destruct

Ecological destruction fuels emerging diseases

The destruction of habitat by human activity and the extinction of species around the world is more than a looming environmental catastrophe, warns a Canadian zoologist. This ecological damage also endangers human health by turning parasites into "evolutionary land mines." Dr. Daniel (Dan) Brooks, a parasitologist at the University of Toronto, says the decline of global biodiversity is li...

Bound for destruction: Ubiquitination protects against improper Notch signaling

The is an important molecular signaling mechanism whose existence has beenknown, or at least hinted at, for nearly a century since theidentification of a mutant strain of Drosophila fruit flies with“notched?wings in Thomas Hunt Morgan’s lab in 1910. Later studiesrevealed that the Notch gene encodes a receptor protein tha...

A molecule impedes the destruction of the 'Brucella' bacteria

Research carried out with the participation of the University of Navarra has shown how a determinate molecule helps an important pathogen, Brucella abortus, escape destruction within the cells charged with eliminating infectious agents (macrophages). This research has been published in Nature Immunology scientific magazine. Brucella is a model of an intracellular parasite, a category that...

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...

Research: Snails were overlooked contributors to marsh destruction

Buoyed by the effects of an intense drought, otherwise harmless snails likely killed off thousands of acres of salt marsh in the Southeast in recent years. Periwinkle snails, known to science as Littoraria irrorata, normally coexist happily with salt marsh. But the drought, which lasted from 1999 to 2001, weakened and killed marsh grasses such as cordgrass, or Spartina alterniflora, so ext...

New method enables gene disruption in destructive fungal pathogen

Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech, Colorado State University, and Duke University Medical Center have developed a new method to determine gene function on a genome-wide scale in the fungal pathogen Alternaria brassicicola. This destructive fungus causes black spot disease, leading to considerable leaf loss in such economically important crops as canola, c...

Synthetic molecule causes cancer cells to self-destruct

Scientists have found a way to trick cancer cells into committing suicide. The novel technique potentially offers an effective method of providing personalized anti-cancer therapy.Most living cells contain a protein called procaspase-3, which, when activated, changes into the executioner enzyme caspase-3 and initiates programmed cell death, called apoptosis. In cancer cells, however, the signalin...

The vicious cycle of rainforest destruction

Rainforests and savannas contain 70% of the world's plants and are critical to the health of our planet. A new £1.6m international project involving researchers from the Leeds Earth and Biosphere Institute is looking at the impact of global warming on these sensitive areas. The researchers think we may be at the start of a vicious cycle, where global warming causes the rainforests to shrin...

UN review shows need to halt destructive fishing practice

A long-awaited report by the United Nations shows the need for an international moratorium on bottom-trawling and other destructive fishing practices that damage deep sea life, Conservation International (CI) said. The U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) reviewed measures to protect the vulnerable deep oceans of the high seas ?the 64 percent of ocean that lies beyo...

Protein found to shield pancreatic cancer cells from self-destruction

An overexpressed protein protects human pancreatic cancer cells from being forced to devour themselves, removing one of the body's natural defenses against out-of-control cell growth, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the March issue of Molecular Cancer Research. The protein tissue transglutaminase, known by the abbreviation TG2, previously has b...

Destructive enzyme shows a benevolent side

New research shows that a recently discovered enzyme that destroys the messenger RNA (mRNA) for some proteins can also help to protect the mRNA during times of stress. The response might help cancer cells survive chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The study examined a recently discovered enzyme called PMR1. That enzyme attaches to certain mRNA molecules and remains there like a hand gren...

Hybrid molecule causes cancer cells to self-destruct

By joining a sugar to a short-chain fatty acid compound, Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a two-pronged molecular weapon that kills cancer cells in lab tests. The researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans. Nevertheless, they believe it represents a promising n...