Leprosy microbes lead scientists to immune discovery
...ting" cells, which seize distinctive pieces of the enemy and use them to "educate" and stir up a second immune response, known as "adaptive" immunity. Until now, laboratory dish experiments hadn't revealed that the instantaneous or "innate" immune reaction--discovered less than 10 years ago--is mounted by...Researchers uncover sequence of major rice pathogen
...nome ?or set of all genes ?of the most destructive enemy of rice: Magnaporthe grisea, the fungus that causes rice blast disease. Dr. Ralph Dean, professor of plant pathology and director of North Carolina State University's Center for Integrated Fungal Research, is the lead author of a research paper that...Deliberately spreading disease among the enemy has been occasionally practiced over hundreds of years. But modern bioterrorism is more chilling than ever because of rapidly expanding knowledge about infectious diseases and biotoxins and their potential to wreak havoc in complex, interdependent so...