cavity-causing organisms. Aloe latex contains anthraquinones, which are chemical compounds that are used in healing and arresting pain because they are anti-inflammatory in nature. But, ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 15, 2009

... already in wide use. They developed a new antimicrobial polymer that includes a type of N-halamine. It has no undesirable effects on the quality of latex paints. Laboratory tests showed that the new polymer kills a wide range of disease-causing microbes including those resistant to multiple ....

New holographic method could be used for lab-on-a-chip technologies

... a single crystalline layer, a structure that could be used in manufacturing. They used their technique to move fluorescent-dyed beads of polystyrene, latex and glass in sizes ranging from 50 nanometers to 3 micrometers. Future work may involve using a less expensive light source, such as a common ...

Scientists developing food allergy treatment

... of exposure to the allergen. Peanut allergy is the most widely known cause, but other causes of anaphylaxis include other foods, insect stings, latex and drugs. If untreated in time it can be fatal. In the FAST project, scientists will use modified variants of allergic proteins that are ...

'Femtomolar optical tweezers' may enable sensitive blood tests

... and blood and plasma collection agencies. Optical tweezers are actually tightly focused laser beams. They can trap certain objects, such as latex microspheres or biological cells, and move them around in water. This occurs because the lasers' electric fields interact with electric charges on ...

Proteomics study yields clues as to how tuberculosis might be thwarting the immune system

... internal housekeeping. However, until now there has been no direct biochemical evidence of a link between phagocytosis and autophagy. Working with latex bead-containing phagosomes isolated in cell lines from mice, Shui and her colleagues performed a detailed analysis of the protein contents of the ...

American Society for Microbiology honors Stephen C. Edberg

... laboratories are: constitutive enzyme testing for the rapid identification of Gram-negative species, the refinement of immunoglobulin coating of latex particles for the direct detection of antigens, and the use of hydrolysable substrates to directly identify bacterial and mycotic isolates within one ...

New, more direct pathways from outside the cell-to-cell nuclei discovered

... clear through the cell. Specifically, the team tracked phagosomes carry extracellular material into the cell nuceli by introducing fluorescent latex beads into the area outside of the cell. They then observed the cells phagocytose (eat) the beads, which gradually moved to the nucleus. The arrival ...

Students invent protective pouch to enhance cell therapy

... to nourish the cells and disperse helpful proteins. But the openings are too small to allow the microcapsules to escape. In lab tests using latex tubing to represent a vein, the students used ultrasound imaging to confirm that fluid can flow smoothly through the mesh and can spread the ...

McBride shows DNA detective work with paper-eating bacteria that 'glide'

... more. Until recently, McBride was not able to image the bacteria closely enough to see the structures involved in movement. Instead, he bonded latex spheres to the surface of F. johnsoniae cells and observed that they moved in all directions around the cell's perimeter. "The cell wall appears ...

A key antibody, IgG, links cells' capture and disposal of germs

... group has now shown that IgG serves to accelerate the creation of phagolysosomes. Under physiological conditions, the scientists found that latex beads coated with IgG formed phagolysosomes in just a third the time it took the cellular machinery to process uncoated beads, 15 minutes versus 45 ...

Many cleaners, air fresheners may pose health risks when used indoors

... reactive group of chemicals called terpenes. Ethylene-based glycol ethers are common, water-soluble solvents used in a variety of cleaning agents, latex paints and other products. They are classified as hazardous air pollutants under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1990 Clean Air Act ...

Marathon of nano-sprinters

... motors outside cells in a systematic fashion. One example is the bead assay, where filaments are immobilized on a surface. Molecular motors pull latex beads along these filaments, and the movement of the beads is observed under the microscope. One important result of these experiments is that ...