pass in Biological News

Mothers pass on disease clues to offspring

When there is a threat of disease during pregnancy, mothers produce less aggressive sons with more efficient immune systems, researchers at The University of Nottingham have discovered. The study provides the first evidence for a transgenerational effect on immune response based on environmenta...

A switch that controls whether cells pass point of no return

DURHAM, N.C. Investigators at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy have revealed the hidden properties of an on-off switch that governs cell growth. The Duke team proved that if the switch is on, then a cell will divide, even if its damaged or the signal to grow disappears. Showi...

Cigarette smoke alters DNA in sperm, genetic damage could pass to offspring

The science has long been clear that smoking causes cancer, but new research shows that children could inherit genetic damage from a father who smokes. Canadian researchers have demonstrated in mice that smoking can cause changes in the DNA sequence of sperm cells, alterations that could poten...

Pure carbon nanotubes pass first in vivo test

In the first experiments of their kind, researchers at Rice University and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have determined that carbon nanotubes injected directly into the bloodstream of research lab animals cause no immediate adverse health effects and circulate for more than ...

AGU journal highlights -- Aug. 6, 2009

...ffect of chemical reactions important to several short-lived compounds that pass through this region. Their model is one-dimensional, allowing complex proce...reduced to a few simple relationships. The authors find that compounds that pass through the TTL with chemical lifetimes of 25 days or longer will have sign...

Wastewater produces electricity and desalinates water

...that pushes water under high pressure through membranes that allow water to pass but not salt -- or an electrodialysis process that uses electricity to draw...it releases charged ions -- protons -- into the water. These protons cannot pass the anion membrane, so negative ions move from the salty water into the was...

Protecting cells from their neighbors

...ranscription activity to initiate development, with the exception of germ cells which are totally inert and repressed. The DNA of the "sex" cells will pass from parents to offspring, and therefore it is convenient to protect it against possible mutations in a period marked by considerable activity in the ...

Parasites ready to jump

...this system usually leads to a drastic reduction in the fertility of the progeny. Germ cells are an ideal target for transposons, since these cells pass their genetic material together with integrated mobile elements on to all cells of the progeny. But normal body (somatic) cells can also be attacked...

Antibody targeting of glioblastoma shows promise in preclinical tests, say Lombardi researchers

...s in the discussion stage, but much remains to be worked out. For example, it is uncertain how the antibody should be administered. Because it may not pass through the blood-brain barrier, it could possibly be delivered through a viral vector, or administered following brain surgery. While antibodies are...

Humans 'damaging the oceans'

...he carbon is acidifying the oceans, with harmful consequences for certain plankton and shellfish. "At current emission rates it is possible we will pass the critical level of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by 2040. That's the level when, it is generally agreed, global climate change may b...

All-in-1 nanoparticle: A Swiss Army knife for nanomedicine

...Using ions allowed the researchers to build a 2- to 3-nanometer gold shell that's thin enough to allow about half of the quantum dot's fluorescence to pass through. "All the traditional techniques use premade gold nanoparticles instead of gold ions," Gao said. "Gold nanoparticles are 3 to 5 nanometers i...

ISU researchers find possible treatment for spinal muscular atrophy

...hy affects 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 10,000 children born every year. One in 40 people are carriers of the disease -- they don't have the symptoms, but could pass the disease to their children. Most children born with the most severe type of SMA die within two years. Using this junk sequence in SMN2 to resto...

Technology improves salmon passage at hydropower dams

...t the Spokane Convention Center in Spokane, Wash. Acoustic tags measure survival rates An average of 76 percent of juvenile Chinook salmon that pass through the lower 100 miles of the Snake River and its three hydroelectric dams survived the trek in the spring of 2008, according to a joint study be...

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis may pose neurological risks

...es to ensure couples that may be carriers of genetic disease (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews who have a high incidence of Tay-Sachs among their population) don't pass on defective genes to their children. While PGD is not believed to pose any serious health risks, the procedure does involve manipulating the developi...

'Invisibility cloak' could protect against earthquakes

... fitted to the Earth's surface to divert surface waves. By controlling the stiffness and elasticity of the rings, waves travelling through the 'cloak' pass smoothly into the material and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. The path of the surface waves can be made into an arc t...

UAB students' Nintendo Wii CPR earns American Heart Association support

...ical engineering course, which required the students to successfully design and construct a prototype of the technology for real-world use in order to pass the course. After a successful class presentation in May, which showed the students' progress and the real potential for the technology, the American ...

New lab test offers better prediction of HIV microbicide safety

...wer chamber, and then monitoring the infection of the T cells over time. When the epithelial barrier was treated with placebo, HIV was unable to pass through to the lower chamber, leaving the T cells uninfected. "But when we applied nonoxynol-9, the virus went right through the barrier and infected...

Plant protein 'doorkeepers' block invading microbes, study finds

...A1 can act to regulate the opening and closing of tiny holes called stomata, found on the underside of the leaf. The stomata allow gases and water to pass in and out of the leaf. This is the same opening that allows bacteria and other invading microbes to gain entrance to the plant. The stomata are ea...

Playing it safe

...tribute to the development of the new organism and gamete formation, and to pass on their genes to further generations. However, not every team carries out ...m the new gPs, and thus demonstrate that cells obtained from the testis can pass their genes on to the next generation. Whether this process can also be ...

Reading the brain without poking it

...ectrodes the poke into the brain and EEG (electroencephalography), in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Because of distortion as brain signals pass through the skull and as patients move, EEG isn't considered adequate for helping disabled people control devices. The regular-size ECoG ...

Plant protein 'doorkeepers' block invading microbes, study finds

...A1 can act to regulate the opening and closing of tiny holes called stomata, found on the underside of the leaf. The stomata allow gases and water to pass in and out of the leaf. This is the same opening that allows bacteria and other invading microbes to gain entrance to the plant. The stomata are ea...

Singapore nanotechnology combats fatal brain infections

...bility and brain damage in patients. IBN's peptide nanoparticles, on the other hand, contain a membrane-penetrating component that enables them to pass through the blood brain barrier to the infected areas of the brain that require treatment. The ability of IBN's peptide nanoparticles to traverse the ...

American Chemical Society weekly presspac -- June 10, 2009

...stomach acid without being absorbed into the bloodstream. One promising approach is to use live bacteria, which can survive those harsh conditions and pass easily from the GI tract into the blood. The scientists describe development of a new strain of Listeria monocytogenes, bacteria that normally caus...

A tiny frozen microbe may hold clues to extraterrestrial life

...ow nutrients, high pressure and limited space." " H. glaciei isn't a pathogen and is not harmful to humans", Dr Loveland-Curtze added, "but it can pass through a 0.2 micron filter, which is the filter pore size commonly used in sterilization of fluids in laboratories and hospitals. If there are other ...

Is this the beginning of the end of plant breeding?

...mosomes line up along the centre of the cell. In mitosis, the two chromatids are pulled apartthe X is divided along one axis of symmetryand these then pass into two genetically identical daughter cells. In meiosis, there are two lining up and dividing phases. The first lining up is of homologous chromosom...

Horse whisperers, lion tamers not needed: Scientists find genetic regions that soothe savage beasts

... fully understand what makes some animals interact with humans better than do others. It may also lead to more precise breeding strategies designed to pass specific genes from one generation to the next as a way to produce tame animals. "I hope our study will ultimately lead to a detailed understandin...

Capturing the birth of a synapse

... Researchers have identified the locking mechanism that allows some neurons to form synapses to pass along essential information. Mutations of genes that produce a critical cell-adhesion molecule involved in the work were previously linked to autism. ...

Healing wounds with lasers, vehicles that drive themselves, other cutting-edge optics

...; that is, the THz light (sometimes called T rays) can be switched so as to pass through or not. The modulator consists of 16 pixels in a 4 x 4 array. Mittl...l array of "transient" prisms is created by first allowing the pump beam to pass through a serrated mask. When the pump beam is properly synchronized to t...

New therapy substitutes missing protein in those with muscular dystrophy

... the crippling disease. Symptoms usually begin in children who are 2 to 3 years-old, most are in a wheelchair by age 12, and many who have the disease pass away by their late teens to early 20s. Current treatment, limited to corticosteroids, are minimally effective and can cause serious side effects. R...

One sponge-like material, three different applications

...ge of the 'soft' sulfur atoms of the chalcogel's surface. These atoms like to interact with other soft molecules passing by, slowing them down as they pass through. Hydrogen, the smallest element, is a 'hard' molecule. It zips right through while softer molecules like carbon dioxide take more time. ...

Climate change driving Michigan mammals north

...s and snakes. But we don't know enough about their natural history to know whether replacing a northern species with a southern equivalent is going to pass unnoticed or is going to be catastrophic. It could work either way. "What we can say is that the potential is there for serious changes to happen, ...

University awarded £1.7M to develop nanotechnology for use in health care

...le being approximately 1/800th the width of a human hair. By examining how successfully they can be absorbed into the intestine, and in what form they pass into the bloodstream, they will also look to establish if nanotechnology can reduce the toxicity of drugs by using smaller doses without losing effect...

Mosquito parasite may help fight dengue fever

...site, Wolbachia pipientis , shortens the lifespan of host insects and could restrict dengue fever transmission by killing the insects before they can pass the infection on, O'Neill and his team successfully infected Ae. aegypti with a strain of the Wolbachia bacterium and shortened the mosquitoes' life...

Simulated gene therapy

...very," says Nikolaos Voulgarakis of Berkeley, the lead author on the paper. "The genetic material must be protected during transit to a cell, it must pass into a cell, it must survive the cell's defense mechanisms, and it must enter into the cell's guarded nucleus." If all of these barriers can be ove...

Limping rat provides sciatica insights

...sed by compression, or pinching, of any of the five nerve roots that combine to make up the sciatic nerve. These roots are the parts of the nerve that pass through openings in the spine to the spinal cord. Surgical simulation of nerve compression in rats was led by Mohammed Shamji, a neurosurgery resid...

Open access advocate Philip E. Bourne to receive 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award

...of creating a YouTube for science, and we have been strongly supportive because SciVee fills a real need among researchers to share their findings and pass along that knowledge to students who grew up with the Internet," said Ramesh Rao, director of the UC San Diego division of Calit2 and a professor in t...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

...than functionally related riboswitches that recognize similar metabolites. This could imply that it is widespread in nature because evolution tends to pass on efficient mechanisms. The next step for Wedekind's team is to see how other bacterial species sequester their ribosome binding sites using diverg...

HIV pays a price for invisibility

...HIV is tricky. To get around HLA-B*5703, the virus mutates three amino acids that T cells need to recognize the infected cells, causing the killers to pass by the infected cell unnoticed. Thus by mutating, the virus becomes invisible to the immune system. In the new report, Hayley Crawford at the Unive...

NOAA report calls flame retardants concern to US coastal ecosystems

...ing humans. Toxicological studies indicate that liver, thyroid and neurobehavioral development may be impaired by exposure to PBDEs. They are known to pass from mother to infant in breast milk. Similar in chemical structure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, they have raised concerns among scientis...

Distinguishing single cells with nothing but light

...ely calibrated to minimize absorption by the cells. The near-infrared spectrum has proven particularly optimal for allowing almost all of the light to pass through the cells. With the availability of a technique where making a measurement does not alter cellular activity, scientists will be able to bet...