Animals

Plants, animals share molecular growth mechanisms

A newly discovered plant protein complex that apparently switches on plants' growth machinery, has opened a scientific toolbox to learn about both plant and animal development, according Purdue University scientists. The protein complex triggers communication between molecules along a pathway that leads to the creation of long protein strings, called actin filaments, that are necessary fo...

Elephants imitate truck noises, other animals

Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today's Nature, further supports the idea that vocal learning is important for maintaining individual social relationships among animals that separate and reunite over time, like dolphins and whales, some bi...

Gene Therapy For Parkinson's Disease Moves Forward In Animals

An international team of scientists has used gene therapy in two separate studies to renew brain cells and restore normal movements in monkeys and rats with a drug-induced form of Parkinson's disease. The research, detailed online in the scientific publications Brain and The Journal of Neuroscience, essentially describes one strategy to halt Parkinson's disease at its onset and another st...

Carnegie Mellon scientists develop tool that uses MRI to visualize gene expression in living animals

In a first, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have "programmed" cells to make their own contrast agents, enabling unprecedented high-resolution, deep-tissue imaging of gene expression. The results, appearing in the April issue of Nature Medicine, hold considerable promise for conducting preclinical studies in the emerging field of molecular therapeutics and for monitoring the delivery of ther...

Gene therapy for Parkinson's disease moves forward in animals

An international team of scientists has used gene therapy in two separate studies to renew brain cells and restore normal movements in monkeys and rats with a drug-induced form of Parkinson's disease. The research, detailed online in the scientific publications Brain and The Journal of Neuroscience, essentially describes one strategy to halt Parkinson's disease at its onset and another st...

Use of PET can reduce, may eliminate more strenuous drug development trials with animals

A number of articles explore the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and small animal imaging--nonsurgical techniques that open the door to understanding and treating human diseases--in the April issue of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. A major benefit of small animal imaging "is the ability to carry out many studies at various time points with the same...

Undesirable expatriates: Preventing the spread of invasive animals

Reconsider relocating aquarium fish into your backyard pond. Restrain yourself from ordering exotic pets off the Internet, no matter how interesting they might look in the pictures. And vote for politicians that encourage sound port inspection. Because, according to recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article by Drs. Jonathan M. Jeschke and David L. Strayer, our best defense in...

Two new retroviruses—transmitted from animals—identified

For patients with cancer of the mouth and throat, surgery is a frequent course of treatment, often leading to speech and swallowing dysfunction and external scarring. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, have completed two studies ?the most comprehensive and largest to date ?that demonstrate the effective use...

Stem cell therapy successfully treats heart attack in animals

Final results of a study conducted at Johns Hopkins show that stem cell therapy can be used effectively to treat heart attacks, or myocardial infarction, in pigs. In just two months, stem cells harvested from another pig's bone marrow and injected into the animal's damaged heart restored heart function and repaired damaged heart muscle by 50 percent to 75 percent. The Hopkins findings, fir...

More animals join the learning circle

Killer whales and chimpanzees both pass on "traditions" to other members of their group, according to two separate studies of feeding behaviour. The findings add to evidence that cultural learning is widespread among animals. One study involved killerwhales at Marineland in Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. An inventive male devised a brand new way to catch birds, and passed the strategy...

Experimental vaccine protects lab animals against several strains of H5N1

Nations are preparing to stockpile vaccines against H5N1, the strain of influenza virus that experts fear could cause the next flu pandemic. But will these vaccines remain effective as the virus mutates? Researchers present good news in the July 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Elena Govorkova, MD, PhD, Robert G. Webster, PhD, and coworkers at St. Jude...

Proposal would allow wild animals to roam North America

If Cornell University researchers and their colleagues have their way, cheetahs, lions, elephants, camels and other large wild animals may soon roam parts of North America. "If we only have 10 minutes to present this idea, people think we're nuts," said Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell. "But if people hear the one-hour version, they realize they haven...

Research suggests fitness of Florida panthers improved by limited breeding with Texas animals

The number of living Florida panthers has grown from a previously estimated 30 to a recently counted 87 as a result of a controversial breeding effort to improve the genetic health of the endangered and inbred animals, according to a new assessment. Hybrid kittens born to panthers brought into the area from Texas have "about a three times higher chance of becoming adults as do purebred one...

Genetically engineered animals help in scientific research that may benefit children

The recent use of genetically modified mice and rats in combination with an animal model of obstructive nephropathy, a type of renal disease, has given researchers new insight in the development of kidney disease. This research is published in the September issue of Kidney International. "Chronic kidney disease is difficult to study since it takes a fair amount of time to install," states...

Scientists use gene transfer technology and common virus to block neuropathic pain in animals

Remember how it felt the last time you burned your finger on a hot stove? Imagine what it's like to have that burning pain in your hands or feet all the time and know there's virtually nothing you can do about it. David Fink, M.D.It's called neuropathic pain, and it's a common complication of many diseases and medical conditions, especially diabetes. Drugs have little effect on this type...

Scientists get first glimpse at how plants, most animals repair UV-damaged DNA

For the first time, researchers have observed exactly how some cells are able to repair DNA damage caused by the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This enzyme is missing in all mammals, including humans, although all plants and all other animals have it. Greater un...

The earliest animals had human-like genes

Species evolve at very different rates, and the evolutionary line that produced humans seems to be among the slowest. The result, according to a new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is that our species has retained characteristics of a very ancient ancestor that have been lost in more quickly-evolving animals. This overturns a commonly-held view of the natu...

Embryos tell story of Earth's earliest animals

Much of what scientists learn about the evolution of Earth's first animals will have to be gleaned from spherical embryos fossilized under very specific conditions, according to a new study by Indiana University Bloomington and University of Bristol researchers in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Purported animal embryo fossils have been reported continuously o...

High-tech tags on marine animals yield valuable data for biologists and oceanographers

Researchers are enlisting seals, sea lions, tunas, and sharks to serve as ocean sensors, outfitting these top predators with electronic tags that gather detailed reports on oceanographic conditions and, in many cases, transmit the data via satellite. The data are proving useful to both biologists and oceanographers, yielding new information about the migrations and behavior of the animals and abo...

Study finds evolution doesn't always favor bigger animals

Biologists have long believed that bigger is better when it comes to body size, since many lineages of animals, from horses to dinosaurs, have evolved into larger species over time. But a study published this week by two biologists at the University of California, San Diego in an early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that maxim, known as "Cop...

Animals can change genes quickly to keep up with viral ingenuity

Viruses are famous for evolving quickly, but the organisms they infect can't be expected to sit idly by. There is now new evidence that animals in fact do an impressive job of keeping up in the ongoing evolutionary arms race between viruses and their hosts. Studying a special class of genes thought to have evolved in part as a defense system against viruses, researchers have found evidence that t...

Oh, rats! Designer animals reveal possible heart disease genes

Every year, heart disease claims an estimated 7 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists have struggled to pinpoint the precise genes behind this complex disease. Now, however, they have a new research ally: the designer rat. , researchers at The Institute for...

Less antibiotic use in food animals leads to less drug resistance in people, study shows

Australia's policy of restricting antibiotic use in food-producing animals may be linked with lower levels of drug-resistant bacteria found in its citizens, according to an article in the May 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Campylobacter jejuni is a leading bacterial cause of foodborne illness in industrialized countries. Drug resistance can make Campylobac...

First demonstration of 'teaching' in non-human animals

Certain species of ant use a technique known as 'tandem running' to lead another ant from the nest to a food source. Signals between the two ants control both the speed and course of the run. It is believed to be the first time a demonstration of 'formal' teaching has been recognised in any non-human animal. This behaviour indicates that it could be the value of information, rather than th...

What animals can tell us about hemorrhage, organ transplants and aging

The stereotype of a scientist as a man in a white lab coat hunched over a microscope in a laboratory is far from real life. Consider the scientists who will meet at The American Physiological Society's conference, Comparative Physiology 2006: Integrating Diversity, taking place October 8-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. They spend time in the mountains studying bears, animals that...

Fruit fly aggression studies have relevance to humans, animals

Even the tiny, mild-mannered fruit fly can be a little mean sometimes ?especially when there's a choice bit of rotten fruit to fight over. And, like people, some flies have shorter tempers than others. Researchers in the North Carolina Sate University genetics department have identified a suite of genes that affect aggression in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, pointing to new mecha...

Gene therapy inhibits epilepsy in animals

For the first time, researchers have inhibited the development of epilepsy after a brain insult in animals. By using gene therapy to modify signaling pathways in the brain, neurology researchers found that they could significantly reduce the development of epileptic seizures in rats. "We have shown that there is a window to intervene after a brain insult to reduce the risk that epilepsy w...

Why do cold animals make bigger babies?

Reproduction involves a critical decision: Should an organism invest energy in a few large offspring or many small ones? In a new study from The American Naturalist, Michael Angilletta (Indiana State University), Chris Oufiero (University of California, Riverside), and Adam Leaché (University of California, Berkeley) used a new statistical approach that can test multiple theories at the same time...

Living view in animals shows how cells decide to make proteins

Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have visualized in a living animal how cells use a critical biological process to dice and splice genetic material to create unique and varied proteins. The scientists say the findings, made in mice, help explain a key wonder of human biology: how the same genes found in every cell of an individual’s body can produce different proteins in differ...

Microbes compete with animals for food by making it stink

Microbes may compete with large animal scavengers by producing repugnant chemicals that deter higher species from consuming valuable food resources -- such as decaying meat, seeds and fruit, a new study suggests. Ecologists have long recognized microbes as decomposers and pathogens in ecological communities. But their role as classic consumers who produce chemicals to compete with larger...

Antarctic warming to reduce animals at base of ecosystem, shift some penguin populations southward

The warming most global climate models predict will do more harm than simply raise the sea levels that most observers fear. It will make drastic changes in fragile ecosystems throughout the world, especially in the Antarctic. A warming trend during the last few decades in the Antarctic Peninsula has already forced penguin populations to migrate south and perhaps diminished the abundance o...

Scientists find method to pick noncompetitive animals, improve production

A new statistical method of determining genetic traits that influence social interactions among animals may provide for more productive livestock. Scientists from Purdue University, the Netherlands and England designed mathematical equations based on traits to choose animals that are more congenial in groups, said William Muir, a Purdue Department of Animal Sciences geneticist. The new me...

New compound prevents alcoholic behavior, relapse in animals by blocking stress response

A study of alcohol-dependent animals shows that a newly discovered compound that blocks chemical signals active during the brain’s response to stress effectively stops excessive drinking and prevents relapse. The new, synthetic compound, known as MTIP, also muted the anxiety that typically develops in rats experiencing the equivalent of a hangover. Such stress is linked with higher levels...

Hexavalent chromium in drinking water causes cancer in lab animals

Researchers announced today that there is strong evidence a chemical referred to as hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, causes cancer in laboratory animals when it is consumed in drinking water. The two-year study conducted by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) shows that animals given hexavalent chromium developed malignant tumors. "Previous studies have shown that hexavalent chromiu...

Global survey of lizards reveals greater abundance of animals on islands than on mainland ecosystems

A comprehensive survey of lizards on islands around the world has confirmed what island biologists and seafaring explorers have long observed: Animals on islands are much more abundant than their counterparts on the mainland. Besides confirming that longstanding observation, the study signals an alarm for island populations in a rapidly warming world. It suggests that climate change may ha...

Massive herds of animals found to still exist in Southern Sudan

Aerial surveys by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society confirm the existence of more than 1.2 million white-eared kob, tiang antelope and Mongalla gazelle in Southern Sudan, where wildlife was thought to have vanished as a result of decades-long conflict. Despite the war, some species of wildlife in Southern Sudan, last surveyed more than 25 years ago, have not only survived but ha...