first

A gene's first 'kiss' sets off that affair known as puberty

Puberty, that awkward phase when boys and girls are primed for their sexual reproductive years as men and women, appears to be triggered by the brain's own version of "It takes two to tango," whereby a signal literally gets turned on by a molecule that is produced by a gene aptly named KiSS-1. The couple ?a biochemical equivalent to Adam and Eve ?makes its sudden appearance in a region of...

Timing is everything: First step in protein building revealed

Timing is everything, it seems, even inscience. A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists has unraveled the firststep in translating genetic information in order to build a protein,only to find that it's not one step but two.In a series of experiments, the scientists found that when yeast'sprotein-building machinery recognizes the starting line for a gene'sinstructions, it first alters its str...

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...

First 'atlas' of key brain genes could speed research on cancer, neurological diseases

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institutehave compiled the first atlas showing the locations of crucial generegulators, or switches that determine how different parts of the braindevelop ?and, in some cases, develop abnormally or malfunction.The scientists say the map will accelerate research on brain tumors andneurological diseases that result from mutations in these switch genes?called...

First-ever Compounds To Target Only Metastatic Cells Are Highly Effective Against Breast, Prostate, And Colon Cancers

Two compounds that zero in on cancer cells spreading throughout the body, while ignoring primary tumor cells, could someday give doctors a whole new weapon in the fight against tough-to-treat metastatic disease, according to Weill Medical College of Cornell University researchers. The compounds, called synthetic migrastatin analogues, prevented 91 to 99 percent of metastatic breast cancer...

NYC's First Rapid HIV Drug-resistant AIDS Case Prompts Call to Step Up HIV Prevention

New York City's Public Health Department today issued a public health advisory after reporting the first documented case of an alarming, new, rapidly-progressing and highly drug resistant strain of HIV in a New York man who progressed from his initial HIV infection, thought to have occurred in mid-October 2004, to a largely untreatable strain of AIDS in just three months. According to City...

First real-time view of developing neurons reveals surprises, say Stanford researchers

Scientists have believed that neurons need a long period of fine-tuning and training with other neurons before they take on their adult role. But after using new technology for the first time to watch these cells develop, a team of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that neurons come into this world with a good idea about what they'll become as adults. The work...

Love at first smell

Why do some males smell better than others? Scientists at Cardiff University, in collaboration with colleagues at Max-Plank Society, Germany ?and the help of stickleback fish - have identified the chemical responsible. The researchers found in a study of sticklebacks, that males with body odour that is particularly attractive to females produce small protein fragments (known as "peptides")...

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...

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...

Breast-Cancer Risk Linked to Exposure to Traffic Emissions at Menarche, First Birth

Exposure to carcinogens in traffic emissions at particular lifetime points may increase the risk of developing breast cancer in women who are lifetime nonsmokers, a study by epidemiologists and geographers at the University at Buffalo has found. Their study was conducted among women who lived in Erie and Niagara counties of New York State between 1996 and 2001. They found that higher expo...

Expression Project for Oncology (expO) completes first phase of standardized gene expression analyses

The International Genomics Consortium’s (IGC) Expression Project for Oncology (expO) has released clinically annotated gene expression profiles for 60 tumor specimens, completing the initial phase of the nation’s first and eventually largest public database dedicated to standardized gene expression data. The clinically annotated dataset is available in the public domain through the National Cente...

Mayo Clinic Researchers Create 'Obedient Virus'; First Step To Use Measles Virus Against Cancer

An international team of Mayo Clinic-led researchers is first to devise a system that consistently converts the measles virus into a therapeutic killer that hunts down and destroys cancer cells -- and cancer cells only. Their research findings appear as an advanced electronic article of Nature Biotechnology. The researchers harnessed the viral trait for attacking and commandeering cells,...

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...

DuPont's first biologically derived polymer receives global recognition

DuPont's newest polymer innovation, the first DuPont polymer derived from a biological source, has been recognized by the China State Intellectual Property Office and China Central Television (CCTV) as "Most Visionary Innovation" at a recent award ceremony. will receive the 2005 "New Technologies in Re...

Anti cancer virotherapy well tolerated in first human administration, research finds

An international medical conference here heard that an Australian developed anti-cancer therapy based on the use of a common cold virus to control cancer cell growth has begun safety testing in human subjects. The research was presented to the third International Meeting on Replicating Oncolytic Virus Therapeutics, on Friday 11 March by Newcastle University associate professor, Darren Sha...

First frozen egg baby born in Canada

The McGill University Health Center (MUHC) in Montreal is pleased to announce the first successful birth in Canada resulting from frozen eggs. A team led by Professor Seang Lin Tan, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University and Director of the McGill Reproductive Centre at the MUHC in Montreal confirmed the birth of a healthy baby boy, weighing 3740grams on April 2...

Human Cells Filmed Instantly Messaging for First Time

Relief from soaring prices at the gas pump could come in the form of corncobs, cornstalks, switchgrass and other types of biomass, according to a joint feasibility study for the departments of Agriculture and Energy. The recently completed Oak Ridge National Laboratory report outlines a national strategy in which 1 billion dry tons of biomass ?any organic matter that is available on a rene...

First North American Encapsulated Islet Transplant without Long-term Immune Suppression into a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes

Biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plagues of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Scientists have known for some time that these individuals carry a genetic mutation (known as CCR5-delta32) that prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system but have been unable to account for the high levels of the gene in Scandinavi...

First technology to remove prions that cause vCJD from blood launched

The risk of receiving blood contaminated with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) prions may no longer be a concern for the thousands of people who require a transfusion. Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) announced today the Council of Europe (CE) marking of its Leukotrap® Affinity Prion Reduction Filter System. It is the first and only technology that removes infectious prions that may be the causative...

A New Species of Monkey is Discovered in Tanzania: The First in Africa for More Than 20 Years

Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, working in conjunction with other partners, have discovered Africa’s first new species of monkey in over 20 years, marking the third monkey WCS...

Unlike other mammals, newborn dolphins and orcas stay active 24/7 during first months of development

If you thought the sleep-deprived months with your newborn were tough, pity the poor mother dolphin or killer whale. Reporting in the June 30 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature, UCLA/Veterans Affairs neuroscientists report a developmental pattern in bottlenose dolphins and killer whales that is unique from other mammals, with calves of both species active 24 hours a day during th...

The first impact factor for PLoS Biology ?13.9

The open-access journal PLoS Biology has been assessed by Thomson ISI to have an impact factor of 13.9*, which places PLoS Biology among the most highly cited journals in the life sciences. This is an outstanding statistic for a journal less than two years old, from a new publisher promoting a new business model that supports open access to the scientific and medical literature. An impact...

Moffitt-USF head toward first human trials of anti-cancer drug that targets protein AKT

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, working in partnership with the University of South Florida (USF), has discovered a new use for an old, previously discredited anti-cancer drug that could add another weapon in the arsenal against several cancers, including tumors of the breast, ovary, colon, skin and prostate. The compound, tricirbine, was tested at various cancer cen...

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...

Researchers find first evidence of venom system in extinct mammal

A tiny fossil found more than 10 years ago in central Alberta has proved to be the key to answering a long unsolved evolutionary question, say researchers from the University of Alberta. Back in 1991, Dr. Richard Fox and his research team found a 60 million year-old incomplete skull fossil that they now believe is the first evidence of an extinct mammal with a venom delivery apparatus. Th...

New Vaccine To Be Used For First Time In Polio Outbreak Response

Eighteen new cases of polio have today been announced in Yemen, bringing the reported total number associated with an outbreak in the country to 22. Yemen had been polio-free since disease surveillance began in 1996 - a genetic investigation is ongoing to determine the precise origin of the outbreak. Experts fear that the number of cases will rise in the immediate future. Teams of WHO and...

First production of human monoclonal antibodies in chicken eggs published in Nature Biotechnology

Chicken-produced antibodies demonstrate enhanced cell killing compared to conventionally produced anti-cancer antibodies Origen Therapeutics today announced the first published scientific report of fully functional, human sequence monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produced in chickens. The antibodies were expressed solely in the chicken oviduct and deposited into egg white in concentrations of...

What comes first…the chicken, the egg, or the bad attitude?

Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that chickens raised for meat can choose whether or not they'll funnel the nutrients they eat towards themselves or their eggs. That phenomenon of 'reproductive attitude' is a headache for producers who must figure out how to deal with less productive hens that "partition" nutrients needed for egg production into their own bodies. "...

For first time, brain cells generated in a dish

Regenerative medicine scientists at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute have created a system in rodent models that for the first time duplicates neurogenesis -- the process of generating new brain cells -- in a dish. Writing in today's (June 13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a cell culture method that holds the promise of producing...

Researchers at UGA provide first look at protein expression in Chagas disease-causing parasites

Covering ship hulls with artificial shark skin could help ships sailing smoothly. The growth of marine organisms such as barnacles on ship hulls is a major cause of increased energy costs in the naval industry. Shark skin offers a structural design that prevents this so called 'bio-fouling'. Ralph Liedert from the University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany, is presenting his work on t...

Agilent Technologies Introduces First Commercial Mouse Microarray for Comparative Genomic Hybridization Research

Tuberculosis remains a major global health threat. Although more than 3 billion doses of the BCG vaccine have been administered to fight tuberculosis, the ability of the BCG vaccine to protect adults is very limited, as is its efficacy against newly emerging isolates. In a study appearing online on August 18 in advance of print publication of the September 1 issue of the Journal of Clinica...

Primate virus jumps species barrier to humans for first time in Asia

Scientists have identified the first reported case in Asia of primate-to-human transmission of simian foamy virus (SFV), a retrovirus found in macaques and other primates that so far has not been shown to cause disease in humans. The transmission of the virus from a monkey to a human took place at a monkey temple in Bali, Indonesia, the researchers report in the July issue of the journal Emerging...

Canada's first embryonic stem cell lines

Leading marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that will most likely benefit from immediate action and will cont...

No small feat: First ever gene therapy success for muscular dystrophy achieved

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh report the first study to achieve success with gene therapy for the treatment of congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) in mice, demonstrating that the formidable scientific challenges that have cast doubt on gene therapy ever being feasible for children with muscular dystrophy can be overcome. Moreover, their results, published in this week's online edi...

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...

Results of world's first gene therapy trial for arthritis show approach safe, feasible

Gene therapy for arthritis and other non-terminal, debilitating conditions and diseases is both feasible and safe, report researchers who conducted the world's first such test on the approach in patients with advanced rheumatoid arthritis. The results, published in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that introducing a new gene has th...

First Whole Genome Map of Genetic Variability in Parkinson’s Disease

In findings with implications for pandemic influenza, a new study reports for the first time that a less-virulent strain of avian influenza virus can spread from poultry to humans. The research appears in the October 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Crossing the species barrier is an important step in the development of a flu virus with pandemic potenti...

Scientists get first glimpse at how plants, most animals repair UV-damaged DNA

For the first time, researchers have observed exactly how some cells are able to repair DNA damage caused by the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This enzyme is missing in all mammals, including humans, although all plants and all other animals have it. Greater un...

Scientists unpick genetics of first 15 minutes of life

Scientists have identified the gene responsible for controlling a first key step in the creation of new life, according to new research published in the journal Nature tomorrow (Thursday 27 October 2005). The gene, known as HIRA, 'chaperones' the early processes that take place once a sperm enters an egg, giving it a crucial role in the most fundamental process in sexually reproducing anim...