Plague in Biological News

USGS news: August science picks

... in Alaska. Learn about carbon farming, a plague vaccine for endangered ferrets, and how lead shot ... effort to help control an extensive outbreak of plague in South Dakota, some of the ferrets are getting ... time the vaccine has been used during a major plague epizootic (an animal version of a human ....

UCF professor develops vaccine to protect against black plague bioterror attack

... survived this challenge with no traces of the plague in their bodies. The rats were exposed to a heavy ... and then you convert them into capsules." The plague had a deadly impact on early Europe, it continues ... Organization reports at least 2,000 cases of the plague annually. The most recent outbreak in 2005 killed ...

Scientists discover why plague is so lethal

... Bacteria that cause the bubonic plague may be more virulent than their close relatives ... the May issue of the journal Microbiology. The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis needs calcium in order ... pestis is missing an important enzyme. Bubonic plague has killed over 200 million people during the ...

NASA technology helps predict and prevent future pandemic outbreaks

... Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, is a highly susceptible area for plague and Hanta virus outbreaks, and by understanding the mixture of vegetation, ... vectors within the region and the threat they cause to humans. Because plague is also considered a bioterrorism agent, NASA surveillance systems enable ...

Ethiopian government celebrates rinderpest eradication

... we hope the eradication will result in a larger and healthier cattle population and we'll see fewer of the violent cattle rustling raids that plague the region." ...

Internationally acclaimed researcher joins UH faculty thanks to $5.5 million grant

... continued research and expansion," Gov. Perry said. "This world-class research team will lead the charge in developing treatments for diseases that plague our citizens and enhance the University of Houston's presence as a biomedical research institution." Jan-ke Gustafsson, a renowned figure in the ...

December 2008 highlights from Biology of Reproduction

... http://www.biolreprod.org/cgi/content/full/79/6/1176?etoc Background noise, or a symphony? Genetic background effects can plague researchers studying developmental processes in mammalian organisms. However, because such effects are due to differences in many allelic ...

Clemson researchers advance nano-scale electromechanical sensors

... between hydrogen and deuterium gas, very similar isotopes of the same element. Since the whole process is electrical, the size limitations that plague competing detection methods are not a problem here. The cantilevers can be shrunk down to the nano-scale and the operating electronics can be ...

Scripps research team sheds light on immune system suppression

... the mouse immune system could well aid the development of new treatments for the many immunosuppressive conditions such as HIV and measles that plague humans. "I think that our study opens up an avenue for people who work in those human diseases to translate our findings," says Oldstone. For now, ...

Smoke smudges Mexico City's air, chemists identify sources

... haze and chart daily patterns of changes to the mix. This forensic work will help to identify the sources of these persistent pollutants, which plague other megacities in places like China and India as well. With this information, leaders will be better able to develop policies that will effectively ...

Fat: Its not what you think!

... As heart disease and obesity continue to plague the US, many people believe that the recent proliferation of high-fat diets is the major culprit. As a consequence, many people aim to significantly ...

National Zoo scimitar-horned oryx going into the wild

... of them in North Africa. But their numbers began to dwindle as they were hunted, both for sport and food. To ensure that the same problems do not plague the oryx that are being reintroduced into the wild, the Tunisian government is planning conservation programs to educate local people about the ...

Iowa State researchers look for smaller, cheaper, 1-dose vaccines

... working with BioProtection Systems Corp. of Ames on this research. BPSC hopes to supply lower-cost vaccines to government agencies for use where the plague is still a threat. "We are thankful that the Iowa Values Fund supports our collaboration with Iowa State University and allows us to combine our ...

Bacteria that cause urinary tract infections invade bladder cells

... Louis, Dec. 17, 2007 Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found definitive proof that some of the bacteria that plague women with urinary tract infections (UTIs) are entrenched inside human bladder cells. The finding confirms a controversial revision of scientists' ...

AAAS announces winners of 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards

... society has been overdosing the oceans with nutrients that have promoted the growth of harmful algae and bacteria. Plastic wastes have created a plague of floating detritus with widespread impact on sea life. The series also discussed how carbon dioxide is entering the oceans at a rate of nearly 1 ...

Northwestern to expose most deadly infectious diseases in 3-D

... newly mapped proteins. "We hope our effort will lay the groundwork for new drugs to treat or prevent some of the worst infectious diseases to plague our country and the world," Anderson said. ...

Sidestepping cancer's chaperone

... occurs in tumor cells, drugs conceived to target Hsp90 would largely spare normal cells, minimizing or even nullifying the dramatic side effects that plague many current cancer treatments. This is an important discovery that opens the door to the design of a completely new class of anticancer agents, ...

Acid oceans warning

... but ocean acidification could be even more so. Other issues at the forum include: the latest science on coral bleaching the rising plague of coral disease managing Australias coral reefs under climate change managing resilience in coral reefs protecting sea water quality ...

Europe needs collective effort on System Biology, says ESF Task Force

... Most of the diseases which plague humankind today are multifactorial: they are not simply the result of one mutation in one gene, producing one rogue protein that can no longer carry ...

Researchers discover new strategies for antibiotic resistance

... development of immunotherapeutics to boost the bodys own defenses against infection or other diseases, and reduce the resistance issues that plague todays antibiotics. ...

Will the plague pathogen become resistant to antibiotics?

... several antibiotics has also been found in the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis, gene sequence ... to resist many of the antibiotics used against plague has been found so far in only a single case of ... that the multiresistance plasmid acquired by the plague bacillus is widespread in environmental bacteria ...

Study illuminates how the plague bacteria causes disease

... The bacteria responsible for the plague and some forms of food poisoning "paralyze" the ... million people are estimated to have died in the plague epidemics that devastated the ancient world, the researchers said. The successful weaponization of plague in the former Soviet Union bioweapons program ...

Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague

... and that poses a concern, especially if plague would be used as a bioweapon," said Luca Santi, a ... the initial exposure. Current vaccines against plague are severely limited from widespread adoption by ... tobacco plants to make high levels of the plague antigens F1, V and a combination of the two, a ...

Typhoid fever led to the fall of Athens

... have for many years debated the cause of the plague of Athens. Analysis carried out by Manolis ... Society for Infectious Diseases. The plague that began in Ethiopia and passed through Egypt ... Thucydides, who himself was taken ill with the plague but recovered. Despite Thucydides' detailed ...

New Look at DNA Hints at Origin of UV Damage

... that make the bacterium responsible for the plague especially efficient at killing its host. In ... blood of mammals. There are different forms of plague in humans -- bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic -- ... for dissecting the ways pathogens such as the plague can infect and kill their hosts," said Pamela ...

Novel plague virulence factor identified

... that make the bacterium responsible for the plague especially efficient at killing its host. In ... blood of mammals. There are different forms of plague in humans -- bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic -- ... for dissecting the ways pathogens such as the plague can infect and kill their hosts," said Pamela ...

Studies reveal how plague disables immune system, and how to exploit the process to make a vaccine

... of Chicago show how the bacteria that cause the plague manage to outsmart the immune system and how, by ... infected rodents. In the mid-14th century, the plague swept through Europe killing nearly one-third of ... centuries. Although far less common now, the plague has not entirely gone away. There are fewer than ...

Wake Forest scientists find new combination vaccine effective against plague

... Honko, found that injecting a protein taken from plague bacteria into a mouse ?one method of vaccination ... added to the vaccine, antibody levels against the plague bacteria are 500,000 times higher. "Flagellin ... protects against the most dangerous form of the plague ?pneumonic plague," reported Mizel, professor and ...

First North American Encapsulated Islet Transplant without Long-term Immune Suppression into a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes

... disease could have been smallpox or even bubonic plague but bubonic plague is a bacterial disease rather than a virus and is ... by the plagues of Mesopotamia (700-450BC), the plague of Athens (430BC), ...

Biologists discover why 10% of Europeans are safe from HIV

... disease could have been smallpox or even bubonic plague but bubonic plague is a bacterial disease rather than a virus and is ... by the plagues of Mesopotamia (700-450BC), the plague of Athens (430BC), ...

New molecule may aid in production of biofuels and fungi-resistant plants

... resource and, most importantly, because it occurs in several types of plague organisms and parasites, chitin degradation is of great interest to ... our ability to interfere with chitin metabolism in insects and other plague organisms. CBP21 also has the potential to aid in the production of ...

Newly found sensing system enables certain bacteria to resist human immune defenses

... that cause anthrax, strep throat, flesh-eating disease and various types of food poisoning. In gram-negative bacteria—such as those that cause plague and salmonellosis—a sensory and gene regulation system named PhoP/PhoQ protects invading bacteria, and scientists believe if they develop a better ...

How plague-causing bacteria disarm host defense

... Yersinia includes three species of bacteria that are pathogenic to humans: Y. pestis is perhaps the most infamous, being responsible for the bubonic plague (also known as the Black Death), which killed more than 200 million people in the Middle Ages. "This bacterial species could still be a threat ...

Scientists discover rare 'gene-for-gene' interaction that helps bacteria kill their host

... Scientists have discovered that a cousin of the plague bacterium uses a single gene to out-fox insect immune defences and kill its host. In research published in the journal Proceedings of the National ...

Herpes infection may be symbiotic, help beat back some bacteria

... Mice with chronic herpes virus infections can better resist the bacterium that causes plague and a bacterium that causes one kind of food poisoning, researchers report in this week's Nature. Scientists at Washington University School of ...

Bacteria control how infectious they become, study finds

... The results of a new study suggest that bacteria that cause diseases like bubonic plague and serious gastric illness can turn the genes that make them infectious on or off. Knowing how disease-causing bacteria, like Yersinia pestis and ...

Proteins anchor memories in our brain

... In the process, however, they also develop receptors that bind to the body's own proteins. These T cells are normally eliminated, avoiding the plague of autoimmunity. A clue to how the elimination process is controlled came from previous work involving a protein in the cell nucleus called ...

Autoimmune disease triggered if T cells miss a single protein early on

... In the process, however, they also develop receptors that bind to the body's own proteins. These T cells are normally eliminated, avoiding the plague of autoimmunity. A clue to how the elimination process is controlled came from previous work involving a protein in the cell nucleus called ...

A wolf in sheep's clothing: Plague bacteria reveal one of their virulence tricks

... The bacterium that causes the plague belongs to a virulent family of bacteria called Yersinia, a group that also includes a pathogen responsible for food poisoning. These bacteria insert ...