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Association of herpesvirus with lung disorder questioned

Contrary to the results of a recent U.S. study, investigators in Japan found no association between a herpesvirus infection and a potentially life-threatening form of high blood pressure, as reported in the March 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. The researchers reported that they were not able to detect human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8), also known as the Kap...

Mouse brain cells rapidly recover after Alzheimer's plaques are cleared

Brain cells in a mouse model of Alzheimer'sdisease have surprised scientists with their ability to recuperateafter the disorder's characteristic brain plaques are removed.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louisinjected mice with an antibody for a key component of brain plaques,the amyloid beta (Abeta) peptide. In areas of the brain whereantibodies cleared plaque...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

Scientists have uncovered new information that may help guide design of vaccines for HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. A new detailed structural analysis of the complex formed by an anti-HIV antibody called 4E10 and its specific target provides insight into why this particular antibody is so broadly effective, a rare characteristic for HIV discovered thus far. The research is published in the Fe...

Research on Worms Yields Clues on Aging

Humanityhas been looking for a "Fontaine de Jouvence" forever; a way to slow orstop aging. While its still nowhere to be found, we are makingprogress; in worms. Researchers found that an epilepsy drug used inhumans had the unexpected effect of prolonging the life span of C.Elegans: A class of anti-seizure medications slows the rate of aging inroundwo...

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

Nearly 40 years after an historic anthropology expedition to Ethiopia's Lake Turkana basin, researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting human bones found at that time are roughly 195,000 years old. The researchers believe the findings may bolster the “Out-of-Africa?hypothesis that suggests we all trace to an ancient line that first evolved in Africa and then displaced other hominids as recent...

New research questions basic tenet of neuron function

New findings by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center challenge one of the established views of how nerve cells communicate with one another. Every time we move, feel emotions, think or remember, the nerve cells, or neurons, in our body transmit messages to one another via chemical signals called neurotransmitters. Within neurons are tiny organelles called synaptic vesicles that s...

Insight into DNA's 'weakest links' may yield clues to cancer biology

The chromosomes of mammals, including humans, contain regions that are particularly prone to breaking under conditions of stress and in cancer. Now, new research by geneticists at Duke University Medical Center finds that yeast cells also contain such weak links in DNA and begins to reveal the molecular characteristics of these links that might help to explain them. The findings, publishe...

Double triumph in stem cell quest

WITH great fanfare a South Korean team announced last week that it had used therapeutic cloning to create human embryonic stem cells that were genetically matched to specific people. But their technique could already be obsolete. Another team headed by Yuri Verlinsky of the Reproductive Genetics Institute, based in Chicago, claims to have produced patient-matched embryonic stem cells without reso...

Gov't Creates Gene Database of Normal Human Tissues

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, have built the largest open-source database for normal tissue from human organs. Scientists searching for genes that go awry and cause disease can use the NCI database as a crucial point of reference because it pinpoints which genes are expressed in many of the body's major organs under normal conditions, wit...

Newer imaging techniques may lead to over-treatment

Newer imaging technologies allow physicians to visualize more of the arteries in the lungs, including detecting small blood clots not previously seen, but seeing more may have little impact on the patient's outcome, a new study suggests. The study included 198 patients with suspected pulmonary embolism. About half of the patients (98) had a multidetector CT (MDCT) examination; 100 patients...

High-powered gene profiles provide clues to genes involved in common form of lung cancer

Using technology that makes it possible to zoom in on smaller sections of cell chromosomes than ever before, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified nearly 100 chromosome regions where genes are either over-copied or missing in non-small cell lung cancer. The findings provide new clues about the location of genes potentially involved in the most common type of lung cancer –?an...

Genetic links could unlock clues to leading cause of blindness

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in older adults, yet researchers are still in the dark about many of the factors that cause this incurable disease. But new insight from University of Florida and German researchers bout a genetic link between rhesus monkeys with macular degeneration and humans could unlock secrets about the earliest stages of the disease,...

ORNL, UC Berkeley unravel real-world clues to Earth's mysteries

A microbial community thriving under bizarre natural conditions in California could be a gold mine to researchers in their quest to understand the complex biological relationships and how these inner workings might apply on a grander scale. In a paper to appear today on Science Online, researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Californi...

Scientific issues associated with carbon-neutral energy sources such as cellulosic ethanol

Professor Chris Somerville of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, explained advances in plant science research that are both needed and achievable to reduce costs and multiply current levels of production of biofuels from plant cellulose (biomass). Somerville presented his talk, "Bioenergy: The 21st Century Challenge to Plant Biologists" at the Annual Meeting of the American...

Few clues about African ancestry to be found in mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA may not hold the key to your origins after all. A study published today in the open access journal BMC Biology reveals that fewer than 10% of African American mitochondrial DNA sequences analysed can be matched to mitochondrial DNA from one single African ethnic group. There has been a growing interest in the use of mitochondrial DNA to trace maternal ancestries, and several com...

Elderly mice yield clues to the process of growing old

Delving deep into the molecular subtleties of a strain of mice engineered to age rapidly, scientists have found that an accumulation of genetic mutations prompts a cascade of programmed cell death that seems to underpin the aging process. Writing today (July 15, 2005) in the journal Science, a team of scientists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison geneticist Tomas A. Prolla describes a...

Engineered skin offers clues to melanoma development

When it comes to the deadly skin cancer melanoma, studying functional tissue rather than cell lines may better provide insight into the disease's development, according to new research from a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. Though multiple genetic alterations are associated with melanoma development, scientists have not been abl...

Scientists uncover new clues about brain function in human behavior

Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, have discovered a genetically controlled brain mechanism responsible for social behavior in humans--one of the most important but least understood aspects of human nature. The findings are reported in Nature Neuroscience, published online on July 10, 2005. The study compared the brains...

Researchers Create DNA-Based Sensors for Nano-Tongues and Nano-Noses

Nano-sized carbon tubes coated with strands of DNA can create tiny sensors with abilities to detect odors and tastes, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Monell Chemical Sciences Center. Their findings are published in the current issue of the journal Nano Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society. According to the researchers, arrays of these nanos...

Techniques available to detect soil that inhibits destructive soybean pest

Identification of soils that inhibit a tiny soybean-destroying organism is an important tool in reducing yield losses, according to a Purdue University plant pathologist. Soybean cyst nematodes cause between $800 million and $1 billion annually in crop losses in the United States, according the American Phytopathological Society. However, techniques are available to find soils that specifi...

On a wing and a prayer - Alaska researchers seek clues to bird flu

While Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" made many of us uneasy at the sight of amassing gulls years ago, today public health officials around the world are beginning to cast an equally uneasy eye toward migratory birds, especially in Alaska, following recent outbreaks of avian influenza in Southeast Asia and, last week, in Siberia. Alaska is at the intersection of the Asian and North American...

Climate change will affect carbon sequestration in oceans, model shows

An Earth System model developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign indicates that the best location to store carbon dioxide in the deep ocean will change with climate change. The direct injection of carbon dioxide deep into the ocean has been suggested as one method to help control rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and mitigate the effects of glob...

Gene therapy may protect normal tissues during radiation retreatment for lung cancer

The ice ages made massive changes to the Earth's landscape In the past it has been thought that these...

New clues to the dark side of a key anti-tumor guardian

Although researchers over recent years have established a foothold in understanding how p53 protects against cancer, the mechanisms by which it might contribute to aging and lifespan are not well studied. In work reported this week, researchers studying p53 function in fruit flies show new evidence that despite the protective role of p53 as a guardian against tumor formation, normal levels of p53...

Amazon trees much older than assumed, raising questions on global climate impact of region

Trees in the Amazon tropical forests are old. Really old, in fact, which comes as a surprise to a team of American and Brazilian researchers studying tree growth in the world's largest tropical region. Using radiocarbon dating methods, the team, which includes UC Irvine's Susan Trumbore, found that up to half of all trees greater than 10 centimeters in diameter are more than 300 years old....

Infection 'alarm' yields clues to immune system behavior

Drawing on lab experiments and computer studies, Johns Hopkins researchers have learned how a common protein delivers its warning message to cells when an infectious agent invades the body. The findings are important because this biological intruder alarm causes the body's immune system to leap into action to fight the infection. Learning more about how this process works, the researchers said, c...

Pair of studies offer new clues to combat antibiotic resistance

In the continuing battle against antibiotic resistance, two new studies shed light on the complex defense mechanisms pathogenic bacteria use to evade antibiotic attack, an understanding of which could lead to new, more effective antibiotics to help save lives and combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. The studies, both of which target chemical components in the protective membrane s...

New evidence questions the simple link between prion proteins and madcow disease

While newly published research confirms that under laboratory circumstances prion-protein can be absorbed across the gut, it also shows that this is unlikely to occur in real life. In addition, the results show that the places in the gut that do take up these disease-associated proteins are different from the locations where infectivity is known to be amplified. The findings will be published in...

Rice bioengineers pioneer techniques for knee repair

A breakthrough self-assembly technique for growing replacement cartilage offers the first hope of replacing the entire articular surface of knees damaged by arthritis. The technique, developed at Rice University's Musculoskeletal Bioengineering Laboratory, is described in this month's issue of the journal Tissue Engineering. "This has significant ramifications because we are now beginning...

Evolutionary biology research techniques predict cancer

In diverse ecosystems, packed with wildly different species, evolution whizzes along. As different species accumulate mutations, some adapt particularly well to their environment and prosper. It happens in marine sediments, mountain forests ?and, as a new study illustrates, in precancerous tumors, too. In a study published online today in Nature Genetics, Carlo Maley, Ph.D., a researcher a...

Mute swan population helps explain longstanding evolutionary question

In an important new study forthcoming from The American Naturalist, biologists from the University of Oxford tracked a colony of mute swans for more than two decades to explore a longstanding evolutionary question: whether the number of eggs laid by a female bird ?known as "clutch size" ?changes in accordance with natural selection. "Extensive debate in the literature…was first focused on...

Clues to breast cancer hidden inside stem cells

Stem cells and how to boost them is hot on the research agenda. But stopping them could be critical too, as evidence implicating stem cells in cancer is mounting. In the human breast, up to 20 per cent of all tumours are now suspected to originate in stem cells. Now scientists from the Icelandic Cancer Society and the Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland have grown three-dimensional...

Ancient DNA provides clues to the evolution of social behavior

A rare Patagonian rodent known as the colonial tuco-tuco fascinates biologists because it seems to defy all odds. This threatened species has so little genetic diversity that the slightest whiff of climate change or disease should have wiped it off the face of the earth long ago. Yet the hearty gopher-like creature has not only managed to survive for thousands of years in the harsh climate of the...

Tool developed to silence genes in specific tissues using RNAi

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center say they have jumped a significant hurdle in the use of RNA interference (RNAi), believed by many to be the ultimate tool to both decode the function of individual genes in the human genome and to treat disease. Reporting in the journal Genes and Development, investigators have developed a simple way to use the RNAi appro...

It's in the genes: Study opens door to new treatment of the blues

A Florida State University scientist used a gene transfer technique to block the expression of a gene associated with clinical depression in a new study of mice that could lead to better treatment of human beings with this condition. Carlos Bolanos, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, was among a team of researchers that identified the role of a gene called Brain Derived...

A clue from macaques yields evidence for impaired retroviral defense genes in humans

Researchers Harmit Malik and Michael Emerman and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have found that a surprisingly large fraction of humans may be impaired in the function of a recently discovered arm of the body's defense against invading retroviruses such as HIV. One of the key components of this "intrinsic immunity" is encoded by the TRIM5 gene. This gene was disc...

Mutation in blood stem cells provides clues to cancer development

A mutation in blood stem cells occurs in patients with a blood disorder called polycythemia vera (PV), scientists at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Comprehensive Cancer Center at Stanford University School of Medicine have confirmed. The discovery suggests that development of a...

One big biology question solved

An Australian research team has solved one of biology's most fundamental questions ?why males produce sperm and females produce eggs. The finding is a breakthrough that could lead to improved infertility treatment, cancer therapy and pest management. The team, led by Dr Josephine Bowles and Professor Peter Koopman from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensla...

U of MN uses robotic surgery techniques in cardiac cell therapy research

Researchers at the University of Minnesota were successful in using robotic surgery to deliver stem cell treatment to damaged heart tissue in pigs. <...

Adult stem cells are touchy-feely, need environmental clues

A certain type of adult stem cell can turn into bone, muscle, neurons or other types of tissue depending on the "feel" of its physical environment, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers discovered that mesenchymal stem cells, which regularly reside in the bone marrow as part of the body's natural regenerative mechanism, depend on physical clues from...