Penn-Wistar team gains insight into HIV vaccine failure

PHILADELPHIA (July 20, 2009) A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania reports new evidence refuting a popular hypothesis about the highly publicized failure in 2007 of the Merck STEP HIV vaccine study that cast doubt on the feasibility of HIV-1 vaccines....

Study by NTU professors provides important insight into apoptosis or programmed cell death

A study by Nanyang Technological University (NTU)'s Assistant Professor Li Hoi Yeung, Assistant Professor Koh Cheng Gee and their team have made an important contribution to the understanding of the process that cells go through when they die. This process known as 'apoptosis' or programmed cell d...

Researchers gain insight into mechanism underlying Huntington's

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 13, 2009) Researchers at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center and Graduate Center for Toxicology (GCT) have gained new insight into the genetic mechanisms underlying Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative or neuromuscular disorders caused by trinucleotide...

U of M study finds new insight on therapy for a devastating parasitic disease

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (June 23, 2009) University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have discovered an important new insight into how a commonly prescribed drug may work to treat those infected by a parasitic flatworm. The Schistosomasis parasite infects about 200 million ...

A new mouse model provides insight into genetic neurological disorders

Neurosensory diseases are difficult to model in mice because their symptoms are complex and diverse. The genetic causes identified are often lethal when transferred to a mouse. The lack of animal models slows progress in understanding and treating the diseases. By strategically altering a protein-...

University of Florida study provides insight into evolution of first flowers

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Charles Darwin described the sudden origin of flowering plants about 130 million years ago as an abominable mystery, one that scientists have yet to solve. But a new University of Florida study, set to appear next week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the Nati...

New insight into Alzheimer's disease pathology

An Alzheimer's-related protein helps form and maintain nerve cell connections, according to a study published in the May 4 print issue of the Journal of Cell Biology and online at www.jcb.org . The protein, called presenilin, is mutated in many cases of inherited Alzheimer's disease. Althoug...

European satellites provide new insight into ozone-depleting species

Using data from the satellite-based MIPAS and GOME-2 instruments, scientists have for the first time detected important bromine species in the atmosphere. These new measurements will help scientists to better understand sources of ozone-depleting species and to improve simulations of stratospheric...

New insight into how bees see

New research from Monash University bee researcher Adrian Dyer could lead to improved artificial intelligence systems and computer programs for facial recognition. Dr Dyer is one of Australia's leading bee experts and his latest research shows that honeybees can learn to recognise human faces e...

New infant feeding and obesity research adds insight to ongoing issue

ATLANTA (January 16, 2009) The February edition of the Journal of Nutrition offers new insights into possible associations between infant feeding and health outcomes related to obesity. According to David Barker, M.D., Ph.D., professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Southampton,...

Rong Li Lab offers insight into adaptive ability of cells

The Stowers Institute's Rong Li Lab has published findings that shed light on the ability of cells to adapt to disruptions to their basic division machineries findings that may help explain how cancer cells elude the body's natural defense mechanisms or chemotherapy treatment. The work was publis...

New insight into the controls on a go-to enzyme

Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have gained new insights into regulation of one of the body's enzyme workhorses called calpains. As the cell's molecular overachievers, calpains function in many cellular processes, including the movement of cells in tissues, the death of dam...

New molecular insight into vertebrate brain development

In the December 1st issue of G&D , Dr. Fred H. Gage (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies) and colleagues reveal a role for the Hippo signaling pathway in the regulation of vertebrate neural development, identifying new factors and potential therapeutic targets that may be involved in cong...

Study provides insight on a common heart rhythm disorder

University of Iowa researchers and colleagues in France have identified a gene variant that causes a potentially fatal human heart rhythm disorder called sinus node disease. Also known as "sick sinus syndrome," the disease affects approximately one in 600 heart patients older than 65 and is respon...

Ancient mother spawns new insight on reptile reproduction

A 75-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant turtle and a nest of fossilized eggs that were discovered in the badlands of southeastern Alberta by scientists and staff from the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology are yielding new ideas on the evolution of egg-laying an...

Integrins as receptors give insight into rotavirus and diarrhea

Eleven years ago, Dr. Mary Estes of Baylor College of Medicine and her colleagues discovered the first viral enterotoxin, rotavirus NSP4, a toxic protein that affects the intestines, causing diarrhea. The next step was to find the cellular receptor on intestinal cells through which the enterot...

Bioinformatics technology developed at Argonne provides new insight into microbial activities

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 14, 2008) -- Scientists may gain a new insight into the relationship between viruses and their environments thanks to a new computational technology developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. This technology has already been...

New insight into the mechanisms of voltage sensing and transduction in biological processes

The voltage sensor of voltage-gated ion channels is a conserved protein domain that senses millivolt changes in transmembrane potential, to regulate ion permeation through the channel. A recently discovered protein, Ci-VSP, has a voltage sensor that is coupled not to an ion channel but to a phosph...

Better insight into brain anatomical structures

Magnetic resonance imaging is a very effective method for revealing anatomical details of soft tissues. Contrast agents can help to make these images even clearer and allow physiological processes to be followed in real time. Conventional gadolinium complexes currently used as MRI contrast agent c...

Study of protein folds offers insight into metabolic evolution

Researchers at the University of Illinois have constructed the first global family tree of metabolic protein architecture. Their approach offers a new window on the evolutionary history of metabolism. The study appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of ...

To sleep, perchance to dream: New insight into melatonin production

In the April 1 issue of G&D, a Korean research team led by Dr. Kyong-Tai Kim (Pohang University) describes how melatonin production is coordinated with the body's natural sleep/wake cycles. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain, which helps to regulate our bodies' c...

Man's best friend lends insight into human evolution

Flexibly drawing inferences about the intentions of other individuals in order to cooperate in complex tasks is a basic part of everyday life that we humans take for granted. But, according to evolutionary psychologist Brian Hare at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, this ability is present in ot...

Studies yield insight into the numerical brain

Two studies in the January 18, 2007, issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press, shed significant light on how the brain processes numerical information--both abstract quantities and their concrete representations as symbols. The researches said their findings will contribute to understan...

Study of planarians offers insight into germ cell development

The planarian is not as well known as other, more widely used subjects of scientific study ?model creatures such as the fruit fly, nematode or mouse. But University of Illinois cell and developmental biology professor Phillip Newmark thinks it should be. As it turns out, the tiny, seemingly cross-e...

Worms produce surprise insight into human fever

Give or take a few dozen trillions, a human adult has about 70 trillion cells. An adult Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm has exactly 959 cells. Yet we have an awful lot in common, says Alejandro Aballay of Duke University, who has been exploring two “highly conserved? cell-signaling pathways fo...

New insight into machinery of immune cells' 'tentacles'

Researchers have identified new molecular components of the machinery that regulates formation of the tentacle-like filaments by which immune system T cells grasp other cells. This embrace by such filaments is critical for the T cell to establish communication with cells called "antigen presenting ...

'Computer-chemistry' yields new insight into a puzzle of cell division

Duke University biochemists aided by Duke computer scientists and computational chemists have identified the likely way two key enzymes dock in an intricate three-dimensional puzzle-fit to regulate cell division. Solving the docking puzzle could lead to anticancer drugs to block the runaway cell di...

New methods offer insight into regulatory DNA

Through the Human Genome Project, the HapMap Project and other efforts, we are beginning to identify genes that are modified in some diseases. More difficult to measure and identify are the regulatory regions in DNA ?the 'managers' of genes ?that control gene activity and might be important in caus...

Study provides insight into cellular defenses against genetic mutation

Nature's finesse revealed in quality surveillance systemWith their latest discovery, researchers have significantly advanced the understanding of how human cells protect themselves from constant and potentially destructive changes in gene expression. According to an article published in this month'...

Studies on human genome variation provide insight into disease

The International HapMap Project was initiated with the primary goal of facilitating medical studies and understanding the genomic basis for human diseases. To coordinate with the journal Nature 's publication describing the HapMap, the journal Genome Research is announcing a special issue enti...

Grasshopper love songs give insight into sensory tuning

As anyone whose nerves have been jangled by a baby's howl or who have been riveted by the sight of an attractive person knows, nature has evolved sensory systems to be exquisitely tuned to relevant input. A major question in neurobiology is how neurons tune the strength of their interconnections to...

Flies on speed offer insight into the roles of dopamine in sleep and arousal

Methamphetamine, the drug of choice for long-distance truckers and college students pulling all-nighters, appears to do a similar trick for fruit flies, too. This finding is one of several in a new study that demonstrates a critical role for the neurotransmitter dopamine in the modulation of sleep,...

Structures of marine toxins provide insight into their effectiveness as cancer drugs

Vibrantly colored creatures from the depths of the South Pacific Ocean harbor toxins that potentially can act as powerful anti-cancer drugs, according to research findings from University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemists and their Italian colleagues. The research team has defined the structure of...

Gambling monkeys give insight into neural machinery of risk

Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists have pinpointed circuitry in the brains of monkeys that assesses the level of risk in a given action. Their findings -- gained from experiments in which they gave the monkeys a chance to gamble to receive juice rewards -- could give insights into why h...

New insight into autoimmune disease: Bacterial infections promote recognition of self-glycolipids

The immune system is a complex and powerful weapon that provides protection against bacteria and viruses that, if left unchecked, would wreak havoc throughout the human body. The ability of the immune system to recognize the body's own tissues is essential, but sometimes the immune system loses the...

New insight into regulation of blood stem cells

Scientists have made a significant advance toward understanding the regulation of blood stem cells and the complex, lifelong process of blood cell formation. A research study published in the February issue of Developmental Cell expands on previous studies by using adult animals to examine the role...

Alaskan puzzles, monitoring provide insight about North Pacific salmon runs

The University of Washington Alaska Salmon Program, the world's longest-running effort to monitor salmon and their ecosystems, has received nearly $2.4 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand its sampling scope and sophistication. The Alaska-based program has applications for...

New insight into people who 'see' colors in letters and numbers

People with a form of synesthesia in which they see colors when viewing letters and numbers really do see colors, researchers, led by Edward M. Hubbard of the University of California San Diego, have found. What's more, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brains reveals that they ...

Fundamental Finding Yields Insight into Stem Cells, Cancer; Opens Door to Drug Discovery

Few things about growing older are as inevitable and obvious as “going gray,?yet scientists have been unable to explain the precise cause of this usually unwelcome transformation. In a report posted today on the Web site of the journal Science, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Chil...

Highest ever winter water temperatures recorded

...n 13C up to 1.5C above normal due to a strengthening of an ocean current originating north of Australia. Satellites have given oceanographers an insight into a remarkable phenomenon a significant extension of the Leeuwin Current curling around the southern tip of Tasmania and reaching as far north as ...