Secret

Protein discovery could unlock the secret to better TB treatment

UCL scientists have found a protein that could unlock the secret to quicker, more effective treatment of TB by waking TB bacteria in the body. Once the TB bacteria are active again, the disease becomes treatable using common drugs like antibiotics. Scientists believe that uncovering the molecular structure of this protein will lead the way to designing drugs which enable treatment of dormant and...

UW's Rosetta software to unlock secrets of many human proteins

University of Washington TechTransferrecently licensed software that will give scientists a huge advantagein the fight against disease.The software, known as Rosetta, predicts how proteins fold, informationthat is highly valuable to biological and biomedical researchers.UW Tech Transfer's Digital Ventures licensed Rosetta software withoutcharge to the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), a...

The secret to longevity in tubeworms

With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years the deep sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrient ?in the form of sulfide - to keep going for this long has been a mystery. In a paper just published in the premier open-access online journal PLoS Biology, Erik Cordes and colleagues now provide a solution: by releasing its...

The secret lives of whales

Using genetics, Navy sonar, deep-sea submersibles, and toxicology, scientists are peering into the lives of whales ?past and present ?in ways never before possible. At a 3:00 PM press conference on February 19th at the annual meeting of AAAS, Steve Palumbi of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, Christopher W. Clark of Cornell University, Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii and Roger Payne of t...

Needling Chromosomes Reveals Cell Division Secret

By impaling individual chromosomes with glassneedles one thousandth the diameter of a human hair, a Duke Universitygraduate student has tested their "stickiness" to one another duringcell division. Her uncanny surgical skills have added a piece to thelarge and intricate puzzle of how one cell divides into two -- aprocess fundamental to all organisms.In the Dec. 14, 2004, issue of Current Bi...

Weill Cornell Research Reveals Secrets Of Trafficking Within Cells

As you read this, cells in your eye are transmitting information to your brain, while cells in your heart and arteries work just as hard to keep that brain alive. Every one of these cells -- and others throughout the body -- depends on an internal process called endocytosis to keep the flow of cellular nutrients and information healthy and strong. It's an incredibly important life process,...

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...

Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication

It's a cloudless July afternoon in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, and ecologist Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell is scanning the horizon for elephants. "It's so fantastic here," she says. "We're constantly seeing elephants, rhinos, zebras, ostriches--it's the Garden of Eden." A research associate in the Stanford University School of Medicine, O'Connell-Rodwell has come to one of Afric...

Marine sponge yields nanoscale secrets

The simple marine sponge is inspiring cutting-edge research in the design of new materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A report about these exciting new results involving the use of gold nanoparticles is the cover story of the current issue of the scientific journal, Advanced Materials. The article is written by Daniel E. Morse, professor of molecular, cellular and dev...

Protein Discovery Could Unlock The Secret To Better TB Treatment

UCL scientists have found a protein that could unlock the secret to quicker, more effective treatment of TB by waking TB bacteria in the body. Once the TB bacteria are active again, the disease becomes treatable using common drugs like antibiotics. Scientists believe that uncovering the molecular structure of this protein will lead the way to designing drugs which enable treatment of dormant and...

Secret of smallpox's success may lead to bioterror cure

In disease, as in war, offensive strategies can become weaknesses, if the defenders see the enemy coming and compensate for its weapons. By manipulating what is perhaps the most devastating trick in cellular weaponry of pox viruses like smallpox, Arizona State University virologist and Biodesign Institute researcher Bertram Jacobs believes that he can turn the biochemical machinery of the...

Climatologists discover deep-sea secret

Climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres are linked by a phenomenon by which the oceans react to changes on either side of the planet. A research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Cardiff University has shown for the first time that ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere has, in the past, adapted to sudden changes in the north. The research published to...

Researchers reveal secrets of flying snakes

It seems size does matters after all. But for flying snakes, smaller is better, according to University of Chicago researchers. "Despite their lack of wing-like appendages, flying snakes ar...

Researchers reveal secret of key protein in brain and heart function

Brown University biologists have solved the structure of a critical piece of synapse-associated protein 97 (SAP97) found in abundance in the heart and head, where it is believed to play a role in everything from cardiac contractions to memory creation. Results are published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Dale Mierke, associate professor of medical science at Brown, said that knowi...

Study: Well-known protein helps stem cells become secretory cells

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a single protein regulates secretion levels in the fruit fly's salivary gland and its skin-like outer layer. Th...

New tool reveals secrets of migrating cells

Called two-photon laser-scanning microscopy, it has revealed, for...

Secrets of the deep may hold key to life on other planets

Leeds researchers use NERC grant to understand extreme sea creaturesExtraordinary creatures who inhabit extreme underwater conditions are being investigated by University scientists in a three-year project. These deep-sea communities could reveal an evolutionary history different to anything else on earth and even give us clues to how life could exist onother planets. The creatures live a...

Secrets to antibody's success against West Nile Virus surprise scientists

Insights may advance vaccines for related viruses including dengue fever. A monoclonal antibody that can effectively treat mice infected with West Nile virus has an intriguing secret: Contrary to scientists' expectations, it does not block the virus's ability to attach to host cells. Instead, the antibody somehow stops the infectious process at a later point. "This was a complete surprise...

Secret sex life of killer fungus?

Aspergillus fumigatus is a medically important fungus, causing potentially life-threatening infections in patients with weakened immune systems. It is also a major cause of respiratory allergy, and it is implicated in asthma as well. The fungus has always been thought to lack the ability to reproduce sexually, but new discoveries by a multinational group of scientists indicate that the fungus has...

Study uncovers dirty little secret: Soil emissions are much-bigger-than-expected component of air pollution

Nitrogen oxides produced by huge fires and fossil fuel combustion are a major component of air pollution. They are the primary ingredients in ground-level ozone, a pollutant harmful to human health and vegetation. But new research led by a University of Washington atmospheric scientist shows that, in some regions, nitrogen oxides emitted by the soil are much greater than expected and could...

Plants reveal a secret and bring researchers nearer a cleaner future

Using sunlight to power our homes and offices is an unaccomplished dream due to the still inefficient technology for a better use of solar energy. The study of photosynthesis in plants could provide new clues by explaining how they absorb almost 100% of the sun-light reaching them, and how they transform it into other forms of energy. Researchers Michael Haumann and Holger Dau, from the Fr...

Study Unlocks Insects?Secret for Love in the Dark

Could improve prediction of patient outcomes, lead to tailored treatmentsWhen it comes to inflammation, too much of a good thing can be deadly. In some severely injured patients, this normal healing process can develop into a lethal, whole-body response, including bloodstream infection (sepsis) and multiple organ failure. How and why inflammation turns from healing to harming is still mysterious,...

The secret love life of plants

A large portion of plant seeds is endosperm. It has the important task of nourishing the plant embryo during the early stages of its development. In flowering plants, there is a complicated double-fertilisation mechanism that arises among embryos and endosperm. They develop together into mature seeds. The exact process, and the communication between the two parts of the seeds, has been un...

MIT chemist discovers secret behind nature's medicines

MIT scientists have just learned another lesson from nature. After years of wondering how organisms managed to create self-medications, such as anti-fungal agents, chemists have discovered the simple secret. Scientists already knew that a particular enzyme was able to coax a reaction out of stubborn chemical concoctions to generate a large family of medically valuable compounds called halo...

UW-Madison engineers squeeze secrets from proteins

Proteins, one of the basic components of living things, are among the most studied molecules in biochemistry. Understanding how proteins form or "fold" from sequenced strings of amino acids has long been one of the grand challenges of biology. A common belief holds that the more proteins are confined by their environment, the more stable - or less likely to unfold - they become. Now, as r...

The secret life of algae

A fundamental process that has puzzled researchers for many years has been explained by UK scientists. Some simple plants that are crucial in maintaining the balance of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere require vitamin B12 to grow properly but it has been a mystery to scientists why some types needed external sources and others did not. Now researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent hav...

Uncovering sex-change secrets of black sea bass

In a former cowshed on the edge of the University of New Hampshire campus, David Berlinsky, assistant professor of zoology, peers into a big blue plastic tub. Inside, black sea bass circle slowly in the dim light. The converted barn is now an aquaculture research facility for the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, and home to Berlinsky's latest research. Black sea bass feature promi...

Secrets of the sea yield stronger artificial bone

The next generation of artificial bone may rely on a few secrets from the sea. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have harnessed the way seawater freezes to develop a porous, scaffolding-like material that is four times stronger than material currently used in synthetic bone. Although still in the investigational stages, var...

Malignant melanoma cells secrete protein required for embryo formation

A Northwestern University research group has discovered that aggressive melanoma cells secrete Nodal, a protein that is critical to proper embryo formation. An article describing this research was published today in the advanced online issue of the journal Nature Medicine. The researchers identified the potent and highly unstable embryonic growth factor by injecting aggressive melanoma c...

Think fast! Rice undergrad unlocks nerve speed secret

In the second it takes you to read these words, tens of thousands of vesicles in your optic nerves are released in sequence, opening tiny surface pores to pass chemical signals to the next cell down the line, telling your brain what you're seeing and your eyes where to move. Thanks to two new studies ?including one spearheaded by an undergraduate biochemistry student at Rice University and publis...

Bacteria give up secrets in war waged on plants

The secret weapon of bacteria -- the way they get a foothold in plants to launch an invasion -- is less of a secret, according to research published this week by Michigan State University scientists. Under study is the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, better known as the disease agent of bacterial speck. The pathogen reared its speckled head in tomatoes, causing serious crop loss....

Researchers find 'secret weapon' used by SARS virus

In 2003, the highly contagious and often-deadly mystery disease now called SARS emerged explosively out of Southern China. It eventually killed an estimated 916 people in Asia, Europe, and North and South America--nearly one in ten of those it infected. When scientists identified the virus that caused this sudden acute respiratory syndrome, they classified it as a coronavirus--a virus f...

3-D model reveals secrets of metastasis

A cancer cell breaks away from a primary tumor and settles in a new location, where it once again divides. Pharmaceutical companies typically use simplistic two-dimensional assays for this process, which is known as metastasis, to evaluate anti-cancer therapeutics. In these assays, cells crawl across the surface of a matrix, traveling in a single plane. But a new study indicates that this approac...

The secret lives of sea slugs

It turns out that the sea slug isn't really that sluggish after all. So says the first broad field study of this charismatic orange creature's behavior in the wild, which was just published in the April 2006 issue of The Biological Bulletin. The new research is significant because the sea slug known as Tritonia diomedea, a nudibranch mollusc species found in the shallow northeast Pacific,...

UVa researchers seek to unlock broccoli's cancer fighting secret

After all these years, mom was right. She knew broccoli was good for you, she just didn't know it was this good. "Everyone knows broccoli is good for you and that it contains compounds known to lessen the occurrence of some types of cancer. We want to know how these compounds work and what their specific targets may be," says Janet V. Cross, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology at the U...

From hot springs to rice farms, scientists reveal new insights into the secret lives of archaea

In the world of microbes, as in politics, some groups just can't seem to shake the label ''extremist.'' So it is with archaea (ar-KEY-uh), a collection of bacteria-like microorganisms whose unique genetics and chemical structure separate them from all other living things. For years, biologists have pigeonholed archaea as extremophiles-creatures that live in extreme conditions. Indeed, many...

Scientists crack genetic secrets of human egg

The human egg's ability to transform into a new life, or into new cells that may someday save lives, is well documented.The mystery lies in the mechanics - in how a single cell can transform so nimbly. Scientists at Michigan State University report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have identified genes unique to the human egg. The identification...

Uncovering DNA's 'sweet' secret

DNA's simple and elegant structure - the "twisted ladder," with sugar-phosphate chains making up the "rails" and oxygen- and nitrogen-containing chemical "rungs" tenuously uniting the two halves - seems to be the work of an accomplished sculptor. J...

One-of-a-kind imaging probe reveals secrets useful for drug discovery

Good things may indeed come in small packages for scientists eager to find natural substances to help cure diseases. The challenge is to analyze material that is smaller than the proverbial gnat's eyelash. But using a refined version of nuclear magnetic resonance technology, or NMR, scientists have unlocked secrets hidden in tiny amounts of venom taken from spindly insects called common tw...

Tears reveal some of their deepest secrets to researchers

It's no secret why we shed tears. But exactly what our tears are made of has remained a mystery to scientists. A new study sheds some light on the complex design of tears. What we think of as tears, scientists call tear film, which is made up of three distinct, microscopic layers. The middle, watery layer ?what we normally think of as tears when we cry ?is sandwiched between a layer of muc...