Ras

Yale Scientists Find MicroRNA Regulates Ras Cancer Gene

Research in the laboratory of Assistant Professor Frank J. Slack at Yale University has identified a new way that a familiar gene is regulated in lung cancer, presenting new possibilities for diagnosis and treatment. The work is reported in March issues of the journals Cell and Developmental Cell. The oncogene Ras is out of control in about 20 percent of cancers where it is over-expressed...

Introduced foxes transformed vegetation on Aleutian Islands from lush grasslands to tundra

Huge colonies of seabirds accustomed to nesting on islands free of predators began disappearing when fur traders started introducing foxes onto islands in the Aleutian archipelago in the 18th century. The ground-nesting birds made easy meals for the foxes. A study published this week in the journal Science now shows that the effects of the introduced foxes rippled through entire island ecosystems...

Scientists reveal molecular secrets of the malaria parasite

In an innovative project with implicationsfor malaria vaccine development, scientists have used genomics,proteomics and gene expression studies to trace how malaria parasitesevolve on a molecular level as they move between their hosts and insectvectors.That focus on the parasites' complex life cycle is helping researchersunderstand when different genes switch on and off as the pathogensmet...

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...

In the migratory marathon, parasitized monarchs drop out early

A little-stud...

Protein offers way to stop microscopic parasites in their tracks

Scientists may have found a way to throw a wrench in the transmissions of several speed demons of the parasite world. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have identified a protein that could help them develop drugs to stop or slow cell invasion by malaria and other parasites known as apicomplexans. Results of the study will appear in...

Yale researchers identify molecule for detecting parasitic infection in humans

Researchers at Yale, in collaboration with NIH researchers, have identified a specific protein molecule that is used by the immune system for detection of parasitic infections, leading the way for development of future vaccines to combat these infections. Published in the April 28 issue of Science Express, the study provides insight into understanding how infectious parasites interface wit...

Pulsating ultrasound enhances gene therapy for tumors

High-intensity focused ultrasound emitted in short pulses is a promising, non-invasive procedure for enhancing gene delivery to cancerous cells without destroying healthy tissue, according to a study in the May issue of the journal Radiology. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is more powerful than standard ultrasound. HIFU can destroy tumors through long and continuous exposures tha...

A human parasite with a streamlined mitochondrion

Mitochondria, as they are defined in textbooks, are essential for eukaryotic cells--including our own--because they make large amounts of energy as they use oxygen. However, some eukaryotic cells, including important parasites of humans--such as Entamoeba histolytica, the causal agent of amoebic dysentery--live in environments that are too oxygen poor to support this process. Nevertheless, Entamo...

Grasping metaphors: UC San Diego research ties brain area to figures of speech

What does it take to fathom a proverb ?catch the figurative meaning of "an apple doesn't fall far from the tree"? According to research led by V. S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, a region of the brain known as the angular gyrus is probably at least partly responsible for the human ability to understand metaphor.</p...

Biochemists report discovery of structure of major piece of telomerase; implications for cancer

UCLA biochemists have determined the three-dimensional structure of a major domain of telomerase, the enzyme that helps maintain telomeres ?small pieces of DNA on the ends of chromosomes that act as protective caps -- allowing DNA ends to be copied completely when cells are replicated. This is the first major piece of telomerase for which the structure is known. Telomerase plays a key rol...

Grass makes environmentally friendly biofuel

Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States. This alternative fuel easily could be produced and pelleted by farmers a...

Invasive parasite destroying fish species

Assistant Professor Mark Pagani in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale and his colleagues mapped the first detailed history of atmospheric carbon dioxide between 45 - 25 million years ago based on stable isotopes of carbon in a National Science Foundation study reported in Science Express. "Through the energy we consume, each of us makes a contribution to increasing greenhouse...

Wild grasses and man-made wheats advance research capabilities

Getting resistance to the latest biotype of greenbug or rust in wheat may require some bridge building. "We're looking for new unique sources of resistance to var...

Movie spies on malaria parasite's sneaky behavior

Malaria has been outsmarting the human immune system for centuries. Now, using real-time imaging to track malaria infections in live mice, researchers have discovered one of the parasite's sneakiest tricks--using dead liver cells to cloak and transport itself back into the bloodstream after leaving the liver. Robert Ménard, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research s...

Measuring hidden parasites in falciparum malaria

A new technique for measuring hidden malaria parasites and assessing severity of disease is described in a paper published on Aug 23rd in . Researchers led by Professor Nick White from Mahidol University, Thailand, looked at patients with the most dangerous type of malaria, falciparum malaria. Usually the severity of disease is measured by counting the number of parasites in t...

Hybrid grass may prove to be valuable fuel source

Giant Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high, may be a valuable renewable fuel source for the future, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say. Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology, recently took that message to Dublin, Ireland, where the British Association for the Advancement of Science sponso...

Three deadly parasite genomes sequenced

Covering ship hulls with artificial shark skin could help ships sailing smoothly. The growth of marine organisms such as barnacles on ship hulls is a major cause of increased energy costs in the naval industry. Shark skin offers a structural design that prevents this so called 'bio-fouling'. Ralph Liedert from the University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany, is presenting his work on t...

Researchers at UGA provide first look at protein expression in Chagas disease-causing parasites

Covering ship hulls with artificial shark skin could help ships sailing smoothly. The growth of marine organisms such as barnacles on ship hulls is a major cause of increased energy costs in the naval industry. Shark skin offers a structural design that prevents this so called 'bio-fouling'. Ralph Liedert from the University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany, is presenting his work on t...

Researchers discover how malaria parasite disperses from red blood cells

Researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have determined the sequence in which the malaria parasite disperses from the red blood cells it infects. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is one of the Institutes comprising the National Institutes of Health. "This discover...

'Gadonanotubes' greatly outperform existing MRI contrast agents

Researchers at Rice University, the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Houston and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created a new class of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents that are at least 40 times more effective than the best in clinical use. The new agents -- dubbed gadonanotubes -- use the same highly toxic metal, gadolinium, t...

Field tested: Grasslands won't help buffer climate change as carbon dioxide levels rise

UCLA biochemists reveal the first structural details of a family of mysterious objects called microcompartments that seem to be present in a variety of bacteria. The discovery was published Aug. 5 in the journal Science. "This is the first look at how microcompartments are built, and what the pieces look like," said Todd O. Yeates, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and a member...

System Drastically Cuts Down Botulism Detection Time

A new study reveals critical molecular events in the origin of fat cells. The findings are central to understanding chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, as fat cells produce hormones critical for metabolic control, the researchers said. The study finds that a hormonal cocktail routinely used in the lab induces a key genetic switch in the transition from fat-cell precursors to fu...

US/African project deciphers deadly parasite genome

An innovative North-South research collaboration has culminated in a study published in this week's Science that provides molecular clues to help develop new ways to treat or prevent East Coast fever. The disease, which kills a million cattle a year in East and Central Africa, has had a devastating impact on rural areas ?such as Maasai tribal communities in Kenya ?where cattle play a cruc...

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 optimally respond to such inputs. Neuronal circuitry consists of a web of neurons, each trig...

Gene that helps mosquitoes fight off malaria parasite identified

Researchers have identified a gene in mosquitoes that helps the insects to fight off infection by the Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria in humans. Anopheles mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite to nearly 550 million people worldwide each year with these cases resulting in more than 2 million deaths annually. The protective gene was identified in a study conducted by a team of investig...

A little telomerase isn't enough

With seed money from Johns Hopkins Institute of Cell Engineering, a Johns Hopkins geneticist and her team have discovered a critical link between the health of stem cells and the length of the chromosome ends within them. Chromosome ends, or telomeres, are repetitive stretches of DNA that protect chromosomes in much the same way as plastic tips on shoelaces prevent the fabric from fraying....

Sleeping sickness parasite shows how cells divide their insides

Researchers at Yale have brought to light a mechanism that regulates the way an internal organelle, the Golgi apparatus, duplicates as cells prepare to divide, according to a report in Science Express. ,...

Penn researchers study the use of ultrasound for treatment of cancer

For the first time, ultrasound is being used in animal models ?to treat cancer by disrupting tumor blood vessels. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine completed a study in mice in which they used ultrasound both to see a tumor's blood perfusion and then to treat it with a continuous wave of low-level ultrasound. After three minutes of treatment at an intensity similar...

Chlamydia parasite lives off our fat

Invasive bacterial pathogens, the Chlamydiae know us very, very well. The Chlamydiae learned to parasitize eukaryotic cells half a billion years ago by reprogramming cellular functions from within. In humans today, chlamydial infections are responsible for a range of ailments from sexually transmitted infections to atypical pneumonias to chronic severe disorders such as pelvic inflammatory diseas...

Researchers develop new method to help find deadly malaria parasite's Achilles heel

The most deadly malaria parasite has protein 'wiring' that differs markedly from the cellular circuitry of other higher organisms, a finding which could lead to the development of antimalarial drugs that exploit that difference. Researchers at UCSD have discovered that the single-cell parasite responsible for an estimated 1 million deaths per year worldwide from malaria has protein "wiring" that...

3D ultrasound device poised to advance minimally invasive surgery

Three-dimensional ultrasound probes built by researchers at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering have imaged the beating hearts of dogs. The engineers said their demonstration showed that the probes could give surgeons a better view during human endoscopic surgeries in which operations are performed through tiny "keyhole" incisions. If the probes prove beneficial in human testing, the advanc...

Ultrasounds show mothers' drinking shrinks fetal brain

Routine ultrasounds show that heavy drinkers who continue to imbibe after learning they are pregnant may carry fetuses with reduced skull and brain growth compared to those of abstainers or quitters, says a new study. Although the alcohol-exposed babies' growth remained within normal range, the findings reveal effects of drinking on the developing human brain. The study will appear in the...

Gene needed for butterfly transformation also key for insects like grasshoppers

It is a marvel of nature that a creature such as a caterpillar changes into something quite different, a butterfly. Contrast that with a grasshopper, which looks largely the same from the time it hatches through its adult stage. New University of Washington research shows that a regulatory gene named broad, known to be necessary for development of insects that undergo complete metamorphos...

Malaria parasites develop in lymph nodes

In the first quantitative, real-time imaging study of the travels of the malaria parasite Plasmodium through mammalian tissue, researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris found the parasites developing in an unexpected place: the lymph nodes. The parasites' presence in the lymph nodes almost certainly has implications for the mammalian immune response, said Robert Ménard, a Howard Hughes...

Bringing the zoos to the zebras

Princeton biologist reports at AAAS on partnership with St. Louis Zoo to empower Kenyan communities in endangered Grevy's zebra conservation The Grevy's zebra is the most endangered member of the horse family in the world, with an estimated 2000 left in the wild. More than 70 percent of these live in the Samburu region of northern Kenya, most of them on unprotected community lands. Now an...

The evolution of food plants: Genetic control of grass flower architecture

Scientists are interested in understanding genetic control of grass inflorescence architecture because seeds of cereal grasses (e.g. rice, wheat, maize) provide most of the world's food. Grass seeds are borne on axillary branches, whose branching patterns dictate most of the variation in form seen in the grasses. Maize produces two types of inflorescence; the tassel (male pollen-bearing fl...

UC San Diego partners with Venter Institute to build marine microbial genomics cyberinfrastructure

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) will build a state-of-the-art computational resource and develop software tools to decipher the genetic code of communities of microbial life in the world's oceans. The new resource will help scientists understand how microbes function in their natural ecosystems, enable studies on the effect humans are having on the environmen...

Rare Chinese frogs communicate by means of ultrasonic sound

First came word that a rare frog (Amolops tormotus) in China sings like a bird, then that the species produces very high-pitch ultrasonic sounds. Now scientists say that these concave-eared torrent frogs also hear and respond to the sounds. The findings, to appear in the March 16 issue of Nature, represent the first documented case of an amphibian being able to communicate like bats, whale...

Worm hormone discovery may aid fight against parasitic disease

New research at UT Southwestern Medical Center shows that on a biochemical level, hormone-like molecules in tiny worms called nematodes work similarly to the way in which certain hormones work in humans ?findings that one day may help eradicate worm infections that afflict a third of the world's population. UT Southwestern researchers have discovered a molecule that activates genes involve...