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FDA Approves Human Hookworm Vaccine for Phase I Safety Trials

As any dedicated video game player knows, the first requireme...

Dysentery uses 'sword and shield' to cause infection

Scientists have found that the bacterium that causes dysentery uses a 'sword and shield' approach to cause infection. They found th...

The secret to longevity in tubeworms

With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years the deep sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrient ?in the form of sulfide - to keep going for this long has been a mystery. In a paper just published in the premier open-access online journal PLoS Biology, Erik Cordes and colleagues now provide a solution: by releasing its...

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 Study from Affymetrix Laboratories Points to Changing View of How Genome Works

Scientists at Affymetrix, Inc. (Nasdaq: AFFX) reported today in Science magazine online that they have completed a high-resolution scan of structure and function for nearly 30 percent of the human genome sequence. In collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, the research team used high-density GeneChip(R) microarrays to study every fifth base, on average, of 10 human chromosomes; they fou...

Study: Soap And Water Work Best In Ridding Hands Of Disease Viruses

The largest, most comprehensive study ever done comparing the effectiveness of hand hygiene products shows that nothing works better in getting rid of disease-causing viruses than simply washing one’s hands with good old-fashioned soap and water. Among the viruses soapy hand washing flushes down the drain is the one that causes the common cold. Other removable viruses cause hepatitis A, ac...

ASU researchers finds novel chemistry at work to provide parrot's vibrant red colors

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...

MSI releases 'moleculizer' - a new approach to simulation of intracellular biochemical networks

Dr. Roger Brent, President and Director of Research at the the release of a new approach to simulation of intracellularbiochemical networks in the January 2005 edition of NatureBiotechnology.The research article, entit...

Tiny scaffolding allows stem cells to become working fat cells

Researchers here have used a new microscopic, three-dimensional scaffolding to coax mouse stem cells to transform themselves into fat cells, and then to function identical to how fat cells naturally do in the body. While other studies have previously grown fat cells, or adipocytes, in the laboratory, those cells never completely functioned in the same way they do in normal tissue. They fai...

RNA project to create language for scientists worldwide

Research into ribonucleic acids (RNA)--the building blocks of life--is exploding as scientists worldwide discover the roles of RNA in genetics, health, disease and the development of organisms. The rapidly growing body of knowledge has created the need for researchers to develop a shared vocabulary and system for describing, cataloging and comparing their findings. An international team of...

Examination of internal 'wiring' of yeast, worm, and fly reveals conserved circuits

First-of-its-kind analysis published in the Feb. 8 PNAS supports the concept of a basic wiring diagram for all eukaryotes. Researchers in California, Israel, and Germany have compared three distantly related species ?baker's yeast, a worm, and the fruit fly ?and reported that protein "wiring" connections in one species are often conserved in all three. This first-of-its-kind analysis of t...

World's largest rainforest drying experiment completes first phase

Scientists with The Woods Hole Research Center are analyzing the surprising results of the first phase of a drydown experiment occurring in the Amazonian rainforest. From January 2000 to July 2004, rainfall was excluded from a one-hectare (2.2 acre) plot in the middle of the Tapajós National Forest, in Brazil. A total of 6 feet of rainfall was diverted with six thousand 2' by 6' clear plas...

VCU Researchers Identify Networks Of Genes Responding To Alcohol In The Brain

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have identified several genetic changes in the brains of mice caused by ethanol, which may help researchers better understand how and why people become addicted to alcohol. In the March issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers reported significant differences in the gene expression patterns regulated by alcohol in two mouse strains know...

PCRM develops world's first cruelty-free insulin assay

If you're an organization dedicated to humane alternatives to the use of animals in research and you want to conduct research of your own that requires using animals as part of the testing, what do you do? In the case of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, you invent your own test. PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D., announced today that PCRM has developed the world's first...

Harnessing microbes, one by one, to build a better nanoworld

Applied Biosystems (NYSE:ABI), an Applera Corporation business, today announced the introduction of the Applied Biosystems Advanced Gene Expression Service Provider Program, a new program for service providers who are interested in accessing Applied Biosystems comprehensive solution for gene expression analysis, including the highly sensitive Expression Array System for whole genome analysis and...

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...

Computational Method Speeds Mapping of Cell Signaling Networks

For decades, scientists have been studying how external information gets transmitted from outside of cells to the control centers inside them that trigger particular responses. But cell signaling networks are so complex that mapping them has been a slow, arduous process. Now, a research team from Stanford, MIT and Harvard has developed a new method for charting cellular signaling networks...

Navigating an integrated yeast network

Scientists have for the first time mapped multiple complex biological interactions in a yeast cell in a simple graphical form, enhancing our understanding of how the networks of interaction by which components of a cell influence one another. New research published in the Open Access journal Journal of Biology shows that such maps can also reveal cryptic interactions and enable accurate predictio...

Revolutionary nanotechnology illuminates brain cells at work

Until now it has been impossible to accurately measure the levels of important chemicals in living brain cells in real time and at the level of a single cell. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology and Stanford University are the first to overcome this obstacle by successfully applying genetic nanotechnology using molecular sensors to view changes in brain chemical l...

New Estimates For The Causes Of Child Deaths Worldwide

The most accurate estimates of the causes of child deaths to date, published in the March 26, 2005 of THE LANCET, reveal that worldwide more than 70% of the 10.6 million child deaths that occur annually are attributable to six causes: pneumonia (19%), diarrhoea (18%), malaria (8%), neonatal sepsis or pneumonia (10%), preterm delivery (10%), and asphyxia at birth (8%). Robert Black (Johns H...

Yeast Network Prevents Damage By Oxygen Radicals

Reactive oxygen species (ROS), or 'oxygen radicals', have been identified as major contributors to signs of premature aging, increased cancer prevalence linked to inflammation-associated syndromes and a variety of human diseases. Now scientists at the University of California, San Diego Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) have identified a key network of DNA repair and cell...

Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication

It's a cloudless July afternoon in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, and ecologist Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell is scanning the horizon for elephants. "It's so fantastic here," she says. "We're constantly seeing elephants, rhinos, zebras, ostriches--it's the Garden of Eden." A research associate in the Stanford University School of Medicine, O'Connell-Rodwell has come to one of Afric...

FDA Works To Speed The Advent Of New, More Effective Personalized Medicines

As part of an agency-wide initiative to speed development of new medical products through the science of pharmacogenomics, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a final guidance titled "Pharmacogenomic Data Submissions." Pharmacogenomics allows health care providers to identify sources of an individual's profile of drug response and predict the best possible treatment option...

New World founders small in number

About 14,000 years ago - a few hundred thousand years after our putative modern forebears spread out from Africa - descendants of archaic humans crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America. Several lines of evidence support this model, but that's where the consensus ends and the details are hotly debated. In a paper published in the premier open-access journal PLoS Biology, Jody...

OneWorld Health drug receives 'Orphan' designation from U.S. and European regulatory agencies

The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the U.S., announced today it has received Orphan Drug Designation from the two leading regulatory agencies in the world, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA), for paromomycin to treat visceral leishmaniasis (VL). VL, also known as kala a...

Study uncovers bacteria's worst enemy

University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have found that the successful use of bacteria to remediate environmental contamination from nuclear waste and processing activities may depend more upon how resistant the bacteria are to chemicals than to how tolerant they are to radioactivity. The results of a recent Laboratory study may help make bacterial bioremedia...

Measles Deaths Worldwide Drop By Nearly 40% Over Five Years

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today announced that countries are on target to halve deaths from measles, a leading vaccine-preventable killer, by the end of this year. Global measles deaths have plummeted by 39%, from 873 000 in 1999 to an estimated 530 000 in 2003. The largest reduction occurred in Africa, the region with the highest...

Low oxygen likely made Great Dying worse, greatly delayed recovery

The biggest mass extinction in Earth history some 251 million years ago was preceded by elevated extinction rates before the main event and was followed by a delayed recovery that lasted for millions of years. New research by two University of Washington scientists suggests that a sharp decline in atmospheric oxygen levels was likely a major reason for both the elevated extinction rates and the v...

Stealth Worms May Improve Insect Pest Control

Nematodes comprise a worm family so large it literally covers the earth. They range in size from less than a micron in length to as much as 26 feet. Worldwide interest has begun to focus on microscopic nematodes that live with symbiotic bacteria. "We study these nematodes -- which are actually insect killers -- not only to understand how diverse they are, but also to use them as biological contro...

WHO suspends Marburg work, appeals for new funds

As of 7 April, 205 cases of Marburg haemorrhagic fever have been reported in Angola. Of these, 180 have died. Zaire Province has reported its first 6 cases, bringing the number of affected provinces to seven, all concentrated in the north-western part of the country. Mobile surveillance teams in Uige were forced to suspend operations yesterday when vehicles were attacked and damaged by loc...

Insects, viruses could hold key for better human teamwork in disasters

In a new and novel study, scientists are looking to nature -- specifically, to ants, bees and viruses -- for ways to improve human collaboration during disaster relief efforts. At the center of the scientists' sights are a sub-group of their own species -- specifically, civil engineers, who historically have had a limited role in such efforts, especially those involving critical physical...

Shark attack worries? Driving to the beach is more deadly

Which is more likely to happen - you being in a car wreck or being bitten by a shark? Those who answered that cars are greater killers win a free trip to the beach. It's really no contest, says a Texas A&M University professor. Your chances of being in a wreck are far greater than being a shark's lunch, says John McEachran, a professor of wildlife and fishery sciences who has studied...

Computational Tool Predicts How Drugs Work In Cells, Advancing Efforts To Design Better Medicines

The ability to select and develop compounds that act on specific cellular targets has just gained a computational ally ?a mathematical algorithm that predicts the precise effects a given compound will have on a cell’s molecular components or chemical processes. Using this tool, drug developers can design compounds that will act on only desired gene and protein targets, eliciting therapeutic respo...

Scientists map the world for nature conservation

For years, experts have been calling for an improved database that would enable them to develop more effective global nature conservation strategies. Botanists at the University of Bonn have now taken a major step in this direction with the publication, in the Journal of Biogeography, of a world map of plant biodiversity. The atlas is arranged in 867 zones, known as ecoregions. "This makes...

Best research work in the area of wine growing

Researchers in the area of Vegetable Production Vegetal of the Department of Agricultural Production at the Public University of Navarra have been awarded the prize for the best research in the area of viticulture. The presentation took place at the V Iberian Congress of Horticultural Science recently held in Oporto (Portugal). The awarded work, entitled "Recovery of photosynthetic activity in 4...

Ancient DNA helps clarify the origins of two extinct New World horse species

The Patagonian Hippidion horse genus and North American stilt-legged horses have found a new place on the evolutionary tree, according to a new article in the open access journal PLoS Biology. In the paper, Jaco Weinstock, Alan Cooper, and colleagues use ancient DNA to argue that the Hippidion genus is younger than previously thought and that American stilt-legged horses were American endemics, n...

UN: World in big ecological mess

The emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of coastal "dead zones," the collapse of fisheries and shifts in regional climate are just some of the potential consequences of humankind's degradation of the planet's ecosystems, according to a new United Nations-backed report launched today. Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50...

IMF Launches World’s First DNA Database for Myeloma Patients

A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with large...

Small worm yields big clue on muscle receptor action

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified an elusive subunit of a neurotransmitter receptor found in both humans and the much-studied laboratory nematode C. elegans which may open new pathways of research on muscle function. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine binds to two different nicotinic receptors at the nematode's neuromuscular junctions, causing them to con...

Researchers develop promising new gene network analysis method

Compared with a long-used linear model, a correlation-based statistical method is a more reliable way to map complex gene interactions and pinpoint genes that may be potential cancer treatment targets, according to new Brown University research. The research is important because it describes a promising new tool for tracing human gene connections, a task critical for understanding and tre...