Import

Genes In The Interferon System Important In Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Two genes with very strong associations withthe disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have been identified bya team of scientists headed by researchers at the Department of MedicalSciences at Uppsala University. The findings are being published todayon the Web page of the highly prestigious American Journal of HumanGenetics. "These findings are probably the first genetic pieces of ahug...

New SARS Protein Linked To Important Cell Doorway

As public health officials in China brace for a potential resurgence in SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in connection with Chinese New Year on February 9, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have published insights into a new protein that could be an important contributor to the SARS virus' ability to cause disease and death. When the SARS virus first jumped from it...

Important discovery about second most fatal cancer

An international team of medical scientists has made an important advance in our understanding of the second most fatal form of cancer in the industrialized world. Professor Jeremy R. Jass, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Gastrointestinal Pathology at McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues in Australia and Japan have shown that in some cases colorectal cancer can be inherited. The new...

Nature provides inspiration for important new adhesive

Researchers from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have developed a new group of adhesives that may revolutionize a large portion of the wood products industry, and have important environmental and economic benefits. The discovery has already resulted in three pending patents and should lead to a wide range of new products. But it was originally based on the aroused curios...

Newly discovered protein an important tool for sleeping sickness research

Sixty million people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are threatened daily by a deadly parasitic disease known as African sleeping sickness. The disease is caused by organisms called trypanosomes, which are spread by the tsetse fly. African sleeping sickness affects approximately 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, a quarter of whom will die this year. Because the trypanosome has an except...

Modified collagen could yield important medical applications

Altered protein could help deliver drugs and shape the growth of engineered tissueCollagen often pops up in beauty products and supermodel lips. But by mating collagen with a molecular hitchhiker, materials scientists at Johns Hopkins hope to create some important medical advances. The researchers have found a simple new way to modify collagen, paving the way for better infection-fighting bandage...

Understanding biases in epidemic models important when making public health predictions

Mathematical models have become invaluable decision-making tools for public health officials. As demonstrated during the United Kingdom's foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, models can be useful in two ways: they can reveal the underlying characteristics of an infection and they can allow the comparison of alternative control measures. Often, however, such models make implicit assumptions that may s...

Most important actors in the growth process of neurons identified

Defects in the growth process of our neurons often underlie brain or nerve diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis. Scientists from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, led by Bassem Hassan, have achieved a major step in unraveling the growth process of axons, the offshoots of neurons. They have identif...

Bugs expose underground carbon traffic system 10 times more important than fossil fuel burning

The flow of carbon through soil is ten times greater than the amount of carbon moved around by the burning of fossil fuel but until now how this happens was at best poorly understood. Soil was almost literally a black box to scientists interested in carbon. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have been able to shed light in that black box by getting a particular class of insects to expos...

Bacteria that cause tooth decay able to survive without important biochemical pathway

Leave it to the bacteria that cause tooth decay to be able to live without something all cells were thought to require. Scientists have long believed a certain biochemical pathway involved in the folding and delivery of proteins to cell membranes is essential for survival. Now University of Florida researchers have discovered that Streptococcus mutans, the decay-causing organism that thri...

Scientists a step closer to protecting world's most important crop

Fighting the fungus that wipes out rice - scientists a step closer to protecting world's most important crop Rice is the globe's most important crop but its production is constantly threatened by disease.Now scientists at the University of Exeter have shown for the first time, in a paper in the prestigious journal Nature, how the world's most destructive rice-killer hijacks its plant prey....

The critical importance of mangroves to ocean life

Mangroves, the backbone of the tropical ocean coastlines, are far more important to the global ocean's biosphere than previously thought. And while the foul-smelling muddy forests may not have the scientific allure of tropical reefs or rain forests, a team of researchers has noted that the woody coastline-dwelling plants provide more than 10 percent of essential dissolved organic carbon that is s...

New method confirms importance of fungi in Arctic nitrogen cycle

A new method to calculate the transfer of nitrogen from Arctic mushrooms to plants is shedding light on how fungi living symbiotically on plant roots transfer vital nutrients to their hosts. The analytical technique, developed by John E. Hobbie, MBL Distinguished Scientist and co-director of the laboratory's Ecosystems Center and his son, Erik A. Hobbie of the University of New Hampshire, may be...

Important gene controlling tree growth and development found

Scientists at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) report today about a breakthrough in our understanding of how the growth and development of forest trees is controlled. In an article published in the international journal Science, they show that the FT gene that was previously shown to control the flowering time of annual plants, also co...

Zinc plays important role in brain circuitry

To the multitude of substances that regulate neuronal signaling in the brain and spinal cord add a new key player: zinc. By engineering a mouse with a mutation affecting a neuronal zinc target, researchers have demonstrated a central role for zinc in modulating signaling among the neurons. Significantly, they found the mutant mouse shows the same exaggerated response to noise as children with the...

Quality not quantity important for immune response to HIV

When it comes to an immune response against HIV, research funded by the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the National Institutes of Health in the US has found that bigger is not necessarily better, contrary to conventional medical wisdom. The research may have a profound impact on the development of a vaccine against the disease. "Conventional medical wisdom tells us that the bigger the immune...

New research identifies gene important for nicotine's effects on the brain

New research identifies an important gene that influences several aspects of nicotine-induced behaviors in the brain. The study, funded by National Institutes of Drug Abuse, was presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's Annual Meeting. Investigator Marina Picciotto, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and her colleagues at Yale University, found that nicotin...

Susceptibility to Crohn's disease -- an important new clue

Crohn’s disease is a chronic relapsing inflammatory disorder of the intestinal tract that affects an estimated 0.15% of people in the developed world. Common symptoms include abdominal pain and diarrhea, but the disorder is often associated with debilitating clinical complications. Researchers from the University of Liège, Belgium, have now uncovered an important clue to the susceptibility of ind...

Proteins important in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease travel in the slow lane

Using a novel video-imaging system, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have been able to observe proteins important in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease moving along axons, extensions of nerve cells that carry proteins away from the cell body. Understanding this process of axonal transport is important for studying many neurodegenerative diseases. The study appeare...

3 proteins may play important role in nerve-cell repair

Some mature brain cells can grow new extensions when the amount of three particular proteins on their surface increases, a new study shows. When researchers increased the amount of the three proteins, the cells grew extensions that were up to three times lon...

LIAI scientists make important finding on cytomegalovirus transmission

Researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology have shown that cytomegalovirus (CMV) in the salivary glands can be reduced ?and in some cases eliminated ?through the use of antibodies to enhance the disease-fighting power of the immune system. The research team’s findings, based on controlled laboratory studies of mice, may also have implications for other chronic virus infec...