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Newly discovered virus linked to childhood lung disorders and Kawasaki disease

Late updatetonight; my girlfriend is sick and I took care of her. First headline :a newly discovered virus causing respiratory infection. Let's hope itsjust a coincidence :) A newly discovered virus may be responsible for many respiratory tractillnesses in infants and children, and may be associated with animportant multi-organ disease whose cause has...

Study Links Ebola Outbreaks To Animal Carcasses

All recent Ebola virus outbreaks in humans in forests between Gabon and the Republic of Congo were the result of handling infected wild animal carcasses, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its regional partners. Appearing in the February edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the study found that many animal carcasses tested for Ebola between 2001 an...

Genome-wide mouse study yields link to human leukemia

Thanks to a handful of very special mice, scientists have discovered a new tumor suppressor gene and a unique chemical signature implicated in the development of human leukemia, findings that open up a "treasure box" of opportunity and possibility, study authors say. Researchers in The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center bred a type of mouse that develops acute lymphoblastic...

Improved Outcomes Releases GeneLinker(TM) Gold and Platinum Version 4.6

Improved Outcomes Software (IOS) todayannounced the release of GeneLinker(TM) Gold and Platinum 4.6, newversions of the award-winning Gene Expression and Proteomics AnalysisSoftware products."The new releases are focused primarily on importing and analyzingprotein biomarker data, a high priority for many of our customers. Forexample, we have integrated the Protein Biomarker Package into the...

Amino acids in nectar enhance butterfly fecundity: A long awaited link

The fascinating interactions between flowers and their pollinators have resulted in a spectacular diversity of plants. In order to entice pollinators such as bees, flies or butterflies to visit and successfully pollinate their flowers, plants have evolved intriguing mechanisms and attractants, of which nectar is best known. Thirty years ago, researchers discovered that nectars of flowers...

New SARS Protein Linked To Important Cell Doorway

As public health officials in China brace for a potential resurgence in SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in connection with Chinese New Year on February 9, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have published insights into a new protein that could be an important contributor to the SARS virus' ability to cause disease and death. When the SARS virus first jumped from it...

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...

Use of Insecticides Linked to Lasting Neurological Problems for Farmers

New research shows that farmers who used agricultural insecticides experienced increased neurological symptoms, even when they were no longer using the products. Data from 18,782 North Carolina and Iowa farmers linked use of insecticides, including organophosphates and organochlorines, to reports of reoccurring headaches, fatigue, insomnia, dizziness, nausea, hand tremors, numbness and other neur...

NASA links nanobacteria to kidney stones and other diseases

Nanobacteria (NB), a novel self-replicating, mineralizing agent, has been identified by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists as a potential culprit in kidney stone formation among astronauts. With the potential for future exploratory space missions to the moon and Mars, longer missions, and exposure to the elements of outer space, health is a major concern for astronaut...

Low level of extinction during ice age linked to adaptability

A Johns Hopkins University graduate student may have figured out why rates of extinction were so low for many of the major groups of marine life during one of the greatest ice ages of them all, which occurred from about 330 million to 290 million years ago, late in the Paleozoic Era. The likely answer: because those aquatic life forms that did survive during this era were singularly equipp...

Insight into DNA's 'weakest links' may yield clues to cancer biology

The chromosomes of mammals, including humans, contain regions that are particularly prone to breaking under conditions of stress and in cancer. Now, new research by geneticists at Duke University Medical Center finds that yeast cells also contain such weak links in DNA and begins to reveal the molecular characteristics of these links that might help to explain them. The findings, publishe...

One gene links newborn neurons with those that die in diseases such as Alzheimer's

In certain parts of the brain, cells called neurons go through a cycle of death and replenishment. New research from Rockefeller University's Fernando Nottebohm, Ph.D., shows that these replaceable neurons share something in common with the neurons that die in people with diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's: both have unusually low levels of a protein called UCHL1. "It would be ir...

Molecular fossils uncover link between viruses and the immune system

Researchers from the Viikki Biocenter, University of Helsinki, show that atomic structures can reveal evolutionary history of viruses in a similar fashion as fossils did for the dinosaurs and reptiles. Their article is published in the April 15 issue of Molecular Cell. These "molecular fossils" also revealed that viruses and proteins of immune system share the same structure. One plausibl...

Engineers improve plastic's potential for use in implants by linking it to biological material

Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have found a way to modify a plastic to anchor molecules that promote nerve regeneration, blood vessel growth or other biological processes. In the study led by Dr. Christine Schmidt, the researchers identified a piece of protein from among a billion candidates that could perform the unusual feat of attaching to polypyrrole, a synthetic polym...

Research may provide new link between soft drinks and weight gain

A University of Cincinnati (UC) study provides new evidence that drinking large amounts of beverages containing fructose adds body fat, and might explain why sweetening with fructose could be even worse than using other sweeteners. Researchers allowed mice to freely consume either water, fructose sweetened water or soft drinks. They found increased body fat in the mice that drank the fruct...

Improved statistical tools reveal many linked loci

An innovative new statistical method, described in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, streamlines the computation required to identify all the potential locations in the genome that influence a particular physical trait, or phenotype. Thanks to the new method developed by John Storey, Joshua M. Akey, and Leonid Kruglyak, researchers have a more efficient genome-mining technique to help them id...

Genetic links could unlock clues to leading cause of blindness

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in older adults, yet researchers are still in the dark about many of the factors that cause this incurable disease. But new insight from University of Florida and German researchers bout a genetic link between rhesus monkeys with macular degeneration and humans could unlock secrets about the earliest stages of the disease,...

Blink, and the brain misses it

We would immediately notice if the outside world suddenly went dark every few seconds. But we rarely become aware of our blinks, even though they cause a similar reduction in the amount of light entering the eye. So why are we not aware of the frequent mini-blackouts caused by blinks? In the 1980s, scientists discovered that visual sensitivity begins decreasing immediately before a blink,...

Scientists at Galileo Pharmaceuticals confirm inflammatory response linked to glucose levels

A team of scientists has discovered three molecules –?from a search of 58,000 compounds –?that appear to inhibit a key perpetrator of Alzheimer's disease. Ken Kosik, co...

Attacks of King George III's madness linked to key metabolism molecule

PGC-1 mediates effects of nutrition on blood disease porphyria The me...

Climate model links higher temperatures to prehistoric extinction

Virginia Commonwealth University immunologists studying mast cells, known to play a central role in asthma and allergic disease, have identified a hormone-like molecule that can kill these cells by programming them to die in studies with mice. The findings move researchers another step closer to understanding the life cycle of mast cells, and may help researchers develop new treatments fo...

Gene controlling circadian rhythms linked to drug addiction

The gene that regulates the body's main biological clocks also may play a pivotal role in drug addiction, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. The Clock gene not only controls the body's circadian rhythms, including sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone levels, blood pressure and heart activity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain's reward system.</...

Major link in brain-obesity puzzle found

A single protein in brain cells may act as a linchpin in the body’s weight-regulating system, playing a key role in the flurry of signals that govern fat storage, sugar use, energy balance and weight, University of Michigan Medical School researchers report. And although it’s far too early to say how this protein could be useful in new strategies to fight the world’s epidemic of obesity,...

Physical and functional interaction of key cell growth molecules linked to cancer

Scientists have uncovered new information about a specific mechanism involved in the biology of malignant human tumor cells. The findings, published in the June issue of Cancer Cell, significantly advance knowledge about epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). EGFR is a well-studied cell surface receptor that stimulates cell growth by transmitting growth factor signals acting outside the...

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...

Naturally occurring asbestos linked to lung cancer

Everyday exposure to naturally occurring asbestos increases the risk of developing malignant mesothelioma, according to a study by UC Davis researchers. Exposure to asbestos in the workplace, particularly in shipyards, has long been recogn...

Genetics links whale to two different ocean basins

For the first time ever, a genetic study has followed a single humpback whale from one ocean basin to another, adding to traditional notions of the migratory patterns of these majestic marine mammals in the process, according to researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and New York University. In the most recent Royal Society's Biolo...

Disappearing arctic lakes linked to climate change

Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal "Science." The paper, titled, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes" is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Envir...

Genes linked to treatment resistance in children with leukemia

Today, the most common childhood cancer is cured in about 80 percent of patients; only forty years ago, this number was closer to five percent. In efforts to further increase the survival rate, researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Chicago studied how an individual's genetics might play a role in the effectiveness of chemotherap...

UCLA researchers identify key enzyme linked to childhood blindness

In findings that could lead to curing some forms of congenital blindness through gene therapy, researchers at UCLA have discovered that RPE65, a gene missing in infants born with the blinding disease Leber congenital amaurosis, is also a key enzyme in the visual cycle. The identity of this enzyme has long been a mystery to scientists. The study, "Rpe65 is the Retinoid Isomerase in Bovine R...

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...

Nighttime Dying Linked To Sleep Apnea From Brain Cell Loss

UCLA biochemists reveal the first structural details of a family of mysterious objects called microcompartments that seem to be present in a variety of bacteria. The discovery was published Aug. 5 in the journal Science. "This is the first look at how microcompartments are built, and what the pieces look like," said Todd O. Yeates, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and a member...

Genetic link confirmed between Polynesians and indigenous Taiwanese

According to folklore, Polynesians originated from a mythical homeland called Hawaiki. Their origins and the existence of such a place, however, have been the subject of much speculation. In a new study in the premier open access journal PLoS Biology, Jean Trejaut and colleagues now provide the first direct evidence for the common ancestry of Polynesians and indigenous Taiwanese. Genetic t...

Firefly protein lets researchers monitor molecule linked to cancer

Scientists have used a glowing protein from fireflies to observe the activity of a molecule that is an important target for new drugs to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and several other disorders. The target molecule, known as IKK (for IKappa kinase), regulates processes that can trigger dramatic changes in cellular physiology. Scientists have linked these changes to many different diso...

OHSU researchers discover potential mechanism to repair brain damage linked to Multiple Sclerosis

Oregon Health & Science University researchers have identified some of the key factors that prevent the repair of brain damage caused by multiple sclerosis (MS), complications of premature birth, and other diseases and conditions. The findings offer important clues about why the nervous system fails to repair itself and suggest ways that at least some forms of brain damage could be reversed....

Defective Gene Linked to Two Inherited Immune Deficiencies

Defects in a single gene can result in two immune system disorders that leave affected individuals vulnerable to frequent or unusually severe infections, according to new findings reported in the August issue of Nature Genetics. The discovery may lead to new diagnostic tests for these two inherited conditions ?immunoglobulin A (IgA) deficiency and common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). Currentl...

UF scientist finds unexpected link between cat and human AIDS viruses

Emerging relationships between the two viruses could one day lead to a vaccine for human A University of Florida researcher has discovered an unexpected link between the viruses that cause feline and human AIDS: Cats vaccinated with an experimental strain of the human AIDS virus appear to be at least as well-protected against the feline version of the disease as those immunized with the v...

Past illegal blood donation in China linked to hepatitis C virus infection

Research in a rural province of central China has documented that illegal blood donation practices led to high hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection rates in blood and plasma donors during the 1980s and early 1990s, and that failure to screen for HCV in transfusion recipients increased their risk of infection as well, according to an article in the November 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Disea...

A new link between stem cells and tumors

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Parc Cient�fic de Barcelona (IRB-PCB) have now added key evidence to claims that some types of cancer originate with defects in stem cells. The study, reported this week in the on-line edition of (September 4) shows that if key molecules aren't place...

Toasty oat aroma influenced by presence of health-linked polyphenols

Penn State food scientists have shown that the amount of health-linked polyphenols present during roasting or baking influences the toasty aroma developed by oats and might be used to limit the generation of off-flavors in oat products. Polyphenols are a large family of naturally occurring plant components that have been associated with a wide variety of health benefits. Flavonoids and so...