TOX

Solution to Pollution: New Bacteria Eats Toxic Waste

Utah State University researchers recently discovered a new bacteria that is a natural cleanser for contaminated soil. The bacteria, now being used around the world, is an inexpensive and highly effective solution to pollution. “This project shows mother nature’s capability to be a master engineer,?said Ron Sims, biological and irrigation engineering department head. “Past disposal practi...

New comparative toxicogenomics database

Scientists at St. Jude Children's ResearchHospital have discovered that the shape of a protein on the surface ofpneumonia bacteria helps these germs invade the human bloodstream. Thisfinding, published Dec. 16 online by the EMBO Journal, could helpscientists develop a vaccine that is significantly more effective atprotecting children against the disease. The St. Jude researchersdetermined t...

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists hasfound the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immunesystem's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a milliondifferent proteins might have originated from a family of genes whoseonly apparent function is to jump around in genetic material. essentially cut...

Duke Chemists Isolating Individual Molecules Of Toxic Protein In Alzheimer's, Parkinson's Disease

To understand the formation of the brain-clogging deposits that cause such disorders as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, Duke University chemists have figured out how to capture and "micromanipulate" the single molecular building blocks of the deposits. Their aim is to understand the detailed assembly process for the toxic protein called amyloid plaque. Such basic understanding, they...

MetaChip provides quick, efficient toxicity screening of potential drugs

A large, multisite trial designed to examine the safety and preliminary effectiveness of two candidate topical microbicides to prevent HIV infection has opened to volunteer enrollment. The trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, represents a partnership among various research institutions in Africa and the U...

Defensins neutralize anthrax toxin

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a link between a critical cancer pathway and an Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) protein known to be expressed in a number of EBV-associated cancers. Their findings demonstrate a new mechanism by which EBV transforms human B cells from the immune system into cancerous cells, which can lead to development of B-cell lymphomas....

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...

Same-Sex Mating Discovered in a Toxic Fungus

An infectious fungus has been found to defy the most basic tenet of sexual reproduction ?that successful mating requires individuals of the opposite sex, according to Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers at Duke University Medical Center. In the April 21, 2005, issue of Nature, the researchers reported that, in the infectious fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, members of the same "sex"...

Evolution of taste receptor may have shaped human sensitivity to toxic compounds

Researchers have found new evidence suggesting that the ability to taste bitter compounds has been strongly advantageous in human evolution. Animals rely on chemical perception, including the senses of taste and smell, for protection against the harmful compounds found in nature. It is widely believed that behavioral and dietary choices may have reduced the importance of such chemical perc...

Green catalyst destroys pesticides and munitions toxins, finds Carnegie Mellon University

Results reported at American Chemical Society meetingA chemical catalyst developed at Carnegie Mellon University completely destroys dangerous nitrophenols in laboratory tests, according to Arani Chanda, a doctoral student who is presenting his findings on Sunday, Aug. 28, at the 230th meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C. (Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemi...

Tetanus toxin found to have therapeutic properties

A team of researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute of Neuroscience at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has discovered that tetanus toxin, which causes tetanus, could be extremely useful as a therapy against psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and anorexia, and to slow the progress of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson'...

UNC computer, marine scientists collaborate to predict flow of toxic waters from Katrina

In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, scientists and research centers from across the country came together to generate information on the contaminated floodwaters and offer it to hazardous materials experts and public health officials. In a matter of hours, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Marine Sciences Program and Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), together...

Structures of marine toxins provide insight into their effectiveness as cancer drugs

Vibrantly colored creatures from the depths of the South Pacific Ocean harbor toxins that potentially can act as powerful anti-cancer drugs, according to research findings from University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemists and their Italian colleagues. The research team has defined the structure of the toxins and provided a basic understanding that can be used to synthesize pharmaceuticals,...

Toxic flood lifts lid on common urban pollution problem

Broken sewers, flooded industrial plants and dead bodies are all likely to blame for poisoning the waters being drained from New Orleans. So sa...

Genomics researchers discover protein deficit that causes drug toxicity

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered an inherited structural mechanism that can make drugs for some diseases toxic for some patients. The mechanism decreases a protein and in turn causes certain individuals to metabolize thiopurine drugs differently. Thiopurine therapies are used to treat patients with childhood leukemia, autoimmune diseases and organ transplants. The Mayo researchers say thei...

'Cookbook recipes' would cure disease with nontoxic DNA delivery systems

Scientists studying the structure and interaction of negatively charged lipids and DNA molecules have created a "cookbook" for a class of nontoxic DNA delivery systems that will assist doctors and clinicians in the safe and effective delivery of genetic medicine. As reported in the Aug. 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have now performed a careful...

Modifications render carbon nanotubes nontoxic

In follow-on work to last year's groundbreaking toxicological study on water-soluble buckyballs, researchers at Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) find that water-soluble carbon nanotubes are significantly less toxic to begin with. Moreover, the research finds that nanotubes, like buckyballs, can be rendered nontoxic with minor chemical modifications.<...

Prenatal exposure to marine toxin causes lasting damage

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that the naturally occurring marine toxin domoic acid can cause subtle but lasting cognitive damage in rats exposed to the chemical before birth. Humans can become poisoned by the potentially lethal, algal toxin after eating contaminated shellfish. The researchers saw behavioral effects of the toxin in animals after prenatal exposure t...

Polymer gel can block toxic leakage problem in gene therapy

Duke University biomedical engineers have devised a potentially patentable method to arrest toxic leakages of genetically engineered viruses that have plagued attempts to use gene therapy against cancerous tumors. The problem has been that viruses carrying anti-tumor genes have tended to leak from tumors, proving toxic to other body tissues. The researchers have developed a biocompatible p...

Katrina floodwaters not as toxic to humans as previously thought, study says

The floodwaters that inundated New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina were similar in content to the city?s normal storm water and were not as toxic as previously thought, according to a study by researchers at Louisiana State University. Their study, the first peer-reviewed scientific assessment of the water quality of the Katrina floodwaters, is good news for those who've been expo...

UCSD study finds anthrax toxins also harmful to fruit flies

Deadly and damaging toxins that allow anthrax to cause disease and death in mammals have similar toxic effects in fruit flies, according to a study conducted by biologists at the University of California, San Diego. Their findings, which appear this week in an early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that fruit flies can be used to study the...

Driver of anthrax toxicity could lead to late-stage therapy

A study in the March 24 Cell reports the discovery of a gene that drives anthrax bacteria's toxic effects. The gene could offer a potential new target for countermeasures against the lethal toxin, according to the researchers. Such therapies might have the potential to protect against anthrax during the late stages of the disease, after antibiotics have lost their therapeutic value, they a...

Scientists design potent anthrax toxin inhibitor

Scientists funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have engineered a powerful inhibitor of anthrax toxin that worked well in small-scale animal tests. "This novel approach to the design of anthrax antitoxin is an important advance, not only for the value it may have in anthrax treatment, but also because...

New nano-canary in the nanotoxicology coalmine: The body itself

There is growing consensus among scientists, regulators, politicians, industry and the public that we need to know more about the possible harmful or adverse effects of nanoparticles on human health. Likewise, most agree that these incredibly small materials can behave quite differently from conventional materials. Nonetheless, neighborhood stores feature products that promise benefits f...

Anthrax inhibitor counteracts toxin, may lead to new therapeutics

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Toronto have designed a nanoscale assembly of molecules that successfully counteracts and inhibits anthrax toxin in animal and laboratory experiments. The novel approach used to neutralize anthrax toxin could be applied in designing potent therapeutics for a variety of pathogens and toxins, according to the researchers. <...

Botox could help target resistant tumors for treatment

The cosmetic treatment Botox may have a new use as an adjuvant to cancer therapy, providing an open door for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, according to a study published in the Feb. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research. The study in mice, led by Bernard Gallez, Ph.D., professor of pharmacy at the Université de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium, found that by injecting Botulinum neurot...

Scientists reveal how deadly toxin hijacks cells

Scientists have pinpointed exactly how botulinum neurotoxin A - a potential agent of biological warfare and one of the most lethal toxins known to man - is able to sneak into cells. The finding is crucial for the development of new treatments against botulism, a paralytic illness caused by the toxin more commonly known as botox. As small amounts of botox are also known to alleviate many m...

Scientists develop a way to make the deadliest toxin known even more toxic

According to the study, the molecules bind to specific sites on the neurotoxin protein, increasing protease activity and enhancing the toxin's effect. In some cases, the study noted, the activation power of the new molecules was as much as fourteen-fold, the greatest increase in activation ever reported for a protease; before this study, a two-fold activation of a protease was referred to as a st...

Dogs keep dying: Many owners unaware of toxic dog food

Even though Diamond, Country Value and Professional brand dog foods have been recalled for containing highly toxic aflatoxins, they have caused at least 100 dog deaths in recent weeks, say Cornell University veterinarians, who are growing increasingly alarmed. Some kennels and consumers around the nation and possibly in more than two dozen other countries remain unaware of the tainted food, and a...

Yale researchers find environmental toxins disruptive to hearing in mammals

Yale School of Medicine researchers have new data showing chloride ions are critical to hearing in mammals, which builds on previous research showing a chemical used to keep barnacles off boats might disrupt the balance of these ions in ear cells. "Our data are the first to directly show that chloride ions are crucial for our exquisite sense of hearing," said Joseph Santos-Sacchi, professo...

Data published in PNAS show antibodies can be made 10 times more toxic to cancer cells

Engineering the "Fc" region of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) increases their toxicity to cancer cells, potentially improving the utility of targeted cancer therapies, according to research conducted at Xencor, which will be published in the March 14 print issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Monoclonal antibodies have important advantages over chemotherapy a...

Evolution mystery: Spider venom and bacteria share same toxin

It's a case of evolutionary detective work. Biology researchers at Lewis & Clark College and the University of Arizona have found evidence for an ancient transfer of a toxin between ancestors of two very dissimilar organisms--spiders and a bacterium. But the mystery remains as how the toxin passed between the two organisms. Their research is published this month in the journal Bioinformatics,...

Mosquito spray increases toxicity of pyrethroids in creek, study finds

A relatively benign compound contained in a widely used group of insecticides can mix with and increase the toxicity of existing pesticides in the environment, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

Key stress protein linked to toxicities responsible for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's

Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research have discovered a mechanistic link between cellular stress caused by free radicals and accumulation of misfolded proteins that lead to nerve cell injury and death in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. That link is Protein Disulphide Isomerase (PDI), a chaperone protein that is necessary for pr...

Toxic molecule may cause most common type of muscular dystrophy

Doctors at the University of Virginia Health System have shown for the first time that getting rid of poisonous RNA (ribonucleic acid) in muscle cells can reverse myotonic dystrophy, the most common type of muscular dystrophy in adults. About 40,000 people in the United States have myotonic muscular dystrophy (MMD). The disease can cause a slow, progressive wasting of the muscles, irregul...

Variations in detoxifying genes linked to Lou Gehrig's disease

Genetic variations in three enzymes that detoxify insecticides and nerve gas agents as well as metabolize cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may be a risk factor for developing sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), and possibly responsible for a reported twofold increased risk of ALS in Gulf War veterans. These findings, from a study led Teepu Siddique, M.D...

Cell death following blood 'reflow' injury tracked to natural toxin

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered what they believe is the "smoking gun" responsible for most tissue and organ damage after a period of blood oxygen loss followed by a sudden restoration of blood oxygen flow. Working with mice, the Hopkins team found that the sudden oxygen bath triggered by restored blood flow causes cells to make a chemical so toxic it kills the cells. The wo...

A new understanding of how cells defend themselves against bacterial pore-forming toxins

Biologists at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have unveiled a new twist in a metabolic pathway that cells use to defend themselves against toxins made by disease-causing bacteria. The discovery of this pathway, published in the September 22 issue of the journal Cell, advances our understanding of how cells mount a survival response when attacked by bacteria and parasit...

Stanford discovery may help predict when toxoplasma can be deadly

Toxoplasma is arguably the most successful animal parasite on earth: It infects hundreds of species of warm-blooded animals, most notably half of humanity. Its unusual ability to overcome the numerous challenges of infecting and reproducing inside such a wide range of creatures has long intrigued scientists, and now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified t...

Molecular structure reveals how botulinum toxin attaches to nerve cells

WHAT: Botulism is a life-threatening disease caused by exposure to botulinum neurotoxins, which are among the most potent toxins known. These neurotoxins are produced by Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium found in soil and food. In the body, the toxins bind to and enter neurons, interfering with nerve transmission and disrupting the communication between the nerve and muscle fibers throughout the...