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Ancient olfaction protein is shared by many bugs, offering new pest control target

In the battle against insect pests, new research indicates that it may all come down to the sense of smell. A group of Rockefeller University scientists who had previously identified a key gene essential for the sense of smell in fruit flies now shows that this gene's function appears to be evolutionarily conserved across very different insect species. Research by Leslie Vosshall's laborat...

Automatic extraction of gene/protein biological functions from biomedical text

With the rapid advancement of biomedical science and the development of high-throughput analysis methods, the extraction of various types of information from biomedical text has become critical. Since automatic functional annotations of genes are quite useful for interpreting large amounts of high-throughput data efficiently, the demand for automatic extraction of information related to gene func...

Decoding the logic of olfaction

Researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have succeeded in mapping the unique patterns of neural activity produced by a wide range of odors, including vanilla, skunk, fish, urine, musk, and chocolate. Revealing these distinct ?but often overlapping ?patterns of neural activity represents a significant step in understanding how the brain translates complex signals from odorant receptor...

Virus-host interactions at sea effect global photosynthesis

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that it has for the first time released the chip design, probe sequence and annotation information for all of its microarrays. The release of this information is expected to improve cross-laboratory experimental research and cross-platform data comparison. "Full release of the probe sequences is an admirable and responsible position for A...

Future diabetes drugs may target new protein interaction

In the March 3 issue of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers report that two proteins best known for very different activities actually come together to turn the liver into a sugar-producing factory when food is scarce. Because the liver's production of sugar is a damaging problem in people with diabetes, the proteins' interaction might be a target for future drugs to fight the disease, the research...

Computational verification of protein-protein interactions by orthologous co-expression

In the March 3 issue of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers report that two proteins best known for very different activities actually come together to turn the liver into a sugar-producing factory when food is scarce. Because the liver's production of sugar is a damaging problem in people with diabetes, the proteins' interaction might be a target for future drugs to fight the disease, the research...

Building a protein name dictionary from full text: a machine learning term extraction approach

The majority of information in the biological literature resides in full text articles, instead of abstracts. Yet, abstracts remain the focus of many publicly available literature data mining tools. Most literature mining tools rely on pre-existing lexicons of biological names, often extracted from curated gene or protein databases. This is a limitation, because such databases have low coverage o...

Discovery of New Dopamine Action May Yield Alternative Psychiatric Drugs

Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered a new mechanism by which chronically high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine exert their effects on the brain. Normally associated with triggering feelings of pleasure, excess concentrations of dopamine underlie schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other psychiatric conditions. The findings therefore provide ne...

Small worm yields big clue on muscle receptor action

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified an elusive subunit of a neurotransmitter receptor found in both humans and the much-studied laboratory nematode C. elegans which may open new pathways of research on muscle function. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine binds to two different nicotinic receptors at the nematode's neuromuscular junctions, causing them to con...

Confirmation of human protein interaction data by human expression data

As the brain develops, neurons reach out helter-skelter forming new connections, only a small number of which take hold. How the brain chooses which connections to keep and which to prune back appears to be governed by which branches have the most electrical activity—a finding that could help to explain how early experiences guide brain development. The work, published in the April 21 issu...

USC researchers determine mechanism of action of chemotherapy drug

The chemotherapy drug motexafin gadolinium (brand name: Xcytrin, manufactured by Pharmacyclics, Inc.) works to thwart cancer cells by disrupting key enzymes involved in cellular metabolism, according to a team of researchers led by Joseph Hacia, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. The cell...

Science's Breakthrough of the Year: Watching evolution in action

Evolution has been the foundation and guiding theory of biology since Darwin gave the theory its proper scientific debut in 1859. But Darwin probably never dreamed that researchers in 2005 would still be uncovering new details about the nuts and bolts of his theory -- how does evolution actually work in the world of influenza genes and chimpanzee genes and stickleback fish armor? Studies that fol...

Scientists take 'snapshots' of enzyme action

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, the New York Structural Biology Center, and SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have determined the atomic crystal structure and functional mechanism of an enzyme essential for eliminating unwanted, non-nutritional compounds such as drugs, industrial chemicals, and toxic compounds from the body. The detailed mechanism of action...

Endocannabinoids ?the brain's cannabis ?demonstrate novel modes of action to stress

Three separate research team reports ?one from Louisiana, one from Japan and one from Scotland ?are presenting independent research results pointing to involvement of endocannabinoids as a novel neural messenger in various stress-related situations with possible applications in eating, disease treatment and social behavior. The team from...

Physical and functional interaction of key cell growth molecules linked to cancer

Scientists have uncovered new information about a specific mechanism involved in the biology of malignant human tumor cells. The findings, published in the June issue of Cancer Cell, significantly advance knowledge about epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). EGFR is a well-studied cell surface receptor that stimulates cell growth by transmitting growth factor signals acting outside the...

Leading scientists rank endangered dolphins, porpoises most in need of immediate action

Leading marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that will most likely benefit from immediate action and will cont...

Complex gene interactions account for autism risk

Using a novel analysis of the interactions among related genes, Duke University Medical Center researchers have uncovered some of the first evidence that complex genetic interactions account for autism risk. The Duke team found that the brain mechanism that normally stops or slows nerve impulses contributes to the disease. The team's findings implicate the so-called GABA receptor genes, wh...

Seafloor creatures destroyed by ice action during ice ages

The ice ages made massive changes to the Earth's landscape In the past it has been thought that these...

Image of myosin-actin interaction revealed in cover story of Molecular Cell

Scientists from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of Vermont have captured the first 3-dimensional (3D) atomic-resolution images of the motor protein myosin V as it "walks" along other proteins, revealing new structural insights that advance the current model of protein motility and muscle contraction. The culmination of four years of work, this collaboration among bi...

Langerhans cells regulate immune reactions in the skin

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have demonstrated that Langerhans cells in the skin, which had been thought to alert the immune system to pathogens, instead dampen the skin's reaction to infection and inflammation. Dendritic...

Serious adverse reactions to smallpox vaccine appear to be limited

There was a low rate of life-threatening adverse reactions to the smallpox vaccine administered to potential first responders to a bioterrorism incident, possibly attributable to rigorous vaccine safety screening and educational programs, according to a study in the December 7 issue of JAMA. Routine childhood immunization against smallpox in the United States ceased in 1971, according to b...

A real time look at interactions between RNA and proteins

For the first time, researchers can now peer inside intact cells to not only identify RNA-binding proteins, but also observe–in real-time–the intricate activities of these special molecules that make them key players in managing some of the cell's most basic functions. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who developed the new technology see this advance as one of the...

'Nano-keys' bind cell receptors and trigger allergic reactions

The tumblers of life continue to click as Cornell University researchers have fabricated a set of "nano-keys" on the molecular scale to interact with receptors on cell membranes and trigger larger-scale responses within cells -- such as the release of histamines in an allergic response. How cell membranes control cellular function has long been studied but with ambiguous results. However,...

U of MN researchers develop way to visualize synchronized interactions of nerve cells in the brain

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have discovered a new way to assess how brain networks act together. Work funded by the MIND Institute (New Mexico) led Apostolos P. Georgopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry, and collaborators to a novel way to assess the dyna...

Biologists visualize protein interaction that may initiate viral infection

Biologists at Purdue University have taken a "snapshot" of a Velcro-like protein on a cell's surface just after it attached to the dengue virus, a linkup thought to initiate the early stages of infection. During the earliest stages o...

Biologists develop genome-wide map of miRNA-mRNA interactions

Researchers at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics and the University of California, Berkeley have used computational analyses to predict a genome-wide map of microRNA (miRNA) targets in the animal model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). MicroRNAs bind to messenger RNA (mRNA) in a specific section, called 3'UTR, and are known to regulate them. Parts of th...

Understanding the actions of others requires the frontal cortex

By stimulating the frontal cortex in adults, researchers have shown that this part of the brain is essential for understanding other people's actions. It has been known for over 100 years that if a person suffers a stroke in the left frontal cortex, he or she often suffers difficulties in speaking and with understanding language. However, because of these language impairments, it has been...

Man's best friend: Study shows lonely seniors prefer playtime with pooch over human interaction

A new Saint Louis University study shows there is some truth in the old cliché that describes a dog as "man's best friend." Nursing...

APS lecturer shows rare video of 'teacher-student' immune cell interactions in live animal

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. But these pictures could one day be worth much more -- the lives saved by the development of new vaccines. Harvard University researcher Ulrich H. von Andrian showed the immune system of a live mouse being challenged by a foreign microbe during a presentation at Experimental Biology 2006. The footage gave many of the physiologists i...

Indonesia - disaster relief aid in action

ISN's immediate response to this latest quake - to strike the Indonesian island of Java - was to call once again on its Renal Disaster Task Force (RDRTF). Under the leadership of Dr. Raymond Vanholder, the Task Force acted rapidly by sending two scouts to join a team from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The two Task Force members Dr. Arjan van der Tol, Nephrologist, (who also participated...

Small molecule interactions were central to the origin of life

In an important new paper forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, Robert Shapiro (New York University) argues against the widely held theory that the origin of life began with the spontaneous appearance of a large, replicating molecule such as RNA. Instead, Shapiro raises an alternative that does not depend on a "stupendously improbable accident," presenting the more pl...

Brain-computer link lets paralyzed patients convert thoughts into actions

A multi-institutional team of researchers has found that people with long-standing, severe paralysis can generate signals in the area of the brain responsible for voluntary movement and these signals can be detected, recorded, routed out of the brain to a computer and converted into actions -- enabling a paralyzed patient to perform basic tasks. In the 13 July 2006 issue of Nature, the r...

Electric fish in Africa could be example of evolution in action

Avoiding quicksand along the banks of the Ivindo River in Gabon, Cornell neurobiologists armed with oscilloscopes search for shapes and patterns of electricity created by fish in the water. They know from their previous research that the various groups of local electric fish have different DNA, different communication patterns and won't mate with each other. However, they now have found a...

A splice of the action: Translational role for WT1 isoform

In the June 15th issue of G&D, Dr. Marie-Louise Hammarskjold (UVA) and colleagues lend new insight into the function of the Wilms' Tumor 1 tumor suppressor. The Wilms' Tumor 1 (WT1) protein is important to both normal and pathological human development, with known roles in kidney and urogenital formation as well as several human cancers. Dr. Hammarskjold and colleagues reveal that WT1...

Gut reaction: Researchers define the colon's genome

For the first time, scientists have defined the collective genome of the human gut, or colon. Up to 100 trillion microbes, representing more than 1,000 species, make up a motley "microbiome" that allows humans to digest much of what we eat, including some vitamins, sugars, and fiber. , scientists at The Institute for Genomic Resear...

Researchers use multiphoton microscopy to watch chromosomes in action

Feverish fruit fly larvae, warmed in a toasty lab chamber, are giving Cornell researchers a way to watch chromosomes in action and actually see how genes are expressed in living tissue. Using multiphoton fluorescence microscopy, a technique pioneered at Cornell by physicist Watt W. Webb, researchers have for the first time been able to watch chromosomes change their form in order to activa...

Pilot study successful in taming allergic reactions to food

Children who were allergic to eggs were able to essentially overcome their allergy by gradually consuming increased quantities of eggs over time, researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have found in a small pilot study. “Participants who took a daily dose of egg product over the two-year study period were able to build up their bo...

Mirrors in the mind: New studies elucidate how the brain reflects onto itself the actions of others

In three new independent studies, researchers have deepened our understanding of the remarkable ability of some specialized areas of the brain to activate both in response to one's own actions and in response to sensory cues (such as sight) of the same actions perpetrated by another individual. This ability is thought to be based in the activity of so-called mirror neurons, which have been hypoth...

Single molecular 'mark' seen as pivotal for genome compaction in spores and sperm

In higher order animals, genetic information is passed from parents to offspring via sperm or eggs, also known as gametes. In some single-celled organisms, such as yeast, the genes can be passed to the next generation in spores. In both reproductive strategies, major physical changes occur in the genetic material after it has been duplicated and then halved on the way to the production of mature...

Novel mechanism of action of new drug for MS identified

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have identified a unique mechanism of action of a new drug that shows great promise for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The researchers report the unique action of FTY720, or Fingolimod, an immunosuppressant drug that was already known to affect the functioning of the immune system by preventing the egress of white blood cells from the lymp...