Trop

Finding Cures For Tropical Diseases: Is Open Source An Answer?

There's aparadigm in life science and drug development : only "lucrative""markets" get exploited by R&D companies. In many occasions I'veseen very promising drugs candidates or related research get cannedbecause no money was to be made with it, even if millions would havebeen saved worldwide. The usual strategy to avoid this fate is to finda drug candid...

Muscle-targeted gene therapy reverses rare muscular dystrophy in mice

Gene therapy methods that specifically target muscle may reverse the symptoms of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, according to new research in mice conducted by medical geneticists at Duke University Medical Center. Infants born with the inherited muscular disorder called Pompe disease usually die before they reach the age of two. The researchers also said their approach of targeting corrective...

An entropy-based gene selection method for cancer classification using microarray data

Accurate diagnosis of cancer subtypes remains a challenging problem. Building classifiers based on gene expression data is a promising approach; yet the selection of non-redundant but relevant genes is difficult. The selected gene set should be small enough to allow diagnosis even in regular clinical laboratories and ideally identify genes involved in cancer-specific regulatory pathways. Here an...

Scripps scientists find potential for catastrophic shifts in Pacific ecosystems

Opening the door to a new way of understanding ocean processes and managing and protecting marine resources, a group of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a groundbreaking analysis of the North Pacific Ocean and how dramatic changes can unfold across its waters. The study, published in the May 19 issue of the journal...

An (ecological) origin of species for tropical reef fish

Dealing a new blow to the dominant evolutionary paradigm, Luiz Rocha and colleagues from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Harvard University the University of Florida and the University of Hawaii, report coral reef fish from neighboring habitats may differ more from one another than from fish thousands of miles away. An ecological speciation model for coral reef organisms may spur the...

Chemical 'band-aid' prevents heart failure in mice with muscular dystrophy

A common chemical used in the manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries can repair damage to cardiac muscle cell membranes and prevent heart failure in mice with the genetic mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, according to scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School. The mutation in the dystrophin gene causes the progressive deterioration of skeletal muscles see...

Study shows eutrophic lakes may not recover for a millennium

Although it has taken just 60 years for humans to put many freshwater lakes on the eutrophication fast track, a new study shows their recovery may take a thousand years under the best of circumstances. Writing in today's (June 13) online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), University of Wisconsin-Madison limnologist Stephen R. Carpenter reported results...

Defect in gene causes 'neuralgic amyotrophy'

Neuralgic Amyotrophy is a painful disorder of the peripheral nervous system. This heritable disease causes prolonged acute attacks of pain in the shoulder or arm, followed by temporary paralysis. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the University of Antwerp, have uncovered a small piece of the molecular puzzle of this disease by identifyin...

No small feat: First ever gene therapy success for muscular dystrophy achieved

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh report the first study to achieve success with gene therapy for the treatment of congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) in mice, demonstrating that the formidable scientific challenges that have cast doubt on gene therapy ever being feasible for children with muscular dystrophy can be overcome. Moreover, their results, published in this week's online edi...

Scientists find evidence of catastrophic sand avalanches, sea level changes in Gulf of Mexico

Identical twins lose some fundamental similarities as they grow older, a new study reports. Researchers report in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that these differences may stem from changes in the epigeno...

Tropical Deforestation affects rainfall in the U.S. and around the globe

Today, scientists estimate that between one-third and one-half of our planet's land surfaces have been transformed by human development. Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate. Researchers from Duke University, Durham, N.C., analyzed multiple years of d...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

Restoring the rich diversity of trees that once characterized expansive tracts of tropical rainforest gets a helping hand from native birds and bats. Just how big a role these winged gardeners play is a question ecologists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and several Latin American universities are about to find out by setting up essentially a living laboratory in Mexico's gulf coast st...

Gene therapy reverses genetic mutation responsible for heart failure in muscular dystrophy

University of Pittsburgh investigators have for the first time used gene therapy to successfully treat heart failure and other degenerative muscle problems in an animal model that is genetically susceptible to a human muscular dystrophy. Reporting in the Oct. 25 edition of the journal Circulation, the authors say that this is the first successful attempt to deliver a therapeutic gene throughout t...

Tropical dry forests receive international recognition

When most people think of tropical forests, rainforests immediately come to mind. But they are not the only kind under threat--the tropical dry forest is in as much danger as its popular cousin yet its grave situation continues to be ignored. Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa is hoping to change that. Sanchez-Azofeifa is the director of the newly formed TROPI-DRY, a research network on tropica...

Scientists must offer solutions for conserving tropical forests in a rapidly changing world

As the future of the tropics unfolds, scientists must explain the dimensions and mechanisms of forest responses to rapid human-population increase and environmental changesAs human populations and their impacts on the world increase, tropical forests are changing in many different ways. Forests are being cleared, burned, logged, fragmented, and overhunted and an unprecedented pace, and they are...

Gene therapy for muscular dystrophy fixes frail muscle cells in animal model, Stanford study finds

A new gene therapy technique that has shown promise in skin disease and hemophilia might one day be useful for treating muscular dystrophy, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. In the study, scheduled to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 2, the researchers used gene therapy to introduce...

Tropical Atlantic cooling and African deforestation correlate to drought, report scientists

Against the backdrop of the Montreal Summit on global climate being held this week, an article on African droughts and monsoons, by a University of California, Santa Barbara scientist and others, which appears in the December issue of the journal Geology, underlines concern about the effects of global climate change. Tropical ocean temperatures and land vegetation have an important effect...

Diverse tropical forests defy metabolic ecology models

As global change accelerates, quantifying the role of forests in the carbon cycle becomes ever more urgent. Modelers seek simple predictors of forest biomass and carbon flux. Over the last decade, the theory of metabolic ecology generated testable explanations, derived from physical and biochemical principles, for a wide range of ecological patterns. However, in two Ecology Letters articles, Hele...

Psychotropic drug prescriptions for teens surge 250 percent over 7 year period

Psychotropic drug prescriptions for teenagers skyrocketed 250 percent between 1994 and 2001, rising particularly sharply after 1999, when the federal government allowed direct-to-consumer advertising and looser promotion of off-label use of prescription drugs, according to a new Brandeis University study in the journal Psychiatric Services. This dramatic increase in adolescent visits to h...

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...

Virus has 'catastrophic' affect on red squirrels, research shows

New research has revealed for the first time the catastrophic effect of a deadly virus on Britain's native red squirrels. The research shows that squirrel poxvirus is threatening to wipe out red squirrels in some of the areas in which they remain in northern England within 10 years. In areas where the virus has been detected, the rate of decline in reds is 17-25 times higher than in plac...

Tropical forest CO2 emissions tied to nutrient increases

Extra helpings of key nutrients given to tropical rain forest soils caused them to release substantially more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a concern to scientists monitoring global change, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. The study showed when either phosphorus or nitrogen -- both of which occur naturally in the rain forest soils -- were added to forest plots in C...

Agriculture and tropical conservation: rethinking old ideas

It's a long-held view in conservation circles that rural peasant activities are at odds with efforts to preserve biodiversity in the tropics. In fact, the opposite is often true, argue University of Michigan researchers John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto. Combining case studies with ecological theory, Vandermeer and Perfecto found that the peasant farming practices encouraged by grassro...

New understanding of parasite cell structures may provide treatments for serious tropical diseases

Don't even think about trying to pronounce it. Although it is found in many organisms including humans, glycosylphosphatidylinositol has remained a mouthful for laymen and a puzzle for scientists. And yet GPIs, as science thankfully calls these cellular lipids, are important in numerous biological functions, including disease transmission. Now, for the first time, cellular biologists at th...

Experimental cancer drugs counter muscle deterioration seen in muscular dystrophy

Muscle weakness and fiber deterioration seen in muscular dystrophy can be countered by a class of drugs currently under study for their effects against cancer, a Burnham Institute study has found. The report shed light on the potential use of these drugs, called histone deacetylase inhibitors, in promoting regeneration and repair of dystrophic muscles, thereby countering the progression o...

Public Library of Science to launch new, open access journal on neglected tropical diseases

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) announced today the creation of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the first open access journal devoted to the world's most neglected diseases. ) will focus on the overlooked diseases that strike millions of people every year in poor countries, including elephantias...

The subtleties of tropical forest demise

"It's not just that tropical forests are being rapidly destroyed, but also that most of the remaining forests and nature reserves are being severely degraded," said William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, who co-edited the book along with Carlos Peres, a Brazilian biologist with the University of East Anglia, U.K. "It's astonishing how insidious many of t...

Scientists show drug can counteract muscular dystrophy in mice

Scientists at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) and other institutions have demonstrated for the first time that a single drug can rebuild damaged muscle in two strains of mice that develop diseases comparable to two human forms of muscular dystrophy. This advance, which is reported online in Nature Medicine, is the latest from a research collaborat...

More species in the tropics because species have been there longer

Why are there more species in the tropics than in the temperate regions of the globe? Many of the world's species live in the tropics (perhaps more than half), but the reason has been debated for more than 100 years. Many researchers have hypothesized that climatic factors somehow cause species to originate more quickly in tropical regions. In a paper appearing in the November issue of Th...

Microfossils unravel climate history of tropical Africa

Scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research obtained for the first time a detailed temperature record for tropical central Africa over the past 25,000 years. They did this in cooperation with a German colleague from the University of Bremen, The scientists developed an entirely new method to reconstruct the history of land temperatures based on the molecular fossils of s...

Tropical forests -- Earth's air conditioner

Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming, the effectiveness of this strategy depends heavily on where these trees are planted. In particular, tropical forests are very efficient at keeping the Earth at a happy, healthy temperature. Th...

Switching genes to overdrive improves muscular dystrophy symptoms in mice

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have shown in a laboratory study that revving up a crucial set of muscle genes counteracts the damage caused by a form of muscular dystrophy. Reporting in the April 1 issue of Genes and Development, the researchers demonstrated that manipulating a genetic molecular switch increased the genes?activity in the muscles of mice with Duchenne muscular d...

Scientists: As rainfall changes, tropical plants may acclimate

Tropical plants may be more adaptable than commonly thought to changing rainfall patterns expected to accompany a warming climate, new research shows. A University of Florida scientist and other researchers have found that plants in Hawaii have the ability to acclimate to big changes in rainfall in at least one important respect ?how they get nutrients. The plants largely rely on one form...

Madagascan tropical forests return thanks to better management and well-defined ownership

A study published in the May 2nd issue of the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, shows that although loss of tropical dry forests occurs in southern Madagascar, there are also large areas of forests regenerating. The return of forest cover was found to be substantial in the study area, with an overall net increase of 4 % during the period 1993-2000. These dry forests have the highest level of...

Scientists discover 5 new species of sea slugs from the Tropical Eastern Pacific

The Tropical Eastern Pacific, a discrete biogeographic region that has an extremely high rate of endemism among its marine organisms, continues to yield a wealth of never-before-described marine animals to visiting scientists at the Smiths...