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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...

Fox Chase Cancer Center scientists identify immune-system mutation

A team of Fox Chase Cancer Center scientists led by immunologist Dietmar J. Kappes, Ph.D., has identified the genetic mutation that keeps a mouse strain from developing white blood cells, or lymphocytes, called helper T cells. The report by Kappes and his colleagues appears in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature. Kappes' laboratory first discovered the mice with this naturally occurring defect in...

Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa

An expanded clinical trial conducted by Optobionics Corporation involving the implantation of a retina mircrochip has allowed Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research & Development Center to implant the device in several patients. The patients all have retinitis pigmentosa with moderate-to-severe vision loss. Three centers in the United States have been chosen...

Massey Cancer Center researcher helps to identify a piece of the cancer puzzle

A structural biologist from the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has identified the crystal structure of a protein that plays a role in supplying nutrients to solid tumors. This identification may help researchers gain a greater understanding of the cell signaling that occurs when cancer cell...

$6.5 Million Grant for Microarray Center at Yale School of Medicine

In 1909, while harvesting a typical corn crop (Zea mays) in Illinois, a field worker noticed a plant so unusual that it was initially believed to be a new species. Its "peculiarly shaped ear" was "laid aside as a curiosity" and the specimen was designated Zea ramosa (from the Latin ramosus, "having many branches"). Due to the alteration of a single gene, later named ramosa1, both the ear and the...

Researchers seek to discover what really happens when a virus enters the body

A well-respected researcher who is now a chief of an immunology laboratory of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has rocked the boat in the past few years for the experts in the understanding of the autoimmune system. NIH's Polly Matzinger has developed the "danger model," suggesting that the immune system is more concerned with damage detected on the basis of a biological cell's deat...

Study shows how retinoic acid enters a cell's nucleus

Cornell University researchers have revealed a process that has stumped scientists for many years: exactly how an acid derived from vitamin A enters a cell's nucleus, where it has strong anti-carcinogenic effects. Discovery of this basic transport mechanism opens a new door for future research on related compounds. The finding has important implications for the fight against cancer and ot...

Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest

Fire is an important agent of transformation in the Amazon landscape. Every year, low intensity fires burn thousands of square miles of Amazon forest. To study the effects of these fires on the forest, and the forests' ability to recover from repeated burning, Woods Hole Research Center scientists will burn two and a half square kilometers of forest in the transition forest of northern Mato Gross...

NIH creates nationwide network of molecular libraries screening centers

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced it is awarding $88.9 million in grants to nine institutions over three years to establish a collaborative research network that will use high-tech screening methods to identify small molecules that can be used as research tools. Small molecules have great potential to help scientists in their efforts to learn more about key biological proces...

Hide and seek: Researchers discover a new way for infectious bacteria to enter cells

French scientists have learned how bacterium, found in soil and water, can be transmitted to humans via undercooked and unpasteur...

VCU Massey Cancer Center study shows enzyme linked to spread of breast cancer cells

Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center have found a new signaling component that influences movement of human breast cancer cells toward epidermal growth factor. In the August issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers showed that epidermal growth factor, which plays a critical role in breast cancer progression, stimulates sphingosine kinase...

Stolen gene allows insect virus to enter cells

A gene enabling an insect virus to enter new cells was likely stolen from a host cell and adapted for the virus's use, researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) at Cornell University report. Virologists have long thought of baculoviruses, a group of viruses that can liquefy their insect hosts in a matter of days but don't induce so much as a sneeze in mammals, as potential pesticides....

A bug's life: Exceptional genomic stability yet rapid protein evolution in a carpenter ant mutualist

The recent surge in the number of microbial genome sequences available to the scientific community is allowing researchers to address interesting ecological questions and to observe how various genomic, evolutionary, and ecological forces interact to define an organism's role in the environment. Today, Dr. Jennifer Wernegreen's group from the Marine Biological Laboratory presents new data that su...

Center releases new public survey on stem cells

Stem cells are unique among human cells in that they possess the uncanny ability to develop into virtually any other cell of the body, offering a hypothetical tool kit for repairing diseased hearts, mending broken spinal cords, or correcting genetic diseases, among other hoped-for benefits. Stem cells derived from very early embryos show the most promise in research to date, but the embryo is de...

New study pinpoints epicenters of Earth's imminent extinctions

Safeguarding 595 sites around the world would help stave off an imminent global extinction crisis, according to new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( Conducted by scientists working with the 52 member organizations of the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE –?<A HREF="http://www.zeroextinction.org...

UC San Diego partners with Venter Institute to build marine microbial genomics cyberinfrastructure

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) will build a state-of-the-art computational resource and develop software tools to decipher the genetic code of communities of microbial life in the world's oceans. The new resource will help scientists understand how microbes function in their natural ecosystems, enable studies on the effect humans are having on the environmen...

World Trade Center identifications pushed forensic DNA technology

At the end of more than three years, New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) identified 58 percent of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack victims, thanks to innovative genetic analysis techniques, intergovernmental and family cooperation and the perseverance of dedicated forensic scientists, according to a recent book by Dr. Robert C. Shaler, professor of biochemistry and molecular...

VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers identify a new class of anti-cancer drugs based on platinum

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University's Massey Cancer Center have created a new platinum-based, anti-cancer agent able to overcome acquired drug resistance by first modifying the way it is absorbed into cancer cells and then attacking the DNA of those cancer cells. The findings may help researchers design a new generation of anti-cancer drugs that selectively target cancer cells...

Leptin has powerful effect on reward center in the brain

Leptin, a hormone critical for normal food intake and metabolism, exerts a strong effect on appetite by acting in the mid-brain region as well as in the hypothalamus, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Neuron. "Finding that metabolic hormones directly regulate the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the mid-brain has profound implications for how researchers view the integration...

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center: Harnessing the measles virus to attack cancer

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has opened a new clinical study using a vaccine strain of the measles virus to attack recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, a largely untreatable brain tumor. This is the second of several pending molecular medicine studies in patients using measles to kill cancer. "We are looking at better ways to treat some of the most lethal cancers," says Eva Galanis, M.D., onco...

Chemical tests of cell growth enter third dimension

Ohio State University researchers have developed two new technologies for measuring cell growth in the laboratory. The first patent-pending technology provides a way for researchers to easily tell if cancer cells in the laboratory are responding to an anti-cancer drug. The second -- because it tests several sets of cells at once -- allows for the simultaneous testing of different dosages,...

Nanoparticle assembly enters the fast lane

The speed of nanoparticle assembly can be accelerated with the assistance of the molecule that carries life's genetic instructions, DNA, a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently found. Nanoparticles, particles with dimensions on the order of billionths of a meter, could potentially be used for more efficient energy generation and data storag...

Darwin's famous finches and Venter's marine microbes

Although the Galápagos finches were to play a pivotal role in the inception of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, he had no inkling of their significance when he collected them during his voyage on the HMS Beagle. Similarly, it is hard to predict the impact the vast amount of marine microbial DNA ?collected during the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition by J....

NIAID DNA vaccine for H5N1 avian influenza enters human trial

The first human trial of a DNA vaccine designed to prevent H5N1 avian influenza infection began on December 21, 2006, when the vaccine was administered to the first volunteer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD. Scientists from the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the NIH Institutes, d...

Researchers develop marker that identifies energy-producing centers in nerve cells

A protein that causes coral to glow is helping researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine to light up brain cells that are critical for the proper functioning of the central nervous system. This fluorescent marker protein may shed light on brain cell defects believed to play a role in various neurological diseases. The researchers describe how this marker works in mice in the De...

Iowa State scientists demonstrate first use of nanotechnology to enter plant cells

A team of Iowa State University plant scientists and materials chemists have successfully used nanotechnology to penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision. Their breakthrough brings nanotechnology to plant biology and agricultural biotechnology, creating a powerful new tool for targeted delivery into plant ce...

Innovative smallpox vaccine research study to be conducted at Case Medical Center

The current FDA-approved vaccine, D...