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Quantum Dots Research Leads to New Knowledge about Protein Binding in Plants

UC Riverside researchers from the Departmentsof Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering andBotany and Plant Sciences have worked together to discover a way toutilize to uncover new knowledge about the binding of a protein at the growingpollen tube tip. This protein plays a critic...

Key molecule in plant photo-protection identified

Brain cells in a mouse model of Alzheimer'sdisease have surprised scientists with their ability to recuperateafter the disorder's characteristic brain plaques are removed.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louisinjected mice with an antibody for a key component of brain plaques,the amyloid beta (Abeta) peptide. In areas of the brain whereantibodies cleared plaque...

Plants, animals share molecular growth mechanisms

A newly discovered plant protein complex that apparently switches on plants' growth machinery, has opened a scientific toolbox to learn about both plant and animal development, according Purdue University scientists. The protein complex triggers communication between molecules along a pathway that leads to the creation of long protein strings, called actin filaments, that are necessary fo...

Plants respond similarly to signals from friends, enemies

Two soil-dwelling strangers ?a friend and a foe ?approach a plant and communicate with it in order to enter a partnership. The friend wants to trade nitrogen for food. The foe is a parasite that wants to burrow in and harm the plant. In a new finding published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at North Carolina State University have found that the two strange...

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...

Transplantation Of Monkey Embryonic Stem Cells Reverses Parkinson Disease In Primates

The replenishment of missing neurons in thebrain as a treatment for Parkinson disease reached the stage of humantrials over 15 years ago, however the field is still in its infancy.Researchers from Kyoto University have now shown thatdopamine-producing neurons (DA neurons) generated from monkey embryonicstem cells and transplanted into areas of the brain where these neuronshave degenerated i...

Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa

An expanded clinical trial conducted by Optobionics Corporation involving the implantation of a retina mircrochip has allowed Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research & Development Center to implant the device in several patients. The patients all have retinitis pigmentosa with moderate-to-severe vision loss. Three centers in the United States have been chosen...

Plant hemoglobins: Oxygen handlers critical for nitrogen fixation

Hemoglobins, key components of our blood, are ancient proteins with well-known roles in oxygen transport and respiration in animals. Hemoglobins are also present in plants and bacteria, but until now the physiological role of plant hemoglobins has been unclear. A group of researchers reveal this week that one such mysterious plant hemoglobin serves to assist in the fixation of nitrogen in the roo...

Circles Of DNA Might Help Predict Success Of Stem Cell Transplantation

Measuring the quantity of a certain type of immune cell DNA in the blood could help physicians predict whether a bone marrow stem cell transplant will successfully restore a population of infection-fighting cells called T lymphocytes in a child. This research, by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, is published in the journal Blood. This finding could help physicians p...

Plants defy Mendel's inheritance laws, may prompt textbook changes

Contrary to inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100 years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents. These mutant parent plants apparently have hidden templates containing genetic information from the preceding generation that can be transferred to their offspring, even though the...

Antibodies from plants protect against anthrax

Scientists have produced, in tobacco plants, human antibodies that could be used to treat anthrax exposure. They report their findings today at the 2005 American Society for Microbiology Biodefense Research Meeting. "The nature of bioterrorism is such that an aggressor is likely to strike at a time and place calculated to induce maximum terror through mass casualties. The unpredictable nat...

New RNA polymerase discovered in plants

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered an entirely new cellular "machine" in plants that plays a significant role in plant flowering and DNA methylation, a key chemical process essential for an organism's development. A team headed by Craig Pikaard, Ph, D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered a fourth kind of RNA poly...

Implanted Devices Detect High-Risk Heart Failure Patients

Implanted devices intended to optimize the cardiac function of patients with heart failure have provided new insights into which patients might be at higher risk of dying suddenly from their disease, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Besides maintaining optimal electrical stimulation to the heart, these CRT-D (cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillation)...

Ophthalmologists implant five patients with artificial silicon retina microchip

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is sch...

World-first Living Donor Islet Cell Transplant A Success; Procedure Offers Promise For Diabetics

A University of Alberta and Capital Health surgeon, well known for his pioneering work in developing the Edmonton Protocol treatment for diabetes, has taken another important step in the fight against diabetes. On January 19, at Kyoto University Hospital, Dr. Koichi Tanaka and Dr. James Shapiro, along with a team of Japanese surgeons, removed part of a 56-year-old woman's pancreas. Dr. Sh...

Polymers with copper show promise for implanted sensors

Developing chemical sensors that can be placed in the bloodstream or under the skin to continuously monitor oxygen, acidity (pH), or glucose levels is a major challenge for analytical chemists and biomedical engineers. The problem is, the body responds to these foreign objects in ways that interfere with their ability to accurately measure blood chemistry. In the bloodstream, clots form on the su...

Transgenic plants remove more selenium from polluted soil than wild plants, new tests show

In the first field trial of plants genetically tweaked to absorb more contaminants, researchers found that the transgenic plants handily beat out their wild-type counterparts. The results raised hopes that the plants might become a viable alternative for cleaning up polluted soil. The new research findings, published Feb. 1 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, show that th...

Researchers discover chemical compounds that affect plant growth

A team of biologists from the University of California, Riverside has used chemical genomics to identify novel compounds that affect the ability of plants to alter their direction of growth in response to gravity, a phenomenon known as gravitropism. The researchers screened a library of 10,000 small molecules, the practice is known as chemical genomics, to identify those that could positiv...

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...

NASA study finds snow melt causes large ocean plant blooms

A NASA funded study has found a decline in winter and spring snow cover over Southwest Asia and the Himalayan mountain range is creating conditions for more widespread blooms of ocean plants in the Arabian Sea. The decrease in snow cover has led to greater differences in both temperature and pressure systems between the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Sea. The pressure differences gene...

Defenseless plants arm themselves with metals

A group of plants that uses metal to defend against infection may do so because the normal defense mechanism used by most other plants is blocked. Purdue University researchers found that this group of plants produces, but does not respond to, the molecule that triggers the infection response used by nearly all other plants. The molecule does, however, allow this group of plants, called m...

First North American Encapsulated Islet Transplant without Long-term Immune Suppression into a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes

Biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plagues of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Scientists have known for some time that these individuals carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta32) that prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system but have been unable to account for the high levels of the gene in Scandinavi...

Researchers unlock mechanism creating jigsaw puzzle-like plant cells

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have unlocked the molecular give and take that allows cells in thin structures such as leaves to develop in a jigsaw-like pattern, providing the leaf a surprising degree of strength. The findings were published in today's edition of the journal Cell. Zhenbiao Yang, a professor of plant cell biology at the UCR's Center for Plant Cell Bi...

At long last, scientists figure out how plants grow

It has been one of the great mysteries in plant science. In this week's Nature, Indiana University Bloomington biologists Mark Estelle, Nihal Dharmasiri and Sunethra Dharmasi...

What's really making you sick? Plant pathologists offer the science behind Sick Building Syndrome

Science-based identification of mold and other causes of Sick Building Syndrome may improve its management, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS). Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) refers to a situation in which building occupants experience health problems while inside a particular building. Human health issues typically associated with SBS range from allerg...

Plant Sacrifices Cells to Fight Invaders

Researchers recently discovered a gene essential to one of the plant kingdom's key immune responses--programmed cell death (PCD). Plants use PCD to create a protective zone of dead cells around the infection site to prevent the invading pathogen from spreading. But how the plants keep from killing themselves after they turn on the cell-suicide process was a mystery. Now, in the May 20 issu...

Single-donor Islet Transplantation Procedure Shows Promise For Patients With Type 1 Diabetes

Patients with type 1 diabetes who received islet transplantation from a single donor pancreas were insulin independent one year later, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical applications of biotechnology. Type 1 diabetes remains a therapeutic challenge, according to background information in the article. The success rate of islet (cells that produc...

Precise Timing Enabled Pig-to-rat Transplants To Cure Diabetes

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned that a temporal "window of opportunity" was critical to their earlier successes in treating diabetic rats with embryonic pig tissues. In those experiments, published in 2004, researchers were surprised to find that they didn't have to give anti-rejection drugs to diabetic rats treated with embryonic pig cell...

Engineers improve plastic's potential for use in implants by linking it to biological material

Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have found a way to modify a plastic to anchor molecules that promote nerve regeneration, blood vessel growth or other biological processes. In the study led by Dr. Christine Schmidt, the researchers identified a piece of protein from among a billion candidates that could perform the unusual feat of attaching to polypyrrole, a synthetic polym...

Innovative coating could give medical implants a longer life

By mimicking an adhesive protein secreted by mussels and a polymer that repels cells and proteins, researchers at Northwestern University have designed a versatile new two-sided coating that could breathe life into medical implants. Currently the longevity of certain medical implants suffers because bacteria, cells and proteins in the body gradually accumulate on the devices (known as fou...

Breakthrough System for Understanding Ocean Plant Life Announced

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...

Unique library of plant genes germinates, takes root at UNC

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's newest "library" is not the kind that will entice an average book lover, but it eventually will please thousands of plant scientists around the world. Through such researchers' work, it will undoubtedly contribute to improving crops that humans around the planet depend on every day, its developers say. Named Phytome, the unique library is a...

Genome study of beneficial microbe may help boost plant health

In a study expected to greatly benefit crop plants, scientists have deciphered the genome of a root- and seed-dwelling bacterium that protects plants from diseases. The research provides clues to better explain how the helpful microbe, Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf-5, naturally safeguards roots and seeds from infection by harmful microbes that cause plant diseases. The genome paper will be p...

UNC plant researchers discover proteins interact to form hair-trigger protection against invaders

Experimenting with Arabidopsis, a fast-growing cousin of the humble mustard plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a big surprise while investigating how plants respond to attacks from disease organisms such as bacteria and viruses. "Contrary to what we thought we'd find, our experiments showed that at least three different proteins work in concert with on...

Mechanism for the captation of nutrients in plants- unknown to date

This finding, carried by the latest issue of the Japanese journal, Plant Cell Physiology, will enable the design of experiments aimed at enhancing vegetable species in the interest of humanity. Researchers at the Institute have shown that, in the presence of saccharose (a substance produced in leaves to be subsequently distributed around the plant), the cells of the reserve organs - such a...

It's electric: Cows show promise as powerplants

Results showed that the microbes in about a half a liter of rumen fluid - fermented, liquefied feed extracted from the rumen, the largest chamber of a cow's stomach - produced about 600 millivolts of electricity. That's about half the voltage needed to run one rechargeable AA-sized battery, said Ann Christy, a study co-author and an associate professor of food, agricultural and biological enginee...

Researchers use 3-D imaging system to unveil swimming behavior of microscopic plankton

From the surface, the ocean appears to be vast and uniform. But beneath the surface, tiny animals called zooplankton are swept into clusters and patches by ocean currents. The very survival of many zooplankton predators--from invertebrates to whales--and the success of fishermen catches can depend on their success at finding those patches. For almost a century ocean scientists have suspect...

Scientists find microRNAs regulate plant development

The plant hormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), commonly referred to as auxin, plays a major role in regulating plant growth and development. Auxin influences development by affecting the expression of numerous genes that control the processes of cell division and cell expansion in specific plant tissues at specific stages during the plant life cycle - e.g. for leaves, roots, and floral organs to d...

Discoveries by UAB and Florida scientists may help transplanted organs survive longer

Scientists may have found a way to dramatically slow organ transplant rejection by as much as several years. The research team reporte...

Researchers feed tiny pills of RNA to planarians to identify genes essential for regeneration

University of Utah researchers-feeding microscopic pills of RNA to quarter-inch long worms called planarians-have identified many genes essential to understanding a biological mystery that has captivated scientists for hundreds of years: regeneration. In pinpointing the genes, the U School of Medicine researchers have established the planarian as a genetically sound model for human biolog...