Tag: "mold" at biology news

Early exposure to indoor fungus molecules may protect infants against future allergies

...ut the home, including the presence of any visible mold and water damage. Environmental and food allergy development was monitored through annual skin prick tests. Scientists say early-life exposure to common microbial components—like bacterial endotoxins and fungal glucans—can stimulate the body’s imm...

Nanotechnology meets biology and DNA finds its groove

...of computer chips, the Wisconsin team fabricated a mold for making a rubber template with slits narrow enough to confine single strands of elongated DNA. The new technique is akin to threading a microscopic needle with a thread of DNA, explains Juan de Pablo, a UW-Madison professor of biomedical engine...

Mailman School of Public Health researchers report blood DNA can be early predictor of liver cancer

...onmental factors including aflatoxin B1, a dietary mold contaminant sometimes found in peanuts and corn; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, ubiquitous environmental contaminants; and 4-aminobiphenyl, a carcinogen found in cigarette smoke, are also associated with the development of HCC. While HCC incidenc...

Iowa State researchers improving plastics made from corn and soy proteins

...technologies from Trexel Inc. of Woburn, Mass., to mold and extrude the plastics. The processing technology is expected to enhance the biodegradable plastics while allowing the researchers to use less base material to make the plastics. Grewell said the potential applications for plastics from crop pro...

Airborne mold spores increase kids' risk for multiple allergies

...ment. Previous allergy studies focused on visible mold or total mold concentrations, not the identification of specific airborne fungal spores. The UC-led study showed t...

When the going gets tough, slime molds start synthesizing

In times of plenty, the uni-cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum leads a solitary life mun...ade that synthesizes polyketide molecules in slime mold cells. "Nature has paved the way to exploit this novel domain arrangement to bioengineer more eff...

Gene thwarts some pathogens, gives access to others, could save crops

...r similar pathogens, he said. Currently, the gray mold disease caused by Botrytis destroys about 10 perce...fosters the fungus, which is spread by spores. The mold can appear in fields on growing plants and on strawberries, raspberries and other foods stored in th...

UC Berkeley researchers create a biologically-inspired artificial compound eye

...the team first needed to construct a hemispherical mold of the eye's outer layer, a structure consisting o...ocked with some 8,700 indentations: a compound-eye mold that could be used over and over again using soft lithography technology, a set of methods developed...

Breaking the mold: Research teams sequence three fungus genomes

From garden compost to forest greenery, the mold Aspergillus fumigatus lurks across much of the world. And so does its impact. The most common mold causing infection, A. fumigatus triggers allergic reactions, asthma attacks--and even deadly infec...

Virginia Tech football player uses prototype cast

...ample materials to Love, and the class was able to mold prototypes in their engineering laboratories. Then, the university hired a professional orthotist who completed one of the prototypes, and is working on the second. One consists of a bi-directional laminate and the second is composed of a uniaxial la...

Hurricane aftermath: Infectious disease threats from common, not exotic, diseases

...essfully with antibiotics. Over the long term, mold may also pose a threat. Mold growth is an indicat...eed to be done to dry out New Orleans and clean up mold growth. Some environmental molds can cause allergic reactions. ...

Bleach found to neutralize mold allergens

...common household mold, but may also neutralize the mold allergens that cause most mold-related health comp...irst to test the effect on allergic individuals of mold spores treated with common household bleach. "It has long been known that bleach can kill mold. Ho...

New complete muscle grown in the lab

...mixed different cell types together on the plastic mold for the tissue. The different cells quickly organized themselves on the scaffold, with the myoblast cells transforming into aligned and elongated muscle fiber tubes and the endothelial cells organizing themselves in tubes nestled between the myoblast...

Breakthrough: Scientists create world's tiniest organic particles

...e trays with tiny cavities in them. After that, we mold the carrier and fragile functional materials into whatever particles we want and gently wash them off the molds with buffer solutions into vials or other containers to concentrate them. Then they can be injected." DeSimone, his colleagues, UNC and o...

Biologists determine genetic blueprint of social amoeba

...ontain all animals, plants, algae, protozoa, slime mold and fungi) before fungi. Dictyostelium has about 12,000 genes that produce a greater variety of proteins than the approximately 6,000 found in fungi. And its genes are more closely related to human genes than are the genes from fungi. "That really s...

Research on antibiotics receives historical recognition

...observation by Alexander Fleming, who noted that a mold contaminant on a Petri dish culture had inhibited the growth of bacteria. Streptomycin was the third antimicrobial agent isolated under Waksman's direction at Martin Hall at Cook College, Rutgers University. Streptomycin, however, was the first agen...

What's really making you sick? Plant pathologists offer the science behind Sick Building Syndrome

Science-based identification of mold and other causes of Sick Building Syndrome may imp...ce ancient times and it is impossible to eliminate mold from our lives," Skaria said. "However, we now have the technological ability to detect mold growth ...

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