hold in Biological News

A tiny frozen microbe may hold clues to extraterrestrial life

A novel bacterium that has been trapped more than three kilometres under glacial ice in Greenland for over 120 000 years, may hold clues as to what life forms might exist on other planets. Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University report finding th...

Covering the bases: Quantum effect may hold promise for low-cost DNA sequencing, sensor applications

A ghostly property of matter, called quantum tunneling, may aid the quest for accurate, low-cost genomic sequencing, according to a new paper in Nature Nanotechnology Letters by Stuart Lindsay and his collaborators at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University. Tunneling implies that a ...

Shellfish and inkjet printers may hold key to faster healing from surgeries

Using the natural glue that marine mussels use to stick to rocks, and a variation on the inkjet printer, a team of researchers led by North Carolina State University has devised a new way of making medical adhesives that could replace traditional sutures and result in less scarring, faster recover...

Alpine rivers hold important clues for preserving biodiversity and coping with climate change

Marginal plants, particularly trees, play a crucial role in sustaining the biodiversity of Europe's big river systems, according to a recently held workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF). This finding provides important clues for protecting Europe's rivers against a combined o...

TWAS to hold 25th anniversary celebration Nov. 10-13, 2008

TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, will hold its 25th anniversary celebration in Mexico City on 10-13 November 2008. Felipe Caldern, the president of Mexico, will give the opening address. Nobel Prize winners Mario Molina (chemistry 1995) and Harold Varmus (physiology and medi...

Study: Tropical wetlands hold more carbon than temperate marshes

COLUMBUS, Ohio In one of the first comparisons of its kind, researchers have demonstrated that wetlands in tropical areas are able to absorb and hold onto about 80 percent more carbon than can wetlands in temperate zones. The scientists extracted soil cores from wetlands in Costa Rica and in O...

Do 68 molecules hold the key to understanding disease?

Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer. Revie...

Potatoes may hold key to Alzheimer's treatment

A virus that commonly infects potatoes bears a striking resemblance to one of the key proteins implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and researchers have used that to develop antibodies that may slow or prevent the onset of AD. Studies in mice have demonstrated that vaccinations with the amyl...

Scientists find elephant memories may hold key to survival

A recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) suggests that old female elephantsand perhaps their memories of distant, life-sustaining sources of food and watermay be the key to survival during the worst of times. In particular, experienced eleph...

Songbirds may hold key to advances in treatment of brain degeneration

BETHLEHEM, PA, August 5, 2008 -- Ongoing research at Lehigh University may one day help make strides toward therapeutic advances in the treatment of diseases that involve the loss of memory and brain degeneration such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and stroke. Colin Saldanha, associate professor of ...

L-1 Identity Solutions to Hold Supplemental Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results Q&A Conference Call at 2:00p.m. (ET) Today

STAMFORD, Conn., July 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., (NYSE: ID ), a leading provider of identity solutions and services, will hold a supplemental conference call for Q&A with the investment community regarding second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2008 finan...

Cells lining milk ducts hold key to spread of common form of breast cancer

BOSTON--When a form of cancer that begins in the milk ducts of the breast invades neighboring tissue to spread to other parts of the body, the cause lies not in the tumor cells themselves but in a group of abnormal surrounding cells that cause the walls of the duct to deteriorate like a rusty pipe...

Genes hold the key to how happy we are, scientists say

Happiness in life is as much down to having the right genetic mix as it is to personal circumstances according to a recent study. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh working with researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia found that happiness is partly determ...

NAS to hold 2-day summit on energy issues

Energy policy is at the center of some of the nation's most pressing challenges, from national security and the economy to global climate change. To provide a critical overview of America's energy future, the National Academies are convening a summit of leading energy experts from the government, ...

Unexplored microbes hold incredible potential for science and industry

Humans live in the midst of a seething, breathing microbial world. Microorganisms populate every conceivable habitat, both familiar and exotic, from the surface of the human skin, to rainforest floors, to hydrothermal vents in the ocean floors. Despite the powerful and pervasive role of microb...

Stanford researchers say living corals thousands of years old hold clues to past climate changes

Using radiocarbon dating and samples of deep-sea corals snipped from the floor of the Pacific Ocean by a submersible, researchers from Stanford and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that deep-sea corals growing off Hawaii are much older than previously thoughtsome as old as 4,...

Birds, bats and insects hold secrets for aerospace engineers

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards. A Blackbird ...

It's all about geometry: Protein contact surfaces hold key to cures

Your mother always told you to do your geometry homework, and for scientists seeking new treatments for diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers, this advice turns out to be right on the mark. In the atomic-level landscape of proteins, shape determines the all-important function of these molecul...

Nanowires hold promise for more affordable solar cells

Millions of nearly invisible wires may hold the answer to making solar cells a more affordable source of alternative energy. The Department of Engineering Physics at McMaster University, Cleanfield Energy and the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) have formed a partnership to pursue the commer...

Hot springs microbes hold key to dating sedimentary rocks, researchers say

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Scientists studying microbial communities and the growth of sedimentary rock at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park have made a surprising discovery about the geological record of life and the environment. Their discovery could affect how certain sequences of sedimen...

Unique fungal collection could hold key to future antibiotics

Royal Holloway and CABI both bring a combination of individual scientific skills, expertise and resources to the project. When brought together, these offer the opportunity to build a highly focused natural products drug discovery operation that will address the urgent need for bringing new antibi...

Gender roles and not gender bias hold back women scientists

Traditional roles of women in the home and a negative bias in workplace support result in less career success for women versus men at the same stage of their research careers, determined researchers at the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in a study appearing in the November 2007 iss...

Gene may hold key to future cancer hope

Scientists may have discovered a new way of killing tumours in what they hope could one day lead to alternative forms of cancer treatments. The University of Manchester research has identified a key gene that appears to play a critical role in the normal process of cell division. Cells divid...

Social habits of cells may hold key to fighting diseases

Scientists in Manchester are working to change the social habits of living cells an innovation that could bring about cleaner and greener fuel and help fight diseases such as cancer and diabetes. As part of a new 18 million project spanning six countries, The Manchester Centre for Integrative ...

Birth records hold pancreatic cancer clue

Pregnancies in Jerusalem in the 1960s and 1970s may hold vital clues about how pancreatic cancer and diabetes are linked. According to research published in the online open access journal BMC Medicine, women with a history of gestational diabetes had a higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer l...

Stem cell research puts interstate rivalry on hold

Victoria and New South Wales have put aside their competitive interstate rivalry to collaborate on a stem cell research project, as announced by Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings and NSW Minister for Science and Medical Research, Verity Firth, today. Scientists from the Monash Institute of Me...

Could fungal collection hold the key to new life-saving drugs?

Scientists may be one step closer to finding new drugs to fight MRSA, cancers and other diseases, after CABI, a leading bioservices organisation announced that its fungal collection will be screened by the University of Strathclyde. CABI houses one of the world’s largest genetic resource collect...

8 plants from South Africa may hold potential for treating high blood pressure

Medicinal plants are an integral part of African culture, one of the oldest and most diverse in the world. In South Africa, 21st century drug therapy is used side-by-side with traditional African medicines to heal the sick. While plants have been used in African medicine to treat fever, asthma, con...

Protein may hold key to decreasing organ dysfunction rates in heart transplants

A new study, led by Felix Aigner, M.D., has identified a protein known as Lipocalin-2 (Lcn-2) as potentially responsible for regulating the body's inflammatory response during heart transplants. One of the major complications involved with many transplantations is the damage done to the transplante...

Neuron cell stickiness may hold key to evolution of the human brain

The stickiness of human neurons may have been a key factor in why the human brain evolved beyond the brains of our primate relatives. In a study comparing the genomes of humans, chimpanzees, mice and other vertebrates, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Labora...

Transplanted brain cells hold promise for Parkinson's disease

Transplanted neural stem cells hold promise for reducing the destruction of dopaminergic cells that occurs in Parkinson’s disease and for replacing cells lost to the disease, scientists say. Research published in the current issue of The Journal of Neuroscience shows a human neural stem cell tra...

Sea urchin genome suprisingly similar to man and may hold key to cures

Sea urchins are small and spiny, they have no eyes and they eat kelp and algae. Still, the sea creature’s genome is remarkably similar to humans?and may hold the key to preventing and curing several human diseases, according to a University of Central Florida researcher and several colleagues. UC...

Quantum dots reviewed -- Could these nanoparticles hold the cure to cancer?

The worlds of medical and biological research are abuzz with the promises offered by nanoparticles known as semiconductor quantum dots. These Quantum Dots (QDs) have unique optical and electronic properties that make them suitable for breakthrough treatments such as the detection and destructio...

Nano-devices hold promise for early-stage cancer detection

They are miniature labs that can be swallowed like a pill, injected through a catheter, or woven into fabric. Their function is to screen for, detect, and potentially treat, cancer and other diseases when they are still at a single-cell size in early development stages. They will also detect harm...

Unique soybean lines hold promise for producing allergy-free soybeans

Researchers have isolated two Chinese soybean lines that grow without the primary protein linked to soy allergies in children and adults. The two lines already are adapted to Illinois-like conditions and will be given away to breeders seeking to produce new varieties of allergy-free soybeans withou...

A new view on Lyme disease: Rodents hold the key to annual risk

In the United States, Lyme disease incidence has skyrocketed from 497 cases reported in 1982 (the first year national statistics were collected) to a record 23,763 in 2002. Lyme disease, like other zoonoses, is transmitted by a vector that picks up the pathogen during a blood meal from a verte...

Acidity in the brain could hold the key to stroke treatment

Development of a new technique for detecting brain damage caused by stroke has been boosted up by a £1m grant to scientists at The University of Manchester. Professor Gareth Morris of the School of Chemistry and Professor Risto Kauppinen of the University of Birmingham are to lead the development o...

Magnetism and mimicry of nature hold hope for better medicine, environmental safety

Critical advances in medicine and environmental protection promise to emerge from a new method for biochemical analysis of fluids developed by an international science team led in part by Arizona State University researchers. Called "digital magnetofluidics," it promises more rapid, more accurat...

Ever-happy mice may hold key to new treatment of depression

A new breed of permanently 'cheerful' mouse is providing hope of a new treatment for clinical depression. TREK-1 is a gene that can affect transmission of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is known to play an important role in mood, sleep and sexuality. By breeding mice with an absence of TREK-1, r...

Bones hold the key to blood renewal

Though we think of them as solid and permanent, our bones are actually constantly being rebuilt throughout our lives. A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now revealed how cells that work at remodeling the bones play a direct part in the ongoing renewal of another system ?t...