ILS

Affymetrix Unveils Plans to Double Plant and Animal Genome Microarray Offering

Sacramento - Today, Affymetrix, Inc.announced plans to make eight new GeneChip(R) plant and animal genomearrays available in 2005 as part of its Consortia Program, includingcanine, Rhesus macaque, Medicago trancatula (legume), Brassica, tomato,citrus, poplar and sugar cane. More than 20 research presentations atthis week's Plant and Animal Genome Conference XIII in San Diego,Calif. feature...

Probing The Promise And Perils Of Nanoparticles

For all its promise, the prospect of using nanoparticles in biomedical applications and consumer products has raised concerns about possible harmful effects of the miniscule materials. Scientists at the University of Michigan are addressing those concerns by investigating how certain kinds of nanoparticles damage cell membranes—enough to cause cell death in some cases—and how the damage can be pr...

Nonlinear Dynamics announces more details of its global partnership with PerkinElmer

Nonlinear Dynamics Ltd, a leading provider of bioinformatics solutions, today announced further details of its global OEM partnership with PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE: PKI), a leading provider of drug discovery, life science research and analytical solutions. As detailed in a press release issued last week, PerkinElmer will distribute Nonlinear's full range of 1D, 2D and array software. Howeve...

Probing the promise and perils of nanoparticles

For all its promise, the prospect of using nanoparticles in biomedical applications and consumer products has raised concerns about possible harmful effects of the miniscule materials. Scientists at the University of Michigan are addressing those concerns by investigating how certain kinds of nanoparticles damage cell membranes---enough to cause cell death in some cases---and how the damage can b...

Oldest cranial, dental and postcranial fossils of early modern European humans confirmed

The human fossil evidence from the Mladec Caves in Moravia, Czech Republic, excavated more than 100 years ago, has been proven for the first time, through modern radiocarbon dating, to be the oldest cranial, dental and postcranial assemblage of early modern humans in Europe. A team of researchers from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, from the University of Vienna in Austria and from t...

Researchers find new giant amphibian fossils in Africa

Two new 250 million year-old species of large, meat-eating amphibians have been discovered by researchers, including investigators from McGill University. Their findings published in today's issue of Nature, describe the first and oldest amphibious carnivores from the Republic of Niger in West Africa. "This the first evidence of carnivores in this area," says McGill paleontologist, and co-...

Molecular fossils uncover link between viruses and the immune system

Researchers from the Viikki Biocenter, University of Helsinki, show that atomic structures can reveal evolutionary history of viruses in a similar fashion as fossils did for the dinosaurs and reptiles. Their article is published in the April 15 issue of Molecular Cell. These "molecular fossils" also revealed that viruses and proteins of immune system share the same structure. One plausibl...

Evidence of 600-million-year old fungi-algae symbiosis discovered in marine fossils

Researchers from China and the United States have found evidence of lichen-like symbiosis in 600-million-year-old fossils from South China. The previous earliest evidence of lichen was 400 million years old, discovered in Scotland. The discovery also adds to the scarce fossil record of fungi and raises new questions about lichen evolution. Xunlai Yuan, a paleontologist with the Nanjing Ins...

Virginia Tech, Nanjing Institute researchers discover half-billion year-old fossils

Scientists interested in ancient life have a wealth of fossils and impressions frozen in rocks that they can study from as far back as 540 million years ago ?when animals with shells and bones began to become plentiful. But evidence of complex life older than 540 million years is scant and difficult to study. Now, a research team from Virginia Tech in the United States and Nanjing Institut...

UF study first to quantify validity of DNA I.D. tool using marine snails

A trendy holiday gift within a decade may be a hand-held device that instantly identifies any species from a snippet of animal tissue, says a University of Florida researcher. That may be possible thanks to scientific advances that include the first test quantifying the effectiveness of a DNA identification tool among brightly colored shells. With an error rate as low as 4 percent, two UF...

Researcher uncovers details of how cancer spreads

When cancer spreads, people often die. That's why a lot of cancer research and drugs focus on the metabolic pathways that allow cancer to metastasize -- to spread from one part of the body to another. Cornell University researchers have now furthered understanding of how these pathways work. Their insights might aid future research on drug therapies that disrupt the sequence of events tha...

Research: Snails were overlooked contributors to marsh destruction

Buoyed by the effects of an intense drought, otherwise harmless snails likely killed off thousands of acres of salt marsh in the Southeast in recent years. Periwinkle snails, known to science as Littoraria irrorata, normally coexist happily with salt marsh. But the drought, which lasted from 1999 to 2001, weakened and killed marsh grasses such as cordgrass, or Spartina alterniflora, so ext...

Darkness unveils vital metabolic fuel switch between sugar and fat

Constant darkness throws a molecular switch in mammals that shifts the body's fuel consumption from glucose to fat and induces a state of torpor in mice, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston reports in the Jan. 19 edition of Nature. While their findings could provide new insight into mammalian hibernation, researchers note that the pivota...

Research details how a virus hijacks cell signals to cause infection

A common virus that causes meningitis and heart inflammation takes a "back door" approach to evade natural barriers, then exploits biological signals to infect human cells. Broadening knowledge of how viruses cause infection, a new study describes elaborate methods that the virus has evolved to bypass the body's defenses. "This study helps to explain how group B coxsackieviruses infect cel...

Bt cotton in China fails to reap profit after seven years

Although Chinese cotton growers were among the first farmers worldwide to plant genetically modified (GM) cotton to resist bollworms, the substantial profits they have reaped for several years by saving on pesticides have now been eroded. The reason, as reported by Cornell University researchers at the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting in Long Beach, Calif.,...

Study reveals details of mussels' tenacious bonds

When it comes to sticking power, marine mussels are hard to beat. They can adhere to virtually all inorganic and organic surfaces, sustaining their tenacious bonds in saltwater, including turbulent tidal environments. Little is known, however, about exactly how the bivalves achieve this amazing feat. In a paper to be published online the week of Aug. 14 by the Proceedings of the National...

Study details hepatitis C ability to block immune system response

The study was published in an advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 17. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a worldwide public health problem. The World Health Organization estimates that 170 million people worldwide are chronically infected and that between 3-4 million are newly infected annually. HCV is the leading cause of chronic liver disease inc...

US infant mortality rate fails to improve

Nearly 28,000 babies died before their first birthday, according to new infant mortality statistics for 2003 released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). In 2003, the infant mortality rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births, which wa...

Oldest animal fossils may have been bacteria

The oldest-known animal eggs and embryos, whose first pictures made the cover of Nature in 1998, were so small they looked like bugs ?which, it now appears, they may have been. The discovery "complicates our understand...

A new male-specific gene in algae unveils an origin of male and female

By studying the genetics of two closely related species of green algae that practice different forms of sexual reproduction, researchers have shed light on one route by which evolution gave rise to reproduction though the joining of distinct sperm and egg cells. The findings, which indicate that a gene underlying a more primitive system of reproduction was likely co-opted during evolution to part...

Emergency contraception fails to halt abortions

Easy availability of emergency contraception does not have a notable effect on rates of pregnancy and abortion, according to an editorial in this week's BMJ. The usefulness of emergency contraception is questioned by Professor Anna Glasier, director of family planning and well woman services of Lothian Primary Care NHS Trust, Edinburgh, who says it does help some women some of the time, w...

Early HIV treatment fails to restore memory T cells

Most of the body’s memory T cells vanish within weeks after a person is infected with the HIV virus. In a study from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Bernard-Nocht Institute appearing in the international open-access journal PLoS Medicine, researchers report that these memory T cells, mostly found in the digestive tract, tend not to return to normal even after years of treatment for...

Microfossils unravel climate history of tropical Africa

Scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research obtained for the first time a detailed temperature record for tropical central Africa over the past 25,000 years. They did this in cooperation with a German colleague from the University of Bremen, The scientists developed an entirely new method to reconstruct the history of land temperatures based on the molecular fossils of s...

Researchers discover new details about HIV-1 entry and infection

The primary targets of HIV-1 infection in the human vagina have been definitively identified in a new study published in the February 2007 issue of the journal Immunity, published by Cell Press. The findings are likely to guide development of new strategies that will prevent HIV-1 transmission. "The majority of HIV-1 infected individuals worldwide are women who acquire HIV infection follo...

New details on how the immune system recognizes influenza

Drawing upon a massive database established with funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists have completed the most comprehensive analysis to date of published influenza A virus epitopes--the critical sites on the virus that are recognized by the immune system. The findings, reported by researchers at th...

New success in engineering plant oils

Using genetic manipulation to modify the activity of a plant enzyme, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have converted an unsaturated oil in the seeds of a temperate plant to the more saturated kind usually found in tropical plants. The research will be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of March 5, 20...

An ancient bathtub ring of mammoth fossils

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory geologists have put out a call for teeth tusks, femurs and any and all other parts of extinct mammoths left by massive Ice Age floods in southeastern Washington. The fossils, in some cases whole skeletons of Mammathus columbi, the Columbian mammoth, were deposited in the hillsides of what are now the Yakima, Columbia and Walla Walla valleys in southeas...

Soils offer new hope as carbon sink

Trials of agrichar - a product hailed as a saviour of Australia's carbon-depleted soils and the environment - have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop...