Strains in Biological News

Scripps scientists develop new tests that identify lethal prion strains quickly and accurately

One of the new in vitro tests, called the Standard Scrapie Cell Assay, measures prion infectivity levels in a highly accurate and extremely rapid way, producing results in less than two weeks. The second test, called the Cell Panel Assay, allows researchers to quickly distinguish between several p...

Researchers recreate SARS virus, open door for potential defenses against future strains

CHAPEL HILL Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have synthetically reconstructed the bat variant of the SARS coronavirus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003. The scientists say designing and synthesizing the virus is ...

New test for most virulent HPV strains under study

A test for the two strains of human papillomavirus responsible for most cervical cancers is under study. The molecular assay uses a cervical scraping, like that for a liquid-based Pap smear, to test for HPV types 16 and 18, responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancers, says Dr. Daron G. Ferris...

Experimental vaccine protects lab animals against several strains of H5N1

Nations are preparing to stockpile vaccines against H5N1, the strain of influenza virus that experts fear could cause the next flu pandemic. But will these vaccines remain effective as the virus mutates? Researchers present good news in the July 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now a...

Human behavior changes the number of strains of infectious diseases

Simple models predict that only one strain of an infectious disease can exist at one time, but observation suggests otherwise. In a study in the August issue of The American Naturalist, Ken Eames and Matt Keeling (University of Warwick) use a mathematical model to help explain multiple strains, sho...

Emerging staph strains found to be increasingly deadly and deceptive

A study of how the immune system reacts to strains of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria--emerging strains that sicken otherwise healthy people, or so-called "community-acquired" infections--has shown for the first time that these strains are more deadly and better at evading human...

Less virulent strains of avian influenza can infect humans

In findings with implications for pandemic influenza, a new study reports for the first time that a less-virulent strain of avian influenza virus can spread from poultry to humans. The research appears in the October 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Crossing t...

Fibril Shape Is The Basis Of Prion Strains And Cross-species Prion Infection

New research on prions, the infectious proteins behind "mad cow" disease and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans, suggests that the ability of prions in one species to infect other species depends on the shape of the toxic threadlike fibers produced by the prion. Two studies on the topic appear in t...

K-State researcher, collaborators study virulence of pandemic H1N1 virus

... The researchers also studied the virulence of two strains of the pandemic H1N1 virus in a nonhuman primate model as a way to predict how the strains would affect humans. Comparing an isolate from Cal...So the big issue now is if these Tamiflu-resistant strains take over, we have no drug to treat infected patie...

Microbes and their hosts -- exploring the complexity of symbiosis in DNA and cell biology

...tening septicemia and meningitis. The authors demonstrate the presence of the type-3 secretion factors AexT and AexU in a variety of Aeromonas veronii strains and propose different functions for these two toxins. ...

Discovery to aid in future treatments of third-world parasites

...d individuals are high, and it is feared that widespread use may foster the emergence of drug-resistant variants, such as has seen with drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis. The body's immune response to schistosome infection, as with all immune responses, is coordinated by cytokines, small proteins s...

C. difficile spores spread superbug

...using a tractable model system. This will be invaluable in determining the role of spore formation in transmission and how and why some C. difficile strains are more virulent and transmissible than others." "It will also facilitate determining the host factors important in disease and will lead to bette...

Munich researchers discover new target for tailored antibiotics

... This release is available in German . More and more strains of bacteria are developing resistance to previously life-saving antibiotics...ring with their ability to produce essential compounds. Ever more bacterial strains are developing multiple antibiotic resistances, however, rendering previous...

Exploring standards to advance microbial genomics

...otein from each protein family or one species from each genus represents the group. Taking this one step farther, all the genes from all the sequenced strains in a species the pan-genome for that species would constitute the genome representing that species for gene comparisons. Sharing his vision for the...

The tiny difference in the genes of bacteria

...With this method we are able to identify bacterial strains as well as clarify their genetic relationships. Fu...th century. Interestingly, not all Vibrio cholerae strains are pathogenic to humans. Only those strains cause severe diarrhoea known as Cholera that produ...

The tiny difference in the genes of bacteria

...With this method we are able to identify bacterial strains as well as clarify their genetic relationships. Fu...th century. Interestingly, not all Vibrio cholerae strains are pathogenic to humans. Only those strains cause severe diarrhoea known as Cholera that produ...

Tryptophan deficiency may underlie quinine side effects

...evel and yeast is frequently, and successfully, used as front-line agents in testing chemicals and small molecule drugs. Their screen revealed that strains unable to make tryptophan were extremely susceptible to quinine poisoning, which led them to identify a tryptophan transporter as a key quinine target...

MicroRNAs help control HIV life cycle

...n and infectivity. The study also showed that inhibition of miR29 enhances viral replication and infectivity. The scientists further demonstrated that strains of HIV-1 with mutations in the region of the genome that interact with miR29 are not inhibited by miR29. "We think the virus may use this mechanis...

Tips from the journals of the American Society for Microbiology

...hreat of a pandemic is at its highest in decades, researchers are pursuing vaccine strategies that can induce cross-reactive immunity against multiple strains of influenza viruses. In prior research virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines have proven to be a promising new technology at preventing diseases in h...

Plant microbe shares features with drug-resistant pathogen

...ists were particularly interested in comparing two strains of S. maltophilia whose genomes were recently decoded to see why these strains - one isolated as an opportunistic pathogen from a...igued about similarities in the mechanisms the two strains use to colonize their respective environments. For...

Researchers from around the globe coming to K-State June 21 for workshop on Fusarium fungus

... commercial banana business in Central America. strains of this fungus pose a threat to the food supply, e...said that using DNA analysis to identify different strains has helped answer questions of more than 100 years...is that the breeder can now can screen against the strains that they really care about," he said. "The first ...

American Society for Microbiology honors Richard W. Castenholz

...logy and Evolutionary Biology. Castenholz is the curator and director of this unique collection of extremophilic microorganisms which holds over 1,200 strains and has a searchable website. His generosity in sharing cultures has been invaluable to the scientific community. . Dr. Castenholz received his Ph...

Rapid approach to identify influenza A virus mutations and drug resistance developed

...nH1N1) virus. Experts have been concerned that the evolutionary track of this new strain might lead to mutation or re-assortment with other influenza strains with the potential to produce a more deadly strain, as the world experienced with the 1918 strain. "With the development of this new system, the e...

International team tracks clues to HIV

...roblem -- we're not going to cure HIV," Barron cautioned. The hope, he said, is to develop a method for the rapid creation of drugs to address various strains of HIV and other diseases. Authors of the paper with Barron were Manthos Papadopoulos of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens; Serdar ...

New lead on malaria treatment

...ey next asked whether fumarranol could stop malaria parasites from growing in a culture dish. They treated both drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum and found that fumarranol could stop the parasite from multiplying. The team then gave mice infected with malaria fumarra...

Cholesterol-busting bug with a taste for waste

...ers are studying the genetics of this novel bacterium to genetically modify strains that might also be used to synthesise new and industrially useful breakdown... cholesterol so that we can identify and construct metabolically engineered strains that are more rapid and effective in breaking down cholesterol." ...

Bacteria create aquatic superbugs in waste treatment plants

...lly after treatment, the remaining bacteria was significantly more likely to resist multiple antibiotics than bacteria in water samples upstream. Some strains resisted as many as seven of eight antibiotics tested. The bacteria in samples taken 100 yards downstream also were more likely to resist multiple dru...

HudsonAlpha investigator develops rapid response swine flu test

... This technology can test for multiple genetic targets at one time and is the only rapid molecular test that can subtype multiple viral and bacterial strains in a single test. According to Dennis Grimaud, chief executive officer for Diatherix Laboratories, the viral respiratory panel allows physicians t...

Swine flu genes dissimilar to past pandemics

...ezak from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, America, published their analysis identifying 34 conserved amino acid markers from past pandemic flu strains two weeks ago. They have since studied sequences from the new virus and found that only about half of their 34 markers are present. Slezak said, "This...

Story tips From the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- May 2009

...f its kind, thousands of cottonwood cuttings planted in common gardens in British Columbia, Oregon and California will help scientists determine which strains are best suited for cellulosic ethanol production. This study, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, builds upon what scientists have for years observ...

SRI International receives $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant

...ntibiotic resistance and the need for broad-spectrum antibiotics. Resistant strains of tuberculosis will initially be screened. Based on those results, the pro...e treatable and lead to diseases that are difficult to cure. Drug resistant strains of tuberculosis pose a grave threat to global health because treatment opti...

Mosquito parasite may help fight dengue fever

...quitoes, such as Aedes aegypti , 40% of the world's population is believed to be at risk from the infection. What is more, previous exposure to other strains of the fever does not confer protection. In fact, subsequent infections are significantly worse, and can result in fatal dengue haemorrhagic fever. Th...

New technology shows promise against resistant staph infections

...y're in the hospital for other reasons. Staph infections can be deadly if the bacteria invade the bloodstream, heart, lungs, or urinary tract. As more strains of staph become resistant to common antibiotics, the need for new treatments has become urgent. The drug-delivery system, developed by Einstein sci...

Just in time for spring: Scientists find the cellular on and off switch for allergies and asthma

...ne marrow cells also use them as the "off switch" to stop mast cells from getting out of hand. Further supporting their discovery was the finding that strains of mice prone to allergies and asthma had genes which affected the production of this chemical "off switch" in their bone marrow. "The immune syste...

Avian flu research sheds light on swine flu outbreak

... with it, so humans have general immunity to human strains of avian influenza strains. But humans do not generally have immunity to avian flu strains because they have not been infected by them before...nt to escape the human immune response. Avian flu strains are therefore more dangerous for humans because th...

Alzheimer's, asthma, cancer, malaria and TB focus of new Singapore grants

...lion people worldwide, National Cancer Centre of Singapore (NCCS) scientists will sift through a bank of DNA samples extracted from drug-resistant MTB strains to identify novel mutated genes conferring resistance to Isoniazid, the main drug now used to treat tuberculosis. In Singapore, the incidence rat...

New study overturns orthodoxy on how macrophages kill bacteria

...be used in the study, is adept at evading these defenses. The most virulent strains of S. typhimurium can survive and even propagate inside macrophages, even...nt, showing that its function is independent of the cytoplasm. Moreover, strains lacking SodC were impaired only in the presence of superoxide produced in m...

IVCC and Syngenta start project for novel insecticidal active ingredient for malaria control

...oject aims to identify lead candidate compounds for a new active ingredient that is effective against adult mosquitoes, in particular against mosquito strains which have developed resistance to the existing pesticides. The Syngenta chemical collection contains more than 2.5 million distinct chemical substan...

UT Southwestern researchers probe kidney damage, protection in lupus

...ating this disease," he said. In the first study, which appears in the April issue of The Journal of Immunology, the researchers examined several strains of mice that mimic human lupus. They found that immune cells in those mice overproduced a particular molecule called CXCR4. In fact, the mice had up t...

Genes from tiny marine algae suggest unsuspected avenues for new research

... an ecologist starting out on this project, I was trying to find out what genes were 'special' to each genome, or those shared by the two Micromonas strains but not other competitors. By looking at the function of such genes we could then learn more about the different niches of these organisms... It turns...