iron

Growth in the sea comes down to a struggle for iron

Scientists know that injecting iron into some major regions of the oceans can stimulate the growth of diatoms and other phytoplankton, but something odd occurs as these tiny marine plants continue to grow. They begin to starve in the midst of plenty, acting as though iron, an essential nutrient, still is in short supply. Why this happens is unclear, but the answer could be that iron sets off a ki...

Iron Deficiency Sparks Dramatic Changes In Gene Expression

Researchers at Duke University Medical Centerhave demonstrated for the first time what happens inside a cell when itis deprived of the essential nutrient iron. Iron is found abundantly inred meats, shellfish dried fruits, whole grains, spinach, seeds andother foods.Their study in yeast cells demonstrated that iron-starved cellspreserve the little iron they possess by shutting down the major...

Scientists find missing enzyme for tuberculosis iron scavenging pathway

Scientists have discovered that a protein that was originally believed to be involved in tuberculosis antibiotic resistance is actually a "missing enzyme" from the biosynthetic pathway for an agent used by the bacteria to scavenge iron. The research appears as the "Paper of the Week" in the April 8 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Molec...

Scientists collaborate to assess health of global environment

For the first time, a group of scientists has accomplished the daunting task of evaluating the status of all of the ecosystems on Earth, and the outlook is troubling. Commissioned by the United Nations in 2001, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment program will issue its primary report on March 30 during press conferences in London, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, Brasilia, Cai...

How the environment could be damaging men's reproductive health

Two Scandinavian studies have provided further evidence that environmental factors could be affecting men's reproductive health. The studies, published online today (Thursday 28 April) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, suggest that environmental pollutants could be changing the ratio of sperm carrying the X or Y (sex determining) chromosomes and that th...

Surprising findings reported about iron overload

UAB and international scientists studying iron-overload disorders have made the unexpected discovery that Asians and Pacific Islanders have the highest levels of iron in their blood of all racial/ethnic groups who were screened. Individuals who develop hemochromatosis/iron overload absorb an excessive amount of iron from food and supplements ingested. The abnormality affects many people wo...

Iron exporter revealed that may explain common human disorder

The first direct evidence that a single protein is critical in the cellular export of iron may help to explain human hemochromatosis, researchers report in the March issue of Cell Metabolism. Hemochromatosis--which affects one in every 200 to 300 people in Western populations --causes tissues of the body to become overloaded with iron. Left untreated, the hereditary disease can lead to org...

Study reveals new technique for fingerprinting environmental samples

Groundbreaking research led by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) demonstrates for the first time that the signatures of the genes alone in terrestrial and aquatic samples can accurately diagnose the health of the sampled environments. This study, published in the April 22nd edition of the journal Science positions large-scale genome sequencing to accelerate advances i...

Compounds in plastic packaging act as environmental estrogens altering breast genes

Compounds found in plastic products used to wrap or contain food and beverages have aroused concerns as possible cancer-causing agents because they can sometimes leach out of the plastic and migrate into the food, especially after heating or when the plastic is old or scratched. In two studies funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Cente...

UN environmental agency steps up battle against marine pollution

Coastal pollution, including plastic waste, discarded lead-acid batteries and used oils and lubricants, will come under renewed attack under a new agreement signed by the United Nations environmental agency and an international treaty body controlling hazardous wastes. The Memorandum of Understanding, signed last week in Nairobi, Kenya, by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Seas Program...

Grass makes environmentally friendly biofuel

Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States. This alternative fuel easily could be produced and pelleted by farmers a...

Two studies document rise of superbugs in the environment

As science gets wiser, so do the bugs. The rates of drug-resistant bacteria infecting patients in the community and in the hospital have been increasing steadily in recent years, according to two new studies in the June 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Drug resistance in microorganisms has become a problem due in part to inappropriate prescribing and overuse...

Environmental chemical cocktail may sabotage sperm

New research has shown that combinations of chemicals found in everyday products and food have subtle but potentially damaging effects on sperm fertility. Professor Lynn Fraser told the 21st annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday), that her previous research had shown that certain chemicals known to mimic the female sex hormone, oes...

Storing carbon to combat global warming may cause other environmental problems, study suggests

Growing tree plantations to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to mitigate global warming -- so called "carbon sequestration" -- could trigger environmental changes that outweigh some of the benefits, a multi-institutional team led by Duke University suggested in a new report. Those effects include water and nutrient depletion and increased soil salinity and acidity, said the researchers.<...

MRSA study demonstrates need for frequent hand washing and environmental disinfection in health care settings

A major cause of hospital-acquired infections can persist for days and even weeks on environmental surfaces found in healthcare settings, including bed linens, computer keyboard covers and acrylic fingernails, according to research presented today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major cause of ho...

Environmental lessons from tsunami as world's coastal population doubles

Coastal populations and ecosystems are more likely to bounce back from extreme coastal disasters by protecting local environments and building on local knowledge, according to a report published in Science. And the aftermath of the Asian tsunami has given valuable insight into handling extreme coastal disasters - inevitable as the world's coastal population is set to double by 2030 and glo...

A radical solution for environmental pollution

Nature abounds with examples of bacteria that can thrive in extreme situations---surviving on toxic chemicals, for instance. In a paper published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) May 25, University of Michigan researchers show how some bugs manage to do that: by harnessing other potentially harmful chemicals known as free radicals to degrade the toxins they live on.</...

Environment, not genes, key in family relationships

Nature or nurture? It's the eternal question for so many human interactions and personality traits. Now, it appears, nature may play a larger role than nurture when it comes to family relationships between adolescents and their parents. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., used data on 674 families, each with a same-sex ad...

Lactose intolerance linked to ancestral environment

Got milk? Many people couldn't care less because they can't digest it. A new Cornell University study finds that it is primarily people whose ancestors came from places where dairy herds could be raised safely and economically, such as in Europe, who have developed the ability to digest milk. On the other hand, most adults whose ancestors lived in very hot or very cold climates that couldn...

NIEHS launches website with information for assessing environmental hazards from Hurricane Katrina

A new website with a Global Information System will provide valuable information for assessing environmental hazards caused by Hurricane Katrina. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health, created the website to provide the most up-to-date data to public health and safety workers on contaminants in flood waters, infrastructure and in...

Plant genes identified that can form basis for crops better adapted to environmental conditions

Roots are crucial for the development of strong, healthy crops. But until recently, exactly which genes are involved in the development of roots was still a mystery. Scientists from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to Ghent University have now analyzed a complete plant genome in order to identify the genes that are essential for the formation of capillary r...

Stem cell microenvironment reverses malignant melanoma

Northwestern University researchers have demonstrated how the microenvironments of two human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines (federally approved) induced metastatic melanoma cells to revert to a normal, skin cell-like type with the ability to form colonies similar to hESCs. The researchers also showed that these melanoma cells were less invasive following culture on the microenvironments of hESC...

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...

UCR environmental scientists propose chemical solution to cleaning California's Salton Sea

UC Riverside scientists are able to improve water quality by 90 percent in the rivers flowing into the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, by using two kinds of water-treatment chemicals that remove phosphorus and silt from the river water. The researchers investigated the use of alum, a type of salt that has been used to treat phosphorus-rich lakes for decades. They also cleaned...

Study finds that nutritionally enhanced rice reduces iron deficiency

Breeding rice with higher levels of iron can have an important impact on reducing micronutrient malnutrition, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition. The research, conducted by scientists from the Philippines and the United States, is a major step forward in the battle against iron deficiency, one of the developing world's most debilitating and intractable public health problems aff...

Environmental tobacco smoke linked to behavior problems in children and pre-teens

A new Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study shows that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, even at extremely low levels, is associated with behavior problems in children and pre-teens. While the study examined 5 to 11 year olds with asthma, the findings most likely could be extrapolated to include children without asthma who "act out" or experience depression and anxiety...

Genetic and environmental influences on alcohol consumption among rhesus monkeys

There is little doubt that alcohol-related disorders in humans are genetically based. The influence of environmental factors, however, remains unclear. Given that studies of humans are complicated by a multitude of cultural and day-to-day-living factors, researchers in the March issue of use rhesus monkeys to examine genetic and environmen...

Environmental metagenomics diagnosing extreme environments, tapping opportunities for clean energy

In his recent State of the Union speech President Bush said technology is the best way to break the nation's addiction to oil. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) is directing the technology of DNA sequencing to scan the environment for processes that will lead to cheaper and easier to produce biofuels. "Through DNA sequencing and the tools of molecular biolog...

Earth Rx: A microbial biotechnology prescription for global environmental health

Water. Waste. Energy. This trio of problems is among the greatest challenges to the environmental health of society. Water purification alone is becoming more problematic in the world due to our increasingly reliance on contaminated sources, such as polluted rivers, lakes and groundwater. "All of these issues are closely interrelated," says Bruce Rittmann, director of the Center for En...

Researchers discover way to transport environmental arsenic to plant leaves in new clean-up strategy

Environmental arsenic pollution is a serious and growing environmental problem, especially on the Indian subcontinent. Researchers at the University of Georgia had, several years ago, used genetic techniques to create "arsenic-eating" plants that could be planted on polluted sites. There was a problem, however. The arsenic sequestered from soil remained largely in the roots of the plant, m...

Yale researchers find environmental toxins disruptive to hearing in mammals

Yale School of Medicine researchers have new data showing chloride ions are critical to hearing in mammals, which builds on previous research showing a chemical used to keep barnacles off boats might disrupt the balance of these ions in ear cells. "Our data are the first to directly show that chloride ions are crucial for our exquisite sense of hearing," said Joseph Santos-Sacchi, professo...

Vital ocean prey play active role in environment

Although Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are one of the best-studied organisms of the open sea, key aspects of their life cycle have remained murky. Understanding krill is important because they are vital prey for fish, birds, and marine mammals, yet they are vulnerable to fishing pressure and environmental change. In the February 2006 issue of BioScience, the monthly journal of the Am...

Iron critical to ocean productivity, carbon uptake

A new study has found that large segments of the Pacific Ocean lack sufficient iron to trigger healthy phytoplankton growth and the absence of the mineral stresses these microscopic ocean plants, triggering them to produce additional pigments that make ocean productivity appear more robust than it really is. As a result, past interpretations of satellite chlorophyll data may be inaccurate,...

Adult stem cells are touchy-feely, need environmental clues

A certain type of adult stem cell can turn into bone, muscle, neurons or other types of tissue depending on the "feel" of its physical environment, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers discovered that mesenchymal stem cells, which regularly reside in the bone marrow as part of the body's natural regenerative mechanism, depend on physical clues from...

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 accurate and less costly analyses of water and biological fluids ?blood, urine, saliva ?that require o...

K-Staters design and build a low-cost remote sensing tool for environmental studies

A Kansas State University research team is prototyping a small, inexpensive remote-control plane as a sensing tool, also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle, to collect environmental data. The team plans to test it over the Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan this summer. If the sensing tool performs as the team hopes, it will be made available to climate scientists, who would...

Researchers discover how bacteria sense their environments

When humans taste or smell, receptors unique to each nerve cell detect the chemical and send signals to the brain, where many cells process the message to understand what we are smelling or tasting. But a bacterium is just a single cell, and it must use many different receptors to sense and interpret everything around it. Bacteria can sense in their environments changes in molecular conce...

Common carp sheds new light on surviving in extreme environments

The research team found that the protein myglobin - thought to act as an oxygen store in the heart and muscle cells of humans and vertebrate animals - also exists in many other tissues of the common carp, enabling it to survive in low oxygenated environments. Myglobin is found in large quantities in diving mammals such as whales and seals and helps them remain submerged for long periods...

China's environmental challenges

It is the most populous country in the world. Half the country is arid or semi-arid and mountains cover three-quarters of it. Natural resources are scarce. Yet 1.3 billion people live in China, which is undergoing a remarkable rate of economic growth. At the same time, China's environmental problems of energy and water shortages, water and air pollution, cropland and biodiversity losses are e...

Extreme environment changes fish appearance

The world of the Devils Hole pupfish is a small place. The entire species lives in one rocky pool, 20 meters long and three meters wide, in a cave entrance in Death Valley, Calif. But their environment is not only cramped: it also has a profound effect on the fishes' appearance, raising questions about how rare species can be protected from extinction. In 1976, the inch-long fish was at th...