Vectors in Biological News

Methods for gene transfer in stem cells featured in Cold Spring Harbor Protocols

... COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. (Wed., Aug. 5, 2009) vectors derived from retroviruses are useful tools for ... and propagation into daughter cells. Lentiviral vectors are preferred because they can transduce non-proliferating cellular targets. These vectors can be engineered to target specific tissues. In ...

UF researchers develop improved gene therapy agent

... about 30 times more efficiently in mice than vectors scientists currently rely on. The discovery ... In tissue samples and in mice, all the new vectors worked better than a commonly used version of ... The researchers are creating additional new vectors based on this concept, with the goal of creating ...

Selfish DNA and the Genetic Control of Vector-Borne Diseases

... medicine have had limited success. The insect vectors responsible for spread of these diseases are ... reducing the spread of disease by these insect vectors is genetically modifying the mosquitoes. ... populations of mosquitoes can be changed from vectors of deadly pathogens to merely annoying pests. ...

'Jumping genes' could make for safer gene delivery system

... lot with it, and it is safer. Problems with viral vectors are extremely rare, but the consequences can be ... risk." Techniques for targeting transposon vectors to regions of the genome devoid of cancer genes ... to be worked out in the development of transposon vectors before they could be tried in human therapy. But ...

Protein analysis methods, viral vectors featured in Cold Spring Harbor Protocols

... complexes. An additional featured article details the generation of viral vectors for gene transfer. "Systematic Monitoring of Protein Complex ... can infect post-mitotic cells, which makes them particularly useful as vectors for gene delivery into cells like neurons. In the May issue of Cold ...

Moving gene therapy forward with mobile DNA

... ultimately depends on these gene delivery vehicles or vectors. Most vectors have been derived from virusses that can be tailor-made to deliver therapeutic genes into the patients' cells. However, some of these viral vectors can induce side-effects, including cancer and inflammation. Marinee ...

New paradigm for cell-specific gene delivery

... Thus, this work establishes the control of nuclear entry of gene therapy vectors as a novel approach to target genes and gene expression to desired cell ... just that". The goal of the team is to design more effective gene therapy vectors for use in the vasculature by understanding the molecular mechanisms by ...

Screw worm outbreak in Yemen

... Technique needs to be assessed to fight pest diseases. As increasingly vectors spread to new locations, brought about by global trade and climate change. ... quite a dangerous and frightening development change. Agricultural pests, vectors of insect diseases, are invading into areas where they were not reported ...

NASA technology helps predict and prevent future pandemic outbreaks

... areas, but also provides information about possible plague-carrying vectors -- such as insects or rodents -- globally and within the U.S. The Four ... the area, scientists can predict the food supply of disease transmitting vectors within the region and the threat they cause to humans. Because plague is ...

Penn Veterinary Medicine report new strategy to create genetically-modified animals

... induced cryptorchid donor testes that were then exposed in vitro to AAV vectors carrying a green fluorescent protein transgene and transplanted to germ ... with developmental abnormalities. The use of retroviral or lentiviral vectors has been reported in rodents, but it requires that animals be handled and ...

Carbon nanoparticles toxic to adult fruit flies but benign to young

... carbon on their bodies from one test tube into another and deposited some of the particles in the clean tube. That test showed how insects could be vectors for transporting nanomaterials, Rand said. While two generations of fruit fly larvae showed no ill effects from eating carbon nanoparticles, the ...

Chasing tiny vehicles

... in gene therapy soon, which has seen more than its fair share of setbacks. After all, lacking most are functional transporters." Such vehicles or vectors have been developed mainly from viruses until now. But even deactivated viruses can sometimes trigger unwanted side-effects. Nanoferries, on the ...

Amarna Therapeutics B.V. and TNO announce SVac research and development partnership

... unmet needs. About SVac Our SVac viral gene delivery vector platform has a number of unique properties compared to other viral gene delivery vectors such as lentiviral, poxviral, alphaviral, adenoviral and adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector systems. SVac is non-immunogenic in humans, highly ...

NAU discovery could help feed millions

... the method a cost-effective way to avoid surgical spaying, there's a global impact to canine management most people don't realize. "Dogs are huge vectors of disease throughout the world," she said. "In India, every two seconds someone is bitten by a dog. The tragedy is that every 30 minutes someone ...

Diuscovery in amber reveals ancient biology of termites

... George Poinar, an Oregon State University researcher and international expert on life forms found in amber. It was just published in Parasites and vectors , a professional journal. This particular termite was probably flying around while mating in a wet, humid tropical forest in what is now Myanmar ...

Open access research celebrated

... outcome for patients with severe head injuries. This year, three new awards were introduced: Editor of the Year - Chris Arme, Parasites & vectors Case Report of the Year Derek Rajakumar, University of Saskatchewan Mycobacterium tuberculosis monoarthritis in a child Rajakumar D, ...

Field stations foster serendipitous discoveries in environmental, biological sciences

... field stations provide the infrastructure, staff, and staying power to understand the life cycles and ecology of invasive or emerging disease vectors and pathogens." In the Hantavirus example, long-term rodent studies were conducted for several years for a different purpose, yet provided data ...

Flies may spread drug-resistant bacteria from poultry operations

... poultry products and the environment surrounding confined poultry operations, as well as releases from poultry transport. "Flies are well-known vectors of disease and have been implicated in the spread of various viral and bacterial infections affecting humans, including enteric fever, cholera, ...

Researchers examine role of climate change in disease spread

... have contributed to that. If average temperatures increase in certain regions of the world as predicted by some experts, then species of arthropod vectors may disperse beyond their current geographic boundaries, and we need to be ready for the possibility that similar outbreaks could occur." ...

Cold Spring Harbor Protocols features stem cell differentiation, plant RNAi methods

... robust results. "Virus-Induced Gene Silencing as a Tool for Delivery of dsRNA into Plants" outlines a simple procedure for introducing TRV-based vectors into commonly studied plants such as Arabidopsis and tomato. This method is freely accessible on the website for Cold Spring Harbor Protocols ( ...

Common soil mineral degrades the nearly indestructible prion

... Prion reservoirs in the soil, Pedersen explains, are likely critical links in the chain of infection because the agent does not appear to depend on vectors intermediate organisms like mosquitoes or ticks to spread from animal to animal. That the birnessite family of minerals possessed the capacity to ...

Avian flu becoming more resistant to antiviral drugs, says University of Colorado study

... Wilson, Farhat Habib of Kansas State University and Daniel Janies of Ohio State University. "As these adamantanes have gotten into nonhuman vectors like birds, the positive selection for resistance to avian flu is rising," said Hill. "If Tamiflu is ever used in the manner of adamantanes, we could ...

Salk researchers develop novel glioblastoma mouse model

... Dinorah Friedmann-Morvinski. To sidestep the shortcomings of currently used cancer models, the Salk team harnessed the power of lentiviral vectors to infect nondividing as well as dividing cells and ferry activated oncogenes into a small number of cells in adult, fully immunocompetent mice. ...

Studies on imaging and tracking transplanted cells

... monitoring the effectiveness of transplanted cells to engraft and repopulate the recipient liver. Using double or triple fusion lentiviral vectors in a mouse model transplanted with immortalized fetal hepatocytes, the researchers for the first time imaged in vivo human hepatic progenitor cells ...

UC Davis researchers exploring gene therapy to fight AIDS

... Joseph Anderson have developed several anti-HIV genes that they plan to insert into IPS cells using standard gene-therapy techniques and viral vectors (viruses that efficiently insert the genes they carry into host cells). These engineered IPS cells could then be differentiated into bone marrow stem ...

Scientists discover 21st century plague

... several different Bartonella bacteria are surely transmitted by rodents. These results raise concerns about the existence of other reservoirs and vectors for this emerging infection. This certainly warrants further investigation." ...

11,000 alien species invade Europe

... health and economy. Why do we need the information? Alien species may have a profound impact on the environment and society as they can act as vectors for new diseases, alter ecosystem processes, change biodiversity, disrupt cultural landscapes, reduce the value of land and water for human ...

New gene-silencing pathway found in plants

... his colleagues' work may have important implications for applied medical research. For instance, gene therapy procedures sometimes use retroviral vectors as a way of introducing a foreign gene to replace a function impaired by disease. Often this foreign gene, called a transgene, restores the missing ...

Innovations in Pediatric Medicine International Conference brings together pediatrics experts

... treat other genetic diseases of blood cells. One challenge is the viral vector used to introduce the gene has been linked to cancer. In response, new vectors are being designed. Dr. Gary Fleisher of the Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School will present a framework for planning for ...

MIT creates tiny backpacks for cells

... sites, and lymphoid tissues a trait that could be exploited to achieve targeted drug or vaccine delivery. "The idea is that we use cells as vectors to carry materials to tumors, infection sites or other tissue sites," said Darrell Irvine, an author of the paper and associate professor of ...

Salk researchers successfully reprogram keratinocytes attached to a single hair

... first set of experiments, first author Trond Aasen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, used viral vectors to slip the genes for the master regulators Oct4, Sox2, as well as Klf4 and c-Myc into keratinocytes cultured from human skin explants. After only 10 ...

Yamanaka eliminates viral vector in stem cell reprogramming

... Yamanka's team began this series of experiments by replacing the retrovirus with an adenoviral vector. While transfections with the genes on separate vectors didn't work, they did work when the genes were arranged in a specific order on a single vector. The same arrangement worked when the genes were ...

Cold Spring Harbor Protocols highlights gene silencing, cancer cell biology methods

... COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. Combining the specificity of small interfering RNA (siRNA) silencing with the versatility of lentiviral vectors gives researchers a powerful tool for the investigation of gene function both in vivo and in vitro. This month's issue of Cold Spring Harbor ...

Cancer drug delivery research at Case Western Reserve University cuts time from days to hours

... graduate student Yu Cheng, appearing in the current edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society . The system uses gold nanoparticle vectors to deliver photodynamic therapy (PDT) drugs through the bloodstream to cancerous sites. "Gold nanoparticles are usually not used for the PDT drug ...

Excavated Jericho bones may help Israeli-Palestinian-German team combat tuberculosis

... will come from a comparison between those data for humans and corresponding animal remains which may allow the identification of animal-human vectors and their interaction. How can this research help us today? Preliminary work suggests that there is sufficient DNA in the bone samples to ...

USGS science picks -- leads, feeds and story seeds

... sea otter population have been closely examining. Understanding foraging behavior may prove helpful in pinpointing sea otters' exposure to specific vectors of food-borne diseases. Scientists at the USGS and the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that the diets of individual sea otters vary as a ...

Scientists announce top 10 new species, issue SOS

... upon which life on our planet depends; to establish baseline knowledge of the planets species and their distribution so that non-native pests and vectors of disease may be detected; to inform and enable conservation biology and resource management. Perhaps most compelling is curiosity about the ...

UC Davis stem researchers demonstrate safety of gene therapy using adult stem cells

... stem cells, and can give rise to bone, cartilage, fat, and muscle. Genes were inserted into the hematopoietic stem cells using one of two viral vectors either a retrovirus or a lentivirus before they were transplanted into the mice, along with genetically modified mesenchymal stem cells. Of the ...

Species explorers ask: What's on Your planet?

... Reliable taxonomic information is necessary for managing sustainable ecosystems, attaining conservation goals, and detecting introductions of pests, vectors and invasive species. This fusion of the traditional theories and goals of taxonomy with computer engineering and cyberinfrastructure will create ...

MBL develops infrastructure and portal for Encyclopedia of Life

... large-scale patterns. By aggregating information on Earths estimated 1.8 million known species, scientists say the EOL could, for example, help map vectors of human disease, reveal mysteries behind longevity, suggest substitute plant pollinators for a swelling list of places where honeybees no longer ...