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Study Demonstrates Gene Expression Microarrays are Comparable and Reproducible

Foreveryone doing or reading a paper about microarray-based experiments,reproductibility, especially inter-lab, is the #1 concern. Can I trustthese results? If I redo the same experiment in one month, will I beable to compare both? The NIH recently demonstrated that microarrays experiments performed in d...

Scientists detect probable genetic cause of some Parkinson's disease cases

Two new studies strongly suggest that amutation in a recently discovered gene is the most common genetic causeof Parkinson's disease identified to date. The discovery by aninternational research team provides fresh evidence that genetics maycontribute to the development of some cases of Parkinson's disease. Thefindings could lead to the development of a genetic test to detect themutation in...

Highly adaptable genome in gut bacterium key to intestinal health

A bacterium that lives in the human gut adaptively shifts more than a quarter of its genes into high gear when its host's diet changes from sugar to complex carbohydrates. This adaptive mechanism not only allows the bacterial species to survive rapidly changing nutrient conditions but also helps maintain the functions and stability of the gut's highly complex microbial society, according...

Development of portable infectious disease detector

A portable device similar to today's homepregnancy tests that can quickly detect the presence of infectiousdiseases, including HIV-AIDS and measles, as well as biological agentssuch as ricin and anthrax, is the object of a new jointuniversity/industry research project.Vanderbilt University's Institute for Integrative Biosystems Researchand Education (VIIBRE) and Pria Diagnostics LLC, a priv...

Unexpressed But Indispensable -- The DNA Sequences That Control Development

Amidst the hoopla over the exact number of genes we have in our genome—more than a fruitfly, fewer than a rice plant—a more fundamental genetic truth has often been obscured. The expression of 20,000?0,000 genes is under the control of an uncounted host of non-coding sequences, which bind transcription factors and thereby regulate when and where genes are expressed. Unlike coding sequences, whose...

Rats infected as newborns grew up vulnerable to memory problems during an immune challenge

Underscoring the value of good prenatal care, new research suggests that early infection may create a cognitive vulnerability that appears later during stress on the immune system. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have reported that rats who experienced a one-time infection as newborns didn't learn as well as adult rats who were not infected as pups, after their immunity was c...

Programmable cells: Engineer turns bacteria into living computers

In a step toward making living cells function as if they were tiny computers, engineers at Princeton have programmed bacteria to communicate with each other and p...

Study: 'homemade' gene expression technology unreliable

Technology for analyzing gene expression must be standardized among laboratories and across platforms around the world to support this age of human genome exploration, an Oregon Health & Science University researcher says. Otherwise, scientists using DNA microarrays, also known as gene chips, risk having their research results called into question, said Peter Spencer, Ph.D., professor...

Undesirable expatriates: Preventing the spread of invasive animals

Reconsider relocating aquarium fish into your backyard pond. Restrain yourself from ordering exotic pets off the Internet, no matter how interesting they might look in the pictures. And vote for politicians that encourage sound port inspection. Because, according to recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article by Drs. Jonathan M. Jeschke and David L. Strayer, our best defense in...

Oceans more vulnerable to agricultural runoff than previously thought, study finds

Researchers have long suspected that fertilizer runoff from big farms can trigger sudden explosions of marine algae capable of disrupting ocean ecosystems and even producing "dead zones" in the sea. Now a new study by Stanford University scientists presents the first direct evidence linking large-scale coastal farming to massive algal blooms in the sea. Writing in the March 10 issue of th...

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...

Scientists identify genes responsible for 'black rot' disease in vegetables

Scientists at four major genomics and plant pathology laboratories in China have collaborated on a project to characterize the causative agent of "black rot" disease, which is the most serious disease of vegetable crops worldwide. Their study, which represents the largest comparative and functional genomics screen for a plant or animal bacterial pathogen to date, is published online today in the...

Disabling gene defuses rheumatoid arthritis in mice

Scientists studying mice have identified a gene that allows immune cells known as neutrophils to protect themselves from the inflammatory chemicals they secrete. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that knocking the gene out in mice prevented the development of an arthritis-like disorder by making the neutrophils victims of their own damaging secret...

Studies reveal how plague disables immune system, and how to exploit the process to make a vaccine

Two studies by researchers at the University of Chicago show how the bacteria that cause the plague manage to outsmart the immune system and how, by slightly altering one of the microbe's tools, the researchers produced what may be the first safe and effective vaccine. Both papers -- one published online July 28 in Science Express and one in the August issue of Infection and Immunity -- fo...

Recombinant DNA technology may enable oral, rather than injectable, delivery of protein drugs

Transferrin, a plasma protein found in blood, can be fused with large, protein-based drugs such as granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) to create a new oral compound that is capable of surviving the journey through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and then able to cross over into the bloodstream to be used by the body, according to research from the University of Southern California Schoo...

Variation in HIV's ability to disable host defenses contributes to rapid evolution

One of the reasons HIV is so difficult to contain and treat is its rapid evolution. Understanding how host defenses and viral countermeasures contribute to that evolution is vital. Vif is full o...

A step toward the $1,000 personal genome using readily available lab equipment

The theoretical price of having one's personal genome sequenced just fell from the prohibitive $20 million dollars to about $2.2 million, and the goal is to reduce the amount further--to about $1,000--to make individualized prevention and treatment realistic. The sharp drop is due to a new DNA sequencing technology developed by Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers Jay Shendure, Gregory...

Hybrid grass may prove to be valuable fuel source

Giant Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high, may be a valuable renewable fuel source for the future, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say. Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology, recently took that message to Dublin, Ireland, where the British Association for the Advancement of Science sponso...

Device traps, disables harmful bacteria

A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Colorado at Boulder has removed bioaerosols -- airborne biological particulate matter -- from the air of a hospital therapy pool using a new generation of hybrid filters. The bioaerosols identified in the unnamed Midwestern hospital pool had sickened nine lifeguards who had become ill with hypersensitivity pn...

Aloe vera coating may prolong freshness, safety of fruits and vegetables

gel is best known for its therapeutic effect on burned or irritated skin, but in the future you could be eating the gel as a healthful additive to your fruits and veggies. Researchers in Spain say they have developed a gel from the tropical plant that can be used as an edible coating to prolong the quality and safety of fresh produce. The gel, which does not appear to affect fo...

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...

Neanderthal teeth grew no faster than comparable modern humans'

Recent research suggested that ancient Neanderthals might have had an accelerated childhood compared to that of modern humans but that seems flawed, based on a new assessment by researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Newcastle . They found that the rate of tooth growth present in the Neanderthal fossils they examined was comparable to that of three different populati...

World-first technology enables study of ancient bacteria

Experts at Cardiff University, UK, have designed world-first technology to investigate sustainable energy sources from the ocean bed by isolating ancient high-pressure bacteria from deep sediments. Scientists and engineers at Cardiff University are investigating bacteria from deep sediments which despite high pressures (greater than 1,000 atmospheres), gradually increasing temperatures (fr...

How HIV disables the cells' call for help

The HIV virus hides out in the very immune system cells that are meant to protect the body from viral infection. But how does it prevent these cells from mounting a full-scale attack against the invader? In research published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown how a part of a protein on the virus' outer surface interferes with the...

Eleven gene 'signature' reliably predicts cancer prognosis

The rather new concept of "tumor stem cells" maintains that a rare, stem cell-like population of cancer cells exists among the mix of other cells found in a tumor and that these tumor stem cells are responsible for tumor progression and metastasis. In a revolutionary study appearing in the June 1 print issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Gennadi Glinsky and colleagues from the Sidney...

Nanotechnology to provide portable genetic risk detection

Currently being developed by the IST project OPTONANOGEN, a prototype of the system will initially be used to detect mutations of the BRCA1 gene that are responsible for between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the incidence of breast cancer in women. The final system, however, could be used to detect virtually any genetic anomaly as well as proteins linked to viruses, chemical contamination in food or wate...

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...

'License to kill' enables powerful immune attack cells in mice

Scientists have discovered that a group of important immune system cells has a surprising resemblance to cinematic British superspy James Bond: the cells receive a "license" that allows them to unleash their most potent attacks on enemies. This licensing process apparently helps reduce the chances that the cells will erroneously direct their firepower at the body's own tissues, according t...

New study shows patients more willing to consider self-injectable HIV therapy than many physicians anticipate

Initial results from the OpenMind study, the largest behavioural study to look at both patients' and physicians' perceptions of HIV care in treatment-experienced patients, were revealed today at EACS. The study's findings are anticipated to help physicians implement improved care to HIV patients and help pave the way for better acceptance and integration of other new innovative drugs such as mono...

Novel protein complex enables survival in hostile environment

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay and Eric Johnson from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered a novel enzyme that represents an ancient detoxification system and provides a clue to the development of early metabolism on earth. The research appears in the Nov. 18, 2005 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, in the article "A New Type of Sulfite Reductase, a Novel...

Implantable pumps extend lives of patients too sick for transplant

Pumps implanted into the chest to maintain circulation can significantly extend the lives of the sickest patients in end-stage heart failure who are not candidates for heart transplantation, according to the results of a clinical trial led by Duke University Medical Center cardiologists. The pumps, known as left ventricular assistant devices (LVADs), are employed when the heart's left vent...

Seal rookeries could provide a reliable food source for endangered California condors, study finds

A team of scientists is proposing that endangered California condors raised in captivity be released near seal and sea lion rookeries so that the birds can once again feast on the carcasses of marine mammals as their ancestors did centuries ago. The researchers from Stanford University and four other institutions base their conclusion on the feeding behavior of modern and early condors and...

Bacteria that cause tooth decay able to survive without important biochemical pathway

Leave it to the bacteria that cause tooth decay to be able to live without something all cells were thought to require. Scientists have long believed a certain biochemical pathway involved in the folding and delivery of proteins to cell membranes is essential for survival. Now University of Florida researchers have discovered that Streptococcus mutans, the decay-causing organism that thri...

Interactive 3-D atlas of mouse brain now available on web

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have just launched a web-based 3-D digital atlas browser and database of the brain of a popular laboratory mouse (see "Neuroscientists around the world can now download these extremely accurate anatomical templates and use them to map ot...

Bioengineers create stable networks of blood vessels

Yale biomedical engineers have created an implantable system that can form and stabilize a functional network of fine blood vessels critical for supporting tissues in the body, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For body tissue to survive it must receive oxygen delivered through the finest of blood vessels. Led by Erin Lavik, assistant professor...

Portable cocaine sensor developed at UC Santa Barbara

A real-time sensor for detecting cocaine –?made with inexpensive, off-the-shelf electronics –?has been developed by a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two local high school students and a Nobel laureate participated in the discovery. The potential applications of the sensor are far-reaching and include bioterrorism detection and important medical uses. Th...

HIV accessory protein disables host immunity via receptor-protein intermediary

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that an HIV-1 accessory protein called Vpr destroys the host cell's ability to survive by binding to a host receptor. This, in turn, keeps an important enzyme from activating the cell's immune system. These findings refine an earlier understanding of Vpr HIV pathogenesis and imply new approaches to treating AIDS, inflamma...

Newly identified mechanism helps explain why people of African descent are more vulnerable to TB

A team of scientists has identified a cellular mechanism that may help explain the puzzle of why people of African descent are more susceptible to tuberculosis infection and why, once infected, they develop more severe states of the disease than whites. The team includes researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The paper will appea...

Microbes convert 'Styrofoam? into biodegradable plastic

Bacteria could help transform a key component of disposable cups, plates and utensils into a useful eco-friendly plastic, significantly reducing the environmental impact of this ubiquitous, but difficult-to-recycle waste stream, according to a study scheduled to appear in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal, The microb...

Sustainable farm practices improve Third World food production

Crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80 percent in four years, according to a study scheduled for publication in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Chemical Society journal . The study, the largest of its kind to date -- 286 farm projects in 57 countries -- concludes that sustainable agriculture p...