Digital communication technology helps clear path to personalized therapies

LA JOLLA, Calif., January 9, 2009 -- Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have shown that search algorithms used in digital communications can help scientists identify effective multi-drug combinations. The study, led by Giovanni Paternostro, M.D., Ph.D., was publish...

Ivory poaching at critical levels: Elephants on path to extinction by 2020?

African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a pace unseen since an international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989. But the public outcry that resulted in that ban is absent today, and a University of Washington conservation biologist contends it is because the public seem...

The construction of heart modelling leads path to new therapies

Heart disease is still a major killer, especially in the western world, but new therapies based on stem cells and other techniques could now be imminent. Progress is being held back however by the difficulty testing new therapies on human heart tissue, with animal models being only of limited valu...

Daisies lead scientists down path to new leukemia drug

A new, easily ingested form of a compound that has already shown it can attack the roots of leukemia in laboratory studies is moving into human clinical trials, according to a new article by University of Rochester investigators in the journal, Blood. The Rochester team has been leading the inv...

Pliable proteins keep photosynthesis on the light path

Photosynthesis is a remarkable biological process that supports life on earth. Plants and photosynthetic microbes do so by harvesting light to produce their food, and in the process, also provide vital oxygen for animals and people. Now, a large, international collaboration between Arizona State...

Tiny clue reveals new path toward heart disease

Geneticists have discovered a new gene that may put individuals at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The identification of the gene, called kalirin, implicates a biological mechanism never before linked to cardiovascular disease, according to the Duke researchers who led the stud...

New path from estrogen to survival in breast cancer cells described

After years of research, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are now able to explain, in exquisite molecular detail, how the estrogen hormone can help keep breast cancer cells alive. In the Sept. 24 issue of the journal, Nature Cell Biology, they assign roles to a ...

Drug resistance may travel same path as quorum sensing

The cellular "pumps" associated with multi-drug resistance in bacteria may also be involved in exporting signals responsible for cell-cell communication, a process known as quorum sensing, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online today in the Proceedings of t...

UC San Diego engineer provides insights to decades-old DNA squabble

...ucture is like a solenoid, where the chain of nucleosomes follows a helical path along the chromatin axis such that adjacent nucleosomes along the chain lie...hromatin has a zigzag structure where the nucleosome chain follows a zigzag path along the chromatin fiber such that adjacent nucleosomes on the chain actua...

Reprogramming human cells without inserting genes

...pted as markers of pluripotency because they are active in stem cells, but become dormant once the stem cells begin to differentiate and head down the path to developing into a specific kind of cell type and tissue. While the study of embryonic stem cells continues to yield important knowledge, researc...

Fujitsu Expands Support for Ethernet Networks With New Additions to XG Switch Product Line

...ide a consolidated product offering that gives customers a low-cost upgrade path to full 10Gb networking combined with the Fujitsu brand name they have come...o existing networks and system chassis while also providing an easy upgrade path for customers. The XG0224 and XG0448 Switches are available immediat...

Biologists rediscover endangered frog population

...quitz Creek frogs on June 10. Biologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum made their find June 25. The museum scientists were retracing the path of a 1908 expedition by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. During that expedition, which covered all elevations and...

Chasing tiny vehicles

...erapeutic approval and the definition of functional doses to know the exact path of these carriers and the efficiency of their transport and uptake by cance...les with a dye that acts like a "molecular lamp" to light up the particle's path into the cell. "Thus, we have traced magnetic lipoplex nanoparticles an...

UK bioscience sparkles with new Diamond fellowship

...g to accelerate the development of new drugs by embedding an expert from the pharmaceutical industry in an academic research lab. Institute Career path Fellowship awarded to an early career researcher who will be based at a BBSRC Institute and will be carrying out research relevant to food security. ...

'Invisibility cloak' could protect against earthquakes

...h and surface waves which travel across it. The new technology controls the path of surface waves which are the most damaging and responsible for much of th...ial and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. The path of the surface waves can be made into an arc that directs the waves outside...

Brain malformations significantly associated with preterm birth, Wake Forest research shows

...eterm birth, leading investigators to believe that something about the brain malformations may be causing preterm birth and providing a possible study path toward a better understanding of the problem. The study appears in the June issue of Pediatric Research . It is the first to investigate the risk ...

Trio of signals converge to induce liver and pancreas cell development in the embryo

...rtion different functions to different cell types is a key question for developmental biology and regenerative medicine. Guidance along the correct path is provided by genetic regulatory proteins that attach to chromosomes, marking part of the genome to be turned on or off. But first the two meters of ...

The battle for CRTC2: How obesity increases the risk for diabetes

...ich is induced by a high fat diet and is overly activated in obese people, triggers aberrant glucose production in the liver, an important step on the path to insulin resistance. In healthy people, a "fasting switch" only flips on glucose production when blood glucose levels run low during fasting. "T...

Study highlights massive imbalances in global fertilizer use

...reductions in nitrogen loss to waters are to be achieved." According to Vitousek, it is important in the long run to avoid following the same path to excess in sub-Saharan Africa that occurred in the United States, Europe and China. "The past can't be altered, but the future can be and should be,...

Powerful nutrient cocktail can put kids with Crohn's into remission

...with IBD. Dr. Raanan Shamir of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and Schneider Children's Medical Centre shows that there is another path to treating IBD in children: a nutritional formula that was first developed for astronauts. This supplement puts 60-70% of children with Crohn's disea...

Duke, Harvard researchers to monitor bonobo reintroduction

...e will give bonobos a brighter future." "This exciting event reminds us of the importance of every individual bonobo, and is a critical step on the path towards raising awareness of the plight of bonobos and the opportunities to help them," Wrangham said. ...

Discovery raises new doubts about dinosaur-bird links

...erstand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed." These studies were just published in The Journal of Morphol...

Combined stem cell-gene therapy approach cures human genetic disease in vitro

...induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology. The study, published in the May 31, 2009 early online edition of Nature , is a major milestone on the path from the laboratory to the clinic. "It's been ten years since human stem cells were first cultured in a Petri dish," says the study's leader Juan-...

Caltech scientists reveal how neuronal activity is timed in brain's memory-making circuits

...t's trajectorythat is, a segment of physical space." "Such segments may be the elementary unit of hippocampal computation," adds Siapas. "Assume the path a rat takes in an environment is represented and stored as a sequence of point locations. If the rat visits the same location more than once, the repr...

Rapid approach to identify influenza A virus mutations and drug resistance developed

...ich strain of influenza A it has recombined with, as well as the genomic location of the re-assortment to better understand and track the evolutionary path and variants of the virus. NimbleGen's microarray-based customised platform is able to sequence as many as 36 genomes per day per chip reader devi...

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

...niversity, will present "Quantum Cascade Lasers: Compact Widely Tailorable Light Sources from 3 to 300 m Wavelength" on Wednesday, June 3, tracing the path from invention to exciting advances in the physics, applications and commercialization of these revolutionary lasers, which cover the mid- and far-ir ...

Novel vaccine approach offers hope in fight against HIV

... team may have broken the stubborn impasse that has frustrated the invention of an effective HIV vaccine, by using an approach that bypasses the usual path followed by vaccine developers. By using gene transfer technology that produces molecules that block infection, the scientists protected monkeys from ...

UCSB scientists document fate of huge oil slicks from seeps at coal oil point

...chemistry at UCSB. Inspired by this project, Farwell has changed his career path and is now a graduate student at UCSB studying marine science and earth sci... 16 sediment samples from the ocean floor, following a carefully calculated path mapped out by Farwell. The researchers were hoping that their route, descri...

Conservationists seek to identify prime stopover sites for migrating birds

... thrush. They will spend 30 minutes walking along a 300-meter transect, documenting every bird-related detail they see and hear within a 25-meter-wide path on either side of a flagged line. The volunteers will make their observations between dawn and four hours after dawn twice a week for four weeks. Ever...

Nanotechnology holds promise for STD drug delivery

...idly from basic research to application. The PLGA packaging these researchers chose is already approved as safe and non-toxic by the FDA, speeding the path to clinical trials for infectious agents such as HPV and HIV. "Before human clinical testing can begin, our next step in research will be to test ...

Scientists shed light on inner workings of human embryonic stem cells

... stem cells' self-renewal and lowers the activity of genes that lend stem cells the capacity to produce other cell types. It also sends the cells on a path toward differentiation. In contrast, when miR-145 is lost, the embryonic stem cells are prevented from differentiating as the concentrations of transc...

DOE makes largest Danforth Campus research award in history

...is energy transfer process can explain its extreme efficiency, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. PARC will explore basic science research aimed at understanding the principles of the harvesting of light and funneling of en...

When cancer cells can't let go

...g enzymes that dissolve the extracellular matrix (ECM), invadopodia clear a path for the cell to wriggle through. As they move, cancer cells get traction by... FAK controls movement by balancing the number of invadopodia that create a path for migration and the number of focal adhesions that hold the cell back. Th...

New insights into progressive hearing loss

... - that this variant microRNA was causing these dramatic effects - to another - that miR-96 does affect genes important for normal hearing and a clear path was laid." In the human studies, two families showed mutations in miR-96 - but they each carried the mutation at different locations in the miR-96 ...

Locking parasites in host cell could be new way to fight malaria

...Assistant Professor of Pharmacology in the Penn School of Medicine. "Researchers can now develop ways to kill parasites by placing roadblocks in the path they use to destroy their victims," says Greenbaum. The team discovered that malaria parasites depend upon an enzyme stolen from the host cell for suc...

Researchers discover primer to plant defense system

...entifying a novel compound that primes a plant's immune system, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Chicago may be on a path to developing disease-resistant plants. In a paper published in Science , a team that includes Tim Tschaplinski of the Department of Energy's ORNL...

Orientation of antenna protein in photosynthetic bacteria described

...is energy transfer process can explain its extreme efficiency, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. "We used a combination of tried and true methods, but two that hadn't been used together in the past," said Blankenship. "The su...

CHIs 5th Biomarker World Congress: Signature Event with Cutting-Edge Agenda

...e and Genetics, The University of Texas, Health Science Center at Houston Maryellen de Mars, Ph.D., Director, Clinical Biomarkers, The Critical path Institute Viswanath Devanarayan, Ph.D., Director, Statistics, Biomarker Research, Abbott Laboratories Nicholas C. Dracopoli, Ph.D., Vice...

Scripps scientists find structure of a protein that makes cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy

...designed to have a wide range of substrates," says Chang. "The presence of so many hydrophobic and aromatic residues explains how this happens." A path to Better Drugs The new study also produced insights by showing structures of P-gp bound to some of its substrates. Chang and Aller collaborated w...

UC Davis bench-to-bedside research: Promising treatment in clinical trials

...ction of blood pressure and various measures of glucose and lipid metabolism. Results are expected the first quarter of 2010. The winding, twisting path that took Hammock from his lab, to collaborative research with other UC Davis scientists, to his founding of a $50 million-investment biotechnology co...