mutate 2 1

Tag: "mutate" at biology news

Mutating the entire genome

A new, fast and inexpensive way to mutate genes and large, non-gene pieces of DNA has been d...ut DNA regulatory sequences between genes also can mutate to cause disease by making the genes they control malfunction. “We know how to knock out genes, ...

Risk of HIV transmission highest early in infection

...ges of infection, before the virus had had time to mutate much. Therefore, early infection—also known as primary infection—which represented “less than 10 percent of the total samples, disproportionately accounted for about half of subsequent transmission events.? A high viral load associated with early ...

UCI scientists reconstruct migration of avian flu virus

... locations, increasing the likelihood that it will mutate into a form that can be transmitted from human to human." Avian flu has been isolated almost exclusively among bird populations. The H5N1 virus has only sporadically been passed on from a bird host to humans; there is little evidence that the viru...

Changes in amino acids in the 1918 influenza virus cut transmission

... been hypothesized that the hemagglutinin needs to mutate and change its binding preference from alpha2-3 to alpha2-6 sialic acids. In this study, the researchers used ferrets as an animal model of human influenza virus infection, due to the presence of alpha2-6 sialic acids in the respiratory tract o...

Scientists find hormone activity explains adolescent mood swings

...at produced the anxiety response, and were able to mutate the site to prevent the novel effect of the stress hormone. In contrast, neither the receptor nor the necessary conditions exist for this anxiety-producing effect of the stress hormone before puberty, because the expression of the receptor is depende...

Bisexual fruit flies show new role for neurochemical

... they pump glutamate out of glia cells. "When we mutate the protein, we get less ambient extracellular glutamate, more glutamate receptors, and so a stronger transfer of messages at synapses," Featherstone said. The gene mutation also made the flies bisexual, leading him to name the gene "genderblind." ...

New protein inhibitor impedes growth of cancerous cells

...se cancer cells are typically fast growing and can mutate to adapt to new growth conditions, effective drug-based therapies will likely succeed in part by impeding multiple functions required for cell division and survival. One particular class of proteins, known as kinases, is known to play especially crit...

Scientists unveil piece of HIV protein that may be key to AIDS vaccine development

...the immune system." For example, not only does HIV mutate rapidly and continuously—defeating attempts by the immune system to identify and destroy it—the virus is also swathed by sugary molecules. This nearly impenetrable sugar cloak prevents antibodies from slipping in and blocking the proteins the virus u...

Scientists unravel clue in cortisol production

...tion of a protein or a gene is to get rid of it or mutate it so that it's not acting normally. Then you compare it with one that is acting normally," said Sewer. In this study, they focused on a protein known as steriodogenic factor 1 (SF-1), which is essential for making all steroid hormones. Researcher...

Turning a cellular sentinel into a cancer killer

...rs. While the researchers caution that cancers can mutate to circumvent p53 reactivation, they believe their...espite p53 expression, indicating that cancers can mutate to deactivate the pathway or circumvent it. Both Lowe and Jacks said they agreed that therapies ai...

A first glimpse of the influenza replication machine

... There is great concern that this virus might also mutate to allow human-to-human transmission and cause another catastrophic pandemic. Specific mutations in a viral protein, the polymerase, contribute to the ability of the bird virus to jump the species barrier to humans. Researchers from the European Mole...

Clue found to Epstein-Barr virus' ability to form and sustain tumors

...onment and Health, designed genetic experiments to mutate various segments of the 640 amino acids that make up the EBNA-1 protein, which is one of about 100 proteins EBV encodes. They then infected human B cells with EBVs carrying various mutant EBNA-1s. The analysis showed that one 25-amino acid segment ...

Powerful genome ID method extended to humans

...ns of extra copies. Cancer genomes, in particular, mutate rapidly and contain frequent abnormalities. "That's something that's very hard to detect" by conventional sequencing, Green said, adding that sequencing can simply miss part of a genome. Optical mapping, by contrast, can estimate the absolute l...

HIV gets a makeover

...duced by a host normally cause invading viruses to mutate so much that they can't survive, but HIV-1 uses a protein called Vif to destroy APOBEC and prevent the attack. Monkey APOBEC proteins, however, aren't susceptible to the human virus's Vif. So Hatziioannou did another swap -- the SIV Vif gene for the ...

Evolution and the workaround

... offer insight into how pathogens and cancer cells mutate to evade the body’s defenses and resist treatment ...f important genes, allowing the original copies to mutate in ways that help the cells survive stresses (such as drugs) that are meant to kill them. The o...

HIV exploits competition among T-cells

...nough to escape initial detection and continues to mutate over time. The third phase, AIDS, occurs when the virus has changed so much that the body's T cells are no longer effective at keeping it in check. Deem and Wang's computer model accurately describes all three phases of HIV infection by incorporati...

USC team reveals structure of APOBEC family protein

...from an enzyme family that, through its ability to mutate genes, can both help and hinder human health. Reporting in the Dec. 24 online edition of Nature, a USC team led by Xiaojiang Chen revealed the "unusual" crystal structure of the Apo2 enzyme. "This three-dimensional structure offers the first me...

St. Jude test of bird flu vaccine proves successful

...ich are "conserved" proteins that generally do not mutate quickly and therefore, are slow to avoid immune re...to infect cells. This variable protein is known to mutate readily, thereby foiling previous immune responses it triggered--whether due to natural exposure or ...

Electric fish in Africa could be example of evolution in action

...om each other. Eventually, genes within each group mutate so that the groups can no longer be considered to be of the same species. Another type of speciation, which many scientists have found harder to imagine, involves animals that live in the same geographic location but, for some reason, begin to mate ...

New bird flu drug promises to beat the problem of resistance

...specific for a part of the virus that is unable to mutate (change), which means it should be impossible for the influenza virus to develop resistance. "Tamiflu and Relenza remain our best lines of defence against a flu pandemic, but we need to be working on better alternatives that do not suffer the same ...

1 2 3