EXCE

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists hasfound the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immunesystem's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a milliondifferent proteins might have originated from a family of genes whoseonly apparent function is to jump around in genetic material. essentially cut...

Antiretroviral therapy may prevent excess risk of some cancers in people with HIV

In people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) may prevent most excess cases of Kaposi sarcoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a new study in the March 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Studies of people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have reported increased risks of several cancers, in...

Scientists discover how plants disarm the toxic effects of excessive sunlight

A newly discovered pathway by which cells protect themselves from a toxic byproduct of photosynthesis may hold important implications for bioenergy sources, human and plant disease, and agricultural yields, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriologists announced Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Plants turn energy from sunlight into bioenergy throug...

Maine Researchers Find Exceptions to Old Rules of Genetic Inheritance

Discoveries by a research team from Maine could help to settle a long-standing debate in genetics. Some genes are seemingly inseparable in nature; they form a haplotype-a set of genes inherited as a unit. Some researchers support the notion that mapping haplotypes may be more significant than mapping the genome. The haplotype map could allow researchers to look for a single variation in t...

Excess liver gene protects against high-fat diet

A gene that senses fat in the liver can modulate the consequences of eating a high-fat, Western diet, new research published in the May issue of Cell Metabolism reveals. Mice with an excess of liver X receptor (LXRa), when fed a diet high in fat, remained free from the high cholesterol and blood vessel plaques exhibited by animals with the normal complement of receptors. Remarkably, in mi...

A bug's life: Exceptional genomic stability yet rapid protein evolution in a carpenter ant mutualist

The recent surge in the number of microbial genome sequences available to the scientific community is allowing researchers to address interesting ecological questions and to observe how various genomic, evolutionary, and ecological forces interact to define an organism's role in the environment. Today, Dr. Jennifer Wernegreen's group from the Marine Biological Laboratory presents new data that su...

Too much of a good thing? Excess nutrients or water limit biodiversity

Too much of a good thing (nutrients or water) actually decreases the diversity of species in an ecosystem while it increases the productivity of a few species, according to a grassland experiment conducted by University of Minnesota researchers. The reduction in species diversity occurs because increasing the amounts of limiting resources, such as nitrogen and water, makes an ecosystem mo...