hunting

Symbiotic bacteria protect hunting wasps from fungal infestation

Researchers have discovered a fascinating symbiotic relationship between a wasp species and a newly discovered bacterial species ?a relationship that potentially sheds light on how bacteria can be successfully utilized by higher organisms in defensive mechanisms against other microbes. In the new work, researchers show that a solitary ground-nesting wasp, the European beewolf, harbors Streptomyce...

U. Iowa researchers improve Huntington's disease symptoms in mice

Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have taken another step toward a potential treatment for Huntington's disease (HD). Using an approach called RNA interference (RNAi), the scientists reduced levels of the disease-causing HD protein in mice and significantly improved the movement and neurological abnormalities normally associated with the diseas...

New insights into how Huntington's disease attacks the brain

Scientific theory holds that Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a mutant protein that arises within brain cells and kills them, triggering the genetic neurological disorder. Now a new UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute study reveals the first strong evidence that the mutant protein also elicits toxic interactions from neighboring cells to provoke the fatal brain disorder. The May 5 edition of Ne...

Huntington's cure in flies lays groundwork for broader treatment approaches

Boosting levels of two critical proteins that normally shut down during Huntington's disease, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have cured fruit flies of the genetic, neurodegenerative condition. The study results,...

Molecular trigger for Huntington's disease found

Researchers have discovered a key regulatory molecule whose overactivation by the abnormal protein produced in Huntington's disease (HD) causes the central pathologies of the disease. The abnormal HD protein activates the regulatory protein called p53, which in turn switches on a host of other genes. This abnormal gene activation damages the cells' power plants, called the mitochondria, and kills...

Old drug shows new promise for Huntington's Disease

Clioquinol, an antibiotic that was banned for internal use in the United States in 1971 but is still used in topical applications, appears to block the genetic action of Huntington's disease in mice and in cell culture, according to a study reported by San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) researchers. The study, led by principal investigator Stephen M. Massa, MD, PhD, a neurologist at...

MIT research holds promise for Huntington's treatment

Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School have identified a compound that interferes with the pathogenic effects of Huntington's disease, a discovery that could lead to development of a new treatment for the disease. There is no cure for Huntington's, a neurodegenerative disorder that now afflicts 30,000 Americans, with another 150,000 at risk. The fatal disease, which is genetically i...

UGA researchers find that hunting can increase the severity of wildlife disease epidemics

A new study by University of Georgia researchers shows that the common practice of killing wild animals to control disease outbreaks can actually make matters worse in some cases. In a study published the August 7 edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, post-doctoral researcher Marc Choisy and Pejman Rohani, associate professor of ecology and UGA Bi...

Gene therapy injected into the brains' of mice with Huntington's disease

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, and Ceregene Inc., San Diego, have successfully used gene therapy to preserve motor function and stop the anatomic, cellular changes that occur in the brains of mice with Huntington's disease (HD). This is the first study to demonstrate that, using this delivery method, symptom onset might be prevented in HD mice with this treatment. <p...

Test reveals effectiveness of potential Huntington's disease drugs

A test using cultured cells provides an effective way to screen drugs against Huntington's disease and shows that two compounds ?memantine and riluzole ?are most effective at keeping cells alive under conditions that mimic the disorder, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. "These drugs have been tested in a variety of Huntington's disease models and some HD human trials and...

Immune cell communication key to hunting viruses, Jefferson immunologists show

Immunologists at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have used nanotechnology to create a novel "biosensor" to solve in part a perplexing problem in immunology: how immune system cells called killer T-cells hunt down invading viruses. They found that surprisingly little virus can turn on the killer T-cells, thanks to some complicated communication amon...

History-hunting geneticists can still follow familiar trail

As the world's first explorers branched away from humanity's birthplace in east Africa some 65,000 years ago, distinct mutations accumulated in the DNA of each population, essentially providing a genetic trail for modern researchers to follow. Recently some scientists have raised doubts about this classic genetic system to study ancient migrations of people and to estimate the populations...

Taking 'chips' to the next level of gene hunting

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins' High Throughput Biology Center have invented two new gene "chip" technologies that can be used to help identify otherwise elusive disease-causing mutations in the 97 percent of the genome long believed to be "junk." A variety of DNA microarray technology, one of the two new chips, called the TIP-chip (transposable element insertion point) can locate in the...

New technology to speed up research into Huntington's disease

A new tool developed at Cambridge University represents a breakthrough in the race to find treatments to help sufferers with Huntington's disease. Researchers have developed an effective new method of testing cognitive decline in mice with the disease, using an automated touch screen. It is hoped the screen will also allow researchers to study more effectively the cognitive difficulties i...

Proteasome activator enhances survival of Huntington's disease neuronal model cells

To function, each living cell needs both to build new and to degrade old or damaged proteins. To accomplish that, a number of intracellular systems work in concert to keep the cell healthy and from clogging up with damaged proteins. When proteins or peptides mutate, they can present major problems to the clearing up of the intracellular environment. In Huntington's disease (HD) the disease provok...