PET/MRI scans may help unravel mechanisms of prenatal drug damage
Scientists have demonstrated a new way to assess the potentially damaging effects of prenatal drug exposure--a technique that could also be used to monitor a fetus's response to therapeutic drugs--using sophisticated, noninvasive medical imaging tools. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, whose findings are reported in the February issue of the Society of...A puzzle piece found in unraveling the wiring of the brain
The complexity of the brain and, more specifically, how nerve cells form billions of contacts when there are fewer than 30,000 human genes is still a scientific mystery. A team headed by Drs. Robin Hiesinger and Hugo J. Bellen at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have unraveled a piece of that puzzle by finding a gene that plays a key role in brain wiring. A report on their work appear...Scientists journey to southern Africa to unravel the secret world of elephant communication
It's a cloudless July afternoon in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, and ecologist Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell is scanning the horizon for elephants. "It's so fantastic here," she says. "We're constantly seeing elephants, rhinos, zebras, ostriches--it's the Garden of Eden." A research associate in the Stanford University School of Medicine, O'Connell-Rodwell has come to one of Afric...ORNL, UC Berkeley unravel real-world clues to Earth's mysteries
A microbial community thriving under bizarre natural conditions in California could be a gold mine to researchers in their quest to understand the complex biological relationships and how these inner workings might apply on a grander scale. In a paper to appear today on Science Online, researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Californi...Unraveling a stomach cancer puzzle
It started several years ago with the observation that a large group of seemingly unconnected genes were behaving differently in patients with stomach cancer. Now a multi-national research team led by the Melbourne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) has joined the proverbial dots and identified a potential new target for stomach cancer therapy, according to a paper publishe...Just spice it up!!!!! Anti bacterial effects of spices unraveled in the West
The West is now sitting up and taking in the aroma of Indian cuisine. The inseparable part of Indian kitchens, the spices are now the subjects of research by scientists at the Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Dr. Daniel Y. C. Fung and colleagues who conducted the study opine that cinnamon, apart from filling the air with its spicy aroma can also double up as an anti bacterial...Unravelling the secrets of ‘Huntingtin’ Protein - towards the treatment of ‘Huntingtons’ Disase
Huntingtons disease is an inherited disease of the nervous system due to the progressive gradual deterioration of the same, initially causing symptoms such as involuntary movements and balance problems and later on leading to declination of functions of speech as well. All these days, until now, it was thought that this disease is due to a mutated form of the protein 'huntingtin' which i...Unravelling the secrets of ‘Huntingtin’ Protein - towards the treatment of Huntingtins’ Disese
Huntingtons disease is an inherited disease of the nervous system due to the progressive gradual deterioration of the same, initially causing symptoms such as involuntary movements and balance problems and later on leading to declination of functions of speech as well. All these days, until now, it was thought that this disease is due to a mutated form of the protein 'huntingtin' which i...Three Tropical Parasites Genetic Code Unravelled
Scientists have now cracked the genetic makeup three fatal diseases –sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis //and Chagas disease that are caused by Trypanosoma brucei, Leishmania major and Trypanosoma cruzi. The three diseases have mostly been to affect people in tropical countries. It is estimated that they affect about half a billion people worldwide and claim more than 150,000 lives annually...Secret Of Heartbeat Protein Unravelled
Scientists in the US have solved the structure of a critical piece of protein used to keep hearts beating that they say will help treat cardiac or neurological diseases//. Biologist Dale Mierke and other researchers at Brown University have solved the structure of synapse-associated protein 97 (SAP97) found in abundance in the heart and head, reports university website www.brown.edu....