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Tag: "toxin" at biology news

Antibiotic Resistant Bacterium Uses Sonar-like Strategy to “See?Enemies or Prey

...g explains howsome bacteria know when to produce a toxin that makes infection moresevere. It may lead to the design of new toxin inhibitors. “Blocking orinterfering with a bacterium’s “detection?mechanism, should preventtoxin pro...

Spider Venom Could Yield Eco-Friendly Insecticides

...strategy is to insert a gene for encoding a spider toxin into viruses that are specific to a particular insect genus, or even a small number of species within a genus. The toxin-enhanced virus would act like a magic insecticide bullet, targeting only cotton bollworms, for example, and leaving bees and othe...

UCSD discovery may help extend life of natural pesticide

...ecific sugar structures are likely critical for Bt toxin susceptibility," said Joel Griffitts, the first au...ugars actually do. They provide a receptor for the toxin that allows the toxin to recognize its "victim"--a roundworm or an insect. This paper also brings us...

Sequencing of marine bacterium will help study of cell communication

..., V. fischer's genome contains genes that may have toxin activity. "Analysis of this sequence has revealed ...tes bacterial processes that include antibiotic or toxin production, biofilm formation, and bioluminescence. One of the longest studied models of quorum sens...

Multiple Campylobacter Genomes Sequenced

...terial virulence, such as adherence, motility, and toxin formation, are all detailed by Fouts et al., who also describe a new putative Campylobacter virulence locus. Further work is needed to relate these genomic differences to functional differences, but this detailed comparative genomic analysis provides...

Researchers uncover sequence of major rice pathogen

... of what types of genes are involved in making the toxin molecules," he says. Some of these genes reside in clusters, Dean says, so one focus will be to take apart the clusters and learn more about toxins and their production. "The primary mission is to uncover the organism's weaknesses. You do that by b...

Brain-injury rehabilitation depends on acetylcholine circuitry

...orepaws. In one group of animals, they then used a toxin to specifically eliminate cholinergic nerves connecting to the motor and sensory regions of the animals' cortex. The other control group received a sham injection. The researchers then used electrical probes to create small lesions in the rats' brain...

Protein prevents detrimental immune effects of bacterial sepsis

...cing act by analyzing the effects of the bacterial toxin LPS on normal and annexin 1 knockout mice. Annexin...ay were activated in the first few hours following toxin administration. In fact, when annexin 1 knockout mice were given small doses of human recombinant an...

Researchers develop assay that could be applied to drug screening

... and that disturbing actin polymerization with the toxin latrunculin B, a toxin found in Red Sea sponge, drastically reduces the efficiency of membrane scission and affects many as...

At the molecular level, the predator is the prey

...Utah present evidence in this week's Nature that a toxin produced by the rough skinned newt, Taricha granul...TX to bind successfully to the sodium channel, the toxin needs something to bind to. At this moment in the garter snake's evolutionary history, TTX infiltrat...

Mutation in clams protects against paralytic shellfish poisoning but raises human health risk

...- to saxitoxin as well as tetrodotoxin, a powerful toxin derived from the puffer fish. The lead author is ...d research in the 1960s and 1970s showing that PSP toxin resistance varies among shellfish species. In laboratory studies, the investigators exposed clams t...

Venom doc tracks down snake bioweapons

... Unit, identified the origin of the 24 known snake toxin types. Surprisingly, rather than being saliva-modi...expressed in ancient reptile saliva. Both of these toxin types, CRISP and kallikrein, are closely related to toxins called helothermine and gilatoxin, which ...

Community MRSA is re-emergence of 1950s pandemic, study suggests

...g years. "The community acquired MRSA clone has a toxin and other traits with a proven track record for causing serious diseases in healthier and younger age groups than those currently regarded as at risk. The increased resistance to antibiotics of the community acquired MRSA clone over its 80/81 ancesto...

Critical step traced in anthrax infection

...aled details of a key step in the entry of anthrax toxin into human cells. The work, which grew out of an o... the protective antigen component of the bacterial toxin plays an active role in transferring the other two components of the toxin through the cell membrane...

Evolution of taste receptor may have shaped human sensitivity to toxic compounds

...orts a pivotal role for bitter-taste perception in toxin avoidance in humans, an attribute that could have come into particular play during periods of expansion into new environments. More broadly, the work contributes to the debate on the mechanisms governing the evolution of chemical sensory perception a...

Insects develop resistance to engineered crops

...ce resulted from farmers and gardeners spraying Bt toxin on plants for insect control, a long-standing practice. While Bt toxin sprayed on leaves quickly degrades in sunlight and often does not reach the insect, genetically modi...

Tetanus toxin found to have therapeutic properties

...ve disorders such as Parkinson's disease. Tetanus toxin is a neurotoxin belonging to the same family as bo...also be possible to use sublethal doses of tetanus toxin and molecules derived from tetanus toxin for therapeutic purposes. The results have been obtained in...

Molecular miners find pain relief drugs from the sea

...umans this month to firstly test the safety of the toxin in normal males, and later its effectiveness in tr...stitute, Associate Professor Bruce Livett says the toxin ?called ACV1 ?also has potential for treating a range of other painful conditions, such as multiple ...

Ants, not evil spirits, create devil's gardens in the Amazon rainforest, study finds

...duced by the ants' poison glands is formic acid, a toxin that is common in many ant species and, in fact, got its name from formica, which is Latin for ant. "Treatment of leaves with formic acid induced leaf necrosis on all the plants we tested," the authors write. "To our knowledge this is the first recor...

Drugs from the deep blue

...t of Western Australia. Phorboxazole A is a potent toxin that in the laboratory, can inhibit the growth of a wide range of tumor cell types even at very low concentrations. It appears to block cancer cells from dividing at a different, earlier step than that targeted by other clinically important anticance...

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