Identifying

UCR chemist part of team identifying new areas of gene regulation

Researcher Kangling Zhang at the University of California, Riverside is part of a team that has discovered a new way that yeast governs genetic expression and repression, a finding that could be repeated in cells of other organisms. Zhang, an academic coordinator at the Mass Spectrometry Facility of the Department of Chemistry at UCR, worked with Feng Xu and Michael Grunstein of the Depart...

Sleeping beauty plays a significant role in identifying cancer genes

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, have discovered a new method that could accelerate the way cancer-causing genes are found and could lead to a more accurate identification of the genes, according to two studies in the July 14, 2005, issue of Nature. The gene identification method was...

U-M scientists discover identifying markers for primitive blood-forming stem cells

Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered the biological equivalent of a grocery store bar code on the surface of primitive, blood-forming stem cells in mice. Called hematopoietic stem cells, they give rise to all the different types of specialized cells found in blood. By reading the bar code, scientists can separate stem cells from their more advanced descen...

Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat

There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming obese, such as "Eat less," and "Exercise." But here's a new and surprising piece of advice based on a promising area of obesity research: "Wash your hands." There is accumulating evidence that certain viruses may cause obesity, in essence making obesity contagious, according to Leah D. Whigham, the lead researcher in a new study, "Adi...

New method for identifying microbes

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new, high-throughput technique for identifying the many species of microorganisms living in an unknown "microbial community." The method, described in the March 2006 issue of Applied Environmental Microbiology, has many applications -- from assessing the microbes present in environmental samples and iden...

Gene chip technology shows potential for identifying life-threatening blood infection

Right now there's no rapid way to diagnose sepsis, a fast-moving blood infection that is a leading cause of death in hospital intensive care units. The illness unleashes a powerful inflammatory response that can quickly overwhelm the body, causing organ failure and death, often within days. With a narrow window of opportunity for halting its lethal spread, doctors who suspect sepsis typica...