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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...

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...

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...

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...

'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...

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...

New RNAi tools enable systematic studies of gene function

An international public-private research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced today the construction and availability of an extensive library of molecular reagents to silence most human and mouse genes. As described in the March 24 issue of Cell, this library consists of small RNA molecules that can switch off genes individually, allowing the user to d...

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...

New technology enables faster, more efficient cell harvest: Cell therapy meeting study

A new, transformative filtration-based technology for the isolation and enrichment of cells, a critical first step in the development of therapies to repair or replace diseased or damaged tissues and organs, was found to be more efficient and faster than traditional technology used for cell separation. These findings were presented today at the International Society for Cellular Therapy (I...

Prototype just-in-time medical device enables untrained bystanders to save lives

Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) researchers at the University of Utah have created a prototype device that could make it possible for anyone ?even those with no emergency medical training ?to perform life-saving actions for victims of sudden cardiac arrest. The just-in-time support, or JITS, device provides bystanders with guidance and information on how to administer CPR and assess the state an...

Protein enables discovery of quantum effect in photosynthesis

When it comes to studying energy transfer in photosynthesis, it's good to think "outside the bun." That's what Robert Blankenship, Ph.D., professor of biology and chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, did when he contributed a protein to a study performed by his collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berk...

Newly found sensing system enables certain bacteria to resist human immune defenses

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