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How the environment could be damaging men's reproductive health

Two Scandinavian studies have provided further evidence that environmental factors could be affecting men's reproductive health. The studies, published online today (Thursday 28 April) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, suggest that environmental pollutants could be changing the ratio of sperm carrying the X or Y (sex determining) chromosomes and that th...

Drug-resistant bacteria on poultry products differ by brand

The presence of drug-resistant, pathogenic bacteria on uncooked poultry products varies by commercial brand and is likely related to antibiotic use in production, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their study is the first to directly compare bacterial contamination of poultry products sold in U.S. supermarkets from food producers who use antibiotics...

Products containing specific probes for detecting alternative splice forms protected

ExonHit Therapeutics, today announced the grant of a major patent, US # 6,881,571, by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on microarray products allowing the specific detection of mRNAs produced by alternative splicing, covering microarrays optimised for the discovery of alternative RNA splicing events. The patent protects the probe configuration of a unique set of five oligonucleotides...

Product improves peptide identification for proteomics research

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced a high-performance ion trap mass spectrometer (MS) that allows pharmaceutical and academic life-science researchers to identify 60 to 80 percent more peptides than preceding models in proteomics applications, such as protein identification and biomarker discovery, potentially leading to a better understanding of diseases like cancer and speedin...

Research shows smoking adds a decade to reproductive age of IVF patients

A major new Dutch study has found that smoking adds the equivalent of ten years to a 20-year-old subfertile woman's reproductive age and has a "devastating" impact on a couples' chances of having a live birth after IVF. Being overweight also seriously damages their chances. The harmful effects of smoking or being overweight were strongest among those women who had no obvious cause for not...

Researchers discover key gene involved in bark beetle pheromone production

University of Nevada, Reno scientists have ended a decade-long controversy over the process by which bark beetles make pheromones: they manufacture their own monoterpenes ?the fragrant substances plants produce and which are often used in perfumes. It had been thought that insects and other animals were incapable of making these substances. "The goal of our research is ultimately to contro...

First production of human monoclonal antibodies in chicken eggs published in Nature Biotechnology

Chicken-produced antibodies demonstrate enhanced cell killing compared to conventionally produced anti-cancer antibodies Origen Therapeutics today announced the first published scientific report of fully functional, human sequence monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produced in chickens. The antibodies were expressed solely in the chicken oviduct and deposited into egg white in concentrations of...

Funding and bureaucracy, not access to journals, are chief obstacles to scientific productivity

The single most important issue obstructing the productivity of biomedical scientists today is the culture of research funding. This finding challenges the belief of some that the lack of "open access" to journal content is a major barrier to scientific productivity. A survey of 883 biomedical scientists ?in Europe and North America - commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium fo...

Mass production of human papillomavirus could lead to gains against cervical cancer

Researchers may be on the verge of exploiting the vulnerabilities of a virus that causes cervical cancer, thanks to a newly developed technique that enables scientists to mass-produce human papillomavirus (HPV) in the laboratory. HPV, which exists in more than 100 forms, is the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection. Transmission of HPV can also occur non-sexually. According to the...

Affymetrix and ParAllele Launch Industry's Most Comprehensive Product Line for Targeted Genotyping

Twenty-eight years after intense selective logging stopped in the region now known as Uganda's Kibale National Park, the red-tailed guenon (Cercophithecus ascanius) is a primate still in decline. The logging practice, scientists report in a new study, changed the ecological balance for these monkeys, leading to behavioral changes and opening the door for multiple parasitic infections. The...

UW scientists report a new method to speed bird flu vaccine production

In the event of an influenza pandemic, the world's vaccine manufacturers will be in a race against time to forestall calamity. But now, thanks to a new technique to more efficiently produce the disarmed viruses that are the seed stock for making flu vaccine in large quantities, life-saving inoculations may be available more readily than before. The work is especially important as governments worl...

New cell transplantation technique restores insulin production in diabetics

Researchers are using a new cell transplantation technique to restore the cells that produce insulin in patients with type 1 diabetes. The method is minimally invasive, with few complications. The study was presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). "We used ultrasound guidance to inject donor cells into the portal vein of diabetic patients,...

New molecule may aid in production of biofuels and fungi-resistant plants

In a recent study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, scientists report on the discovery of a new molecule that is essential for degradation of the biopolymer chitin. This new molecule could eventually aid in the engineering of fungi-resistant plants and could also lead to the discovery of similar molecules that can be used in cellulose-based biofuel production. The research...

Getting an evolutionary handle on life after reproduction

Since many animals live beyond their fertile years, biologists have searched for evolutionary clues to this extended lifespan. What role, if any, does natural selection play in the evolution of the postreproductive lifespan? For natural selection to shape the twilight years, postreproductive females should contribute to the fitness of their offspring or relatives, a hypothesis called the...

Fish evolve a longer lifespan by evolving a longer reproductive period, researchers find

A UC Riverside-led research team has found that as some populations of an organism evolve a longer lifespan, they do so by increasing only that segment of the lifespan that contributes to "fitness" ?the relative ability of an individual to contribute offspring to the next generation. Focusing on guppies, small fresh-water fish biologists have studied for long, the researchers found that gu...

Olfactory system detects pheromones that control reproduction

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have discovered that pheromones essential for mating behavior in mice are recognized by the nose and not by the vomeronasal system, as researchers had long suspected.The new studies demonstrate that the main olfactory epithelium, which was presumed to be mostly involved with the sense of smell, plays a critical role in pheromone detection. Howar...

The brain is broadly wired for reproduction

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have discovered a vast network of neurons in the brain of mice that governs reproduction and controls the effects of reproductive status on other brain functions. In their studies, the researchers found neural circuits that coordinate a complex interplay between neurons that control reproduction and brain areas that carry the neural signals trigg...

Sexual reproduction delays aging in a mammalian species

Past research on aging and the life histories of diverse species has shown that sexual reproduction is biologically costly for individuals and tends to decrease lifespan rather than increase it. But a new study by Philip Dammann and Hynek Burda from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows that, in a vertebrate species, the opposite can be true as well. The authors, studying captive Zambian...

Sustainable farm practices improve Third World food production

Crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80 percent in four years, according to a study scheduled for publication in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Chemical Society journal . The study, the largest of its kind to date -- 286 farm projects in 57 countries -- concludes that sustainable agriculture p...

GlycoFi announces the first production of antibodies with human glycosylation in yeast

Researchers at GlycoFi and Dartmouth College have reported the first production of monoclonal antibodies with human sugar structures in yeast. This research, published online January 22 and in the February issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, demonstrates that antibodies with human sugar structures (glycosylation) can be produced in glyco-engineered yeast cell lines, and that by con...

New brain hormone puts brakes on reproduction

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have discovered a new actor in the mammalian reproductive system, a hormone that fills a role long suspected, but until now undetected. The hormone, a small protein, or peptide, called gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH), puts the brakes on reproduction by directly inhibiting the action of the central hormone of the reproductive system - g...

Component in soy products causes reproductive problems in laboratory mice

Genistein, a major component of soy, was found to disrupt the development of the ovaries in newborn female mice that were given the product. This study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating the potentially adverse consequences of genistein on the reproductive system. "Although we are not entirely certain about how these animal studies on genistein translate to the human popula...

Iron critical to ocean productivity, carbon uptake

A new study has found that large segments of the Pacific Ocean lack sufficient iron to trigger healthy phytoplankton growth and the absence of the mineral stresses these microscopic ocean plants, triggering them to produce additional pigments that make ocean productivity appear more robust than it really is. As a result, past interpretations of satellite chlorophyll data may be inaccurate,...

Production of key Alzheimer's protein monitored for first time in humans

Science is now poised to answer an important and longstanding question about the origins of Alzheimer's disease: Do Alzheimer's patients have high levels of a brain protein because they make too much of it or because they can't clear it from their brains quickly enough? Researchers from the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis...

Compound in dairy products targets diabetes

Fatty acids commonly found in dairy products have successfully treated diabetes in mice, according to a researcher at Penn State. The compounds, known as conjugated linoleic acids (CLA), have also shown promising results in human trials, signaling a new way of potentially treating the disease without synthetic drugs. "The compounds are predominantly found in dairy products such as milk,...

Plant diseases threaten chocolate production worldwide

Chocolate lovers, beware. Each year 20 percent of the cacao beans that are used to make chocolate are lost to plant diseases, but even greater losses would occur if important diseases spread. "Plant diseases are the most important constraints to cacao production and the continued viability of the world's confectionary trades," said Randy Ploetz, plant pathology professor at the Univers...

ABCB6 is key to production of heme in hemoglobin

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered that a protein called ABCB6 plays a central role in production of a molecule that is key to the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen, of liver cells to break down toxins, and of cells to extract energy from nutrients. The St. Jude investigators showed that ABCB6 is lodged within the outer membrane of the cell's...

'Fruit fly dating game' provides clues to our reproductive prowess

There's growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period. The Chicxulub impact may, in fact, have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volca...

Exposure to dioxins influences male reproductive system, study of Vietnam veterans concludes

A dioxin toxin contained in the herbicide Agent Orange affects male reproductive health by limiting the growth of the prostate gland and lowering testosterone levels, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a cohort study of more than 2,000 Air Force veterans who served during the Vietnam War. Environmental H...

Engineer ramps up protein production, develops versatile viral spheres

Scientists are taking the amazing protein-making parts out of cells and putting them into systems to mass-produce designer proteins for a wide variety of medical uses. At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Sept. 13 in San Francisco, Stanford engineering Professor James Swartz will discuss advances in such "cell-free" protein synthesis, including production of versatile, nan...

Researchers discover that sheep need retroviruses for reproduction

A team of scientists from Texas A&M University and The University of Glasgow Veterinary School in Scotland has discovered that naturally occurring endogenous retroviruses are required for pregnancy in sheep. In particular, a class of endogenous retroviruses, known as endogenous retroviruses related to Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus or enJSRVs, are critical during the early phase of preg...

Engineered yeast speeds ethanol production

Scientists from Whitehead Institute and MIT have engineered yeast that can improve the speed and efficiency of ethanol production, a key component to making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply. Currently used as a fuel additive to improve gasoline combustibility, ethanol is often touted as a potential solution to the growing oil-driven energy crisis. But there are signifi...

BC catalyst discovery promises faster, cheaper drug production

Boston College chemists have discovered a substance that will make it possible for scientists to produce scores of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals in a faster, less expensive way. In a letter published in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Nature, a team led by professors Amir Hoveyda and Marc Snapper of the Boston College Chemistry Department said they had found a first-of-its-kind cata...

How mammals fuel milk production may have implications for cancer

A new study in the December issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, published by Cell Press, offers insight into the manner in which the mammary glands of mammals meet the incredible metabolic demands of milk production. As the normal pathways of breast development undoubtedly affect breast cancer, the findings may have therapeutic implications, the researchers said. The researchers found th...

Hay fever can send work productivity down the drain

Employers can blame hay fever for the loss of millions of hours of work productivity this spring. While missing an hour of work a week may seem small, consider that 20 to 50 million Am...

In presence of fragrant cleaning products, air purifiers that emit ozone can dirty the air

Indoor air purifiers that produce even small quantities of ozone may actually make the air dirtier when used at the same time as household cleaning products, scientists at UC Irvine have discovered. Ozone emitted by purifiers reacts in the air with unsaturated volatile organic compounds such as limonene ?a chemical added to cleaning supplies that gives them a lemon fragrance ?to create ad...

Scientists unravel clue in cortisol production

When a person's under stress or injured, the adrenal gland releases cortisol to help restore the body's functions to normal. But the hormone's effects are many and varied, lowering the activity of the immune system, helping create memories with short-term exposure, while impairing learning if there's too much for too long. Given the variety of its effects,understanding how cortisol is made is ess...

Scientists find method to pick noncompetitive animals, improve production

A new statistical method of determining genetic traits that influence social interactions among animals may provide for more productive livestock. Scientists from Purdue University, the Netherlands and England designed mathematical equations based on traits to choose animals that are more congenial in groups, said William Muir, a Purdue Department of Animal Sciences geneticist. The new me...

Genome sequencing reveals key to viable ethanol production

As the national push for alternative energy sources heats up, researchers at the University of Rochester have for the first time identified how genes responsible for biomass breakdown are turned on in a microorganism that produces valuable ethanol from materials like grass and cornstalks. Waste products such as grass clippings and wood chips—once thought too difficult to turn into ethanol—...

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' circadian rhythm (the roughly-24-hour cycle around which basic physiological processes proceed)....