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Scientists ID molecular 'switch' in liver that triggers harmful effects of saturated and trans fats

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have identified a molecular mechanism in the liver that explains, for the first time, how consuming foods rich in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids causes elevated blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and increases one's risk of heart disease and certain cancers. In the Jan. 28 issue of Cell, scientists led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, rep...

Genome of deadly amoeba shows surprising complexity, evidence of lateral gene transfer

The genome sequence of the parasitic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica, a leading cause of severe diarrheal disease in developing countries, includes an unexpectedly complex repertoire of sensory genes as well as a variety of bacterial-like genes that contribute to the organism's unique biology. The report, which appears in the February 24 issue of Nature, presents the first genome-wide study...

Male circumcision reduces risk of HIV transmission from women to men

The first study to examine the probability ofHIV infection per act of heterosexual sex among a population withmultiple sexual partners has found that uncircumcised men have morethan twice the risk of acquiring HIV than do circumcised men.In the study, published in the Feb. 15 issue of The Journal ofInfectious Diseases, now available online, Jared Baeten and colleaguesfrom the United States...

Transplantation Of Monkey Embryonic Stem Cells Reverses Parkinson Disease In Primates

The replenishment of missing neurons in thebrain as a treatment for Parkinson disease reached the stage of humantrials over 15 years ago, however the field is still in its infancy.Researchers from Kyoto University have now shown thatdopamine-producing neurons (DA neurons) generated from monkey embryonicstem cells and transplanted into areas of the brain where these neuronshave degenerated i...

The transparent organism: EMBLEM and Carl Zeiss give labs a unique look at life

A novel high-tech microscope will be brought to the marketplace, giving laboratories everywhere fascinating new insights into living organisms. EMBLEM Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM), the commercial entity of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), announced today that it has signed a licensing deal with technological leader Carl Zeiss to commercialize a new technology called SPIM (Se...

Sea skate experiment sheds light on human cell transport

Along with Mark Musch, a longtime University of Chicago collaborator, Goldstein conducted an experiment with the red blood cells of skates to understand how these skinny, graceful fish can swim from salt water to fresh water. For humans, such a drastic environmental change would prompt an equally drastic physiological change: Our cells would take in too much water, diluting blood and other body f...

Female sex hormones play a vital role in defense against sexually transmitted diseases

Two McMaster University studies, to be published in the Journal of Virology, show that sex hormones have a profound effect on susceptibility of female mice to the herpes simplex virus, type 2 (HSV-2 ), one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Charu Kaushic, assistant professor and supervisor of the studies, says the implication of this work is quite significant. "The research...

Transport System Smuggles Medicines Into Brain

Parrots, long a favorite pet animal, are attractive to owners because of their vibrant colors. But those colors may mean more to parrots than what meets the eye. For more than a century, biochemists have known that parrots use an unusual set of pigments to produce their rainbow of plumage colors, but their biochemical identity has remained elusive. Now, an Arizona State University researc...

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...

New studies suggest airborne SARS transmission is possible

Two new studies present evidence that the virus causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may spread through the air, not just through direct contact with contaminated water droplets as previous research had shown. SARS coronavirus was detected in the air in a patient's room during the 2003 outbreak in Toronto, according to a new study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases...

Circles Of DNA Might Help Predict Success Of Stem Cell Transplantation

Measuring the quantity of a certain type of immune cell DNA in the blood could help physicians predict whether a bone marrow stem cell transplant will successfully restore a population of infection-fighting cells called T lymphocytes in a child. This research, by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, is published in the journal Blood. This finding could help physicians p...

UCLA scientists transform HIV into cancer-seeking missile

Camouflaging an impotent AIDS virus in new clothes enables it to hunt down metastasized melanoma cells in living mice, reports a UCLA AIDS Institute study in the Feb. 13 online edition of Nature Medicine. The scientists added the protein that makes fireflies glow to the virus in order to track its journey from the bloodstream to new tumors in the animals' lungs. "For the past 20 years, ge...

Affymetrix and the Karolinska Institutet Announce Translational Medicine Strategic Alliance

Affymetrix Inc. (Nasdaq: AFFX - News) and Karolinska Institutet announced today that they have entered into a strategic alliance designed to improve healthcare by accelerating the translation of basic genetic research into tools for better diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. During the next five years the projects include genetic analyses and measurement of gene expression in patients wi...

World-first Living Donor Islet Cell Transplant A Success; Procedure Offers Promise For Diabetics

A University of Alberta and Capital Health surgeon, well known for his pioneering work in developing the Edmonton Protocol treatment for diabetes, has taken another important step in the fight against diabetes. On January 19, at Kyoto University Hospital, Dr. Koichi Tanaka and Dr. James Shapiro, along with a team of Japanese surgeons, removed part of a 56-year-old woman's pancreas. Dr. Sh...

Reducing malarial transmission in Africa

There are 300 million cases of malaria each year worldwide, causing one million deaths. Around 90% of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children. One of the greatest challenges facing Africa in the fight against malaria is drug resistance; resistance to chloroquine (CQ), the cheapest and most widely used antimalarial, is common throughout Africa, and resistance to sulfadoxine-pyrimeth...

Transgenic plants remove more selenium from polluted soil than wild plants, new tests show

In the first field trial of plants genetically tweaked to absorb more contaminants, researchers found that the transgenic plants handily beat out their wild-type counterparts. The results raised hopes that the plants might become a viable alternative for cleaning up polluted soil. The new research findings, published Feb. 1 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, show that th...

Stem cells from brain transformed to produce insulin at Stanford

With careful coaxing, stem cells from the brain can form insulin-producing cells that mimic those missing in people with diabetes, according to a paper published in the April 26 issue of PLoS Medicine. Although the work is not yet ready for human patients, Seung Kim, MD, PhD, the lead author and assistant professor of developmental biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, sai...

HIV-1 spread through six transmission lines in the UK

Contrary to the prevailing belief that the HIV epidemic in the UK can be traced back to one source, a new study suggests that HIV spread via at least six independent virus introductions and subsequent transmission chains. The findings, published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggest that antiviral therapy has not had a significant impact on the g...

FDA Clears the Way for Generic Versions of Transdermal Patches to Treat Chronic Pain

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval to Mylan Technologies, Inc., for the first generic version of Alza Corporation's Duragesic Patch (Fentanyl Transdermal System) used to treat patients suffering from severe chronic pain that cannot be managed with alternative analgesics. When applied to the skin, this patch technology delivers fentanyl, an opioid pain medication that is s...

First North American Encapsulated Islet Transplant without Long-term Immune Suppression into a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes

Biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plagues of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Scientists have known for some time that these individuals carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta32) that prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system but have been unable to account for the high levels of the gene in Scandinavi...

Researchers make surprise discovery that some neurons can transmit three signals at once

Generations of neuroscientists have been indoctrinated into believing that our senses, thoughts, feelings and movements are orchestrated by a communication network of brain cells, or neurons, each responsible for relaying one specific chemical message called a neurotransmitter. Either neurons release a neurotransmitter that excites a neighboring cell, thereby triggering an electrical discharge an...

Single-donor Islet Transplantation Procedure Shows Promise For Patients With Type 1 Diabetes

Patients with type 1 diabetes who received islet transplantation from a single donor pancreas were insulin independent one year later, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical applications of biotechnology. Type 1 diabetes remains a therapeutic challenge, according to background information in the article. The success rate of islet (cells that produc...

Precise Timing Enabled Pig-to-rat Transplants To Cure Diabetes

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned that a temporal "window of opportunity" was critical to their earlier successes in treating diabetic rats with embryonic pig tissues. In those experiments, published in 2004, researchers were surprised to find that they didn't have to give anti-rejection drugs to diabetic rats treated with embryonic pig cell...

Two new retroviruses—transmitted from animals—identified

For patients with cancer of the mouth and throat, surgery is a frequent course of treatment, often leading to speech and swallowing dysfunction and external scarring. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, have completed two studies ?the most comprehensive and largest to date ?that demonstrate the effective use...

Aircraft Cabin Ventilation Influences The Transmission Of Diseases In-flight

Increasing ventilation within aircraft cabins can reduce the spread of infectious diseases in-flight, suggests a review published in this week's issue of THE LANCET. Mark Gendreau (Lahey Clinic Medical Centre, MA, USA) and colleagues reviewed data from studies looking at the transmission of diseases during commercial air travel. They found that while commercial airlines are a suitable envi...

Antiretroviral Therapy May Prevent HIV Transmission From Breastfeeding Mothers To Infants

Two new studies support the hypothesis that combination antiretroviral drug therapy may reduce the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission through breastfeeding, findings that could have significant implications in the developing world. Researchers in the first study found mothers pass antiretroviral medications on to their breastfeeding infants in concentrations high enough to prevent in...

New study: Sexually transmitted disease treatment can be effectively administered by sex partners

Effective control of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) requires treatment of the sexual partners of infected patients. A new study shows that providing infected men with antibiotics to give their partners is more effective than traditional means of contacting and treating the partners, according to an article in the Sept. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Men with...

Motor transport in bio-nano systems

Molecular motors are nanoscale engines which move along very thin rod-like filaments and, in this way, drive the heavy traffic of molecular cargo within biological cells. Both motors and filaments can be isolated from the cells and used to construct biomimetic transport systems. In order to increase the flux of the cargo transport, it would be necessary to increase the number of motors that contr...

To translate touch, the brain can quickly rearrange its sense of the body

The brain is bombarded by information about the physical proportions of our bodies. The most familiar sensations, such as a puff of wind or the brush of our own shirt sleeve, serve to constantly remind the brain of the body's outer bounds, creating a sense of what is known as proprioception. In a new study, researchers report this week that the brain's ability to interpret external signals and up...

Discoveries by UAB and Florida scientists may help transplanted organs survive longer

Scientists may have found a way to dramatically slow organ transplant rejection by as much as several years. The research team reporte...

New type of rejection blocker protects kidneys after transplant

In an international clinical trial, a new drug that selectively blocks immune responses has proved as effective in preventing acute kidney transplant rejection as cyclosporine, the standard anti-rejection treatment. Patients who took the experimental drug, a co-stimulatory blocker called belatacept (LEA29Y), also had better kidney function and experienced less of the toxic side effects as...

High rates of sexually transmitted infections found in young drug users

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions found high rates of herpes simplex virus 2 and syphilis among young drug users in Baltimore, Md. The study found that women had significantly higher rates compared to their male counterparts, but did not find significant differences between injection drug users and non-injection drug users. Few of the infect...

FSU biologists describe key role of signal-transcribing gene during cell cycle

Study in Oct. 1 'Development' shows when, where Alzheimer's, some cancers and genetic ills beginT. Biologists at Florida State University have uncovered the pivotal role of a gene called "Cut" that acts as a sort of middleman in cell-to-cell communication. A DNA-binding protein, Cut interprets and transcribes the developmental signals sent through the "Notch" gene, which regulates a layer...

Transgenic goat's milk offers hope for tackling children's intestinal disease

It's hard to improve on milk, but animal scientists at the University of California, Davis, have found that milk produced by transgenic goats, which carry the gene for an antibacterial enzyme found in human breast milk, altered the intestinal bacteria in young goats and pigs that were fed the milk. The researchers hope these findings will one day lead to milk that protects infants and chi...

IBM Transforms the Art of Scientific Expeditions

Scientists have shown they can dramatically enhance radiation's cancer-killing effects by blocking a "master switch" in cancer cells that promotes cancer growth. Blocking a protein called HIF-1 after radiation therapy doubled the length of time it took for human cancers to begin growing again in mice, said the radiation biologists from the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. Each therapy alo...

Monkeying around to improve organ transplantation

Organ transplantation is accompanied by nonspecific immune suppression therapy to prevent T cell-mediated rejection. These immunosuppressants can cause infection, hypertension, cancer, and other undesirable side effects. Therefore, specific suppression of the T cells that attack the transplanted organ is needed. It was known that anergic T cells (immune T cells that do not respond to antig...

Researchers identify genes associated with lung transplant rejection

Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have identified six genes associated with lymphocytic bronchitis, which is thought to lead to obliterative bronchitis (OB), the most common cause of long-term failure of transplanted lungs. The researchers hope their results will lead to an earlier, more sensitive, and more ac...

Modification of program enables prediction of gene transcription

A modification to an "ace" gene prediction program by computer scientists at Washington University in St. Louis now enables scientists to predict the very beginnings of gene transcription start sites and where the first splice occurs thereby defining the first exon of the gene. The modification to the gene prediction software TWINSCAN is called N-SCAN. Michael Brent, Ph.D. professor of com...

Virtual animal shelters ?How the Internet is transforming the experience of pet adoptions

Across the United States, independent pet rescue organizations are growing in number, working to place abandoned animals in loving new homes. Although the majority of these organizations operate out of clusters of private foster homes, they're successfully winning high visibility for placing their pooches. In a presentation at the 100th annual meeting of the American Sociological Associati...

NYU chemists use computer simulation to enhance understanding of DNA transcription

New York University chemists have employed a computer simulation whose results have enhanced scientific understanding of the DNA transcription process. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears in the June 7 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previous research has indicated that chromatin--a chromosome's substance consisting of histone prote...