For the first time, researchers studying patients with abnormal moles have identified proteins that could help predict whether such moles will progress into melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. The study provides promising evidence that the proteins may represent potential biomarkers for prevention therapy. The results were announced today at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The study, abstra
Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs and parts of the limbs that are similar to four-legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fish-like features such as a primitive jaw, fins and scales.
These fossils, found on Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada, are
Nerve cells that normally are not light sensitive in the retinas of blind mice can respond to light when a green algae protein called channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) is inserted into the cell membranes, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study published in the April 6, 2006 issue of the journal Neuron. The study was conducted with mice that had been genetically bred to lose rods and cones, the light-sensitive cells in the retina. This condition is similar to the blinding
Using transparent zebrafish embryos, researchers at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia have shown that a microscopic nanoparticle can help fend off damage to normal tissue from radiation. The nanoparticle, a soccer ball-shaped, hollow, carbon-based structure known as a fullerene, acts like an “oxygen sink,” binding to dangerous oxygen radicals produced by radiation.
The scientists, led by Adam P. Dicker, M.D., Ph.D., and Ulrich Rodeck, M.D., see fullerenes as a potentially “new
In an experiment that could offer a new pathway to restoring vision in people with inherited retinal degeneration, researchers have engineered cells in the eye to be light sensitive that were not before. Using a harmless virus, they introduced a gene for a light-sensitive protein into “inner retinal neurons” in a strain of mice with photoreceptor deficiency that resembles the defect in such inherited human disorders as retinitis pigmentosa. Unlike the retinal rods and cones that normally funct
Cancer researchers are working toward a future in which each patient’s tumor will act like a crystal ball, revealing how oncologists should treat the cancer to obtain the best outcome. Currently, physicians cannot predict which patients with prostate cancer should receive extra therapy after surgery – or whether some of these patients have an indolent disease that does not even require surgery. Most patients with colorectal cancer have surgery, but some, even at the earliest stages, could b
Research bolsters case for Philippine conservation
Scientists have discovered two new species — a parrot and a mouse — that live only on a small island in the Philippines. This island, Camiguin, is the smallest Philippine island, of which there are 7,000, known to support a bird or mammal species that is endemic (lives nowhere else).
The scientists’ research, which is embargoed, is described in the April 5 issue of Fieldiana: Zoology, a peer-reviewed, scientific jour
Reduces virus RNA abundance
Last fall Dr. Peter Sarnow and a team of Stanford University scientists reported that the hepatitis C virus needs a specific microRNA, named miR-122, in order to replicate in cultured liver cells. When the scientists inactivated the microRNA, the amount of hepatitis C virus RNA was reduced by approximately 80 percent. The discovery was widely heralded for its potential to develop new antiviral agents against hepatitis C, the most common blood-borne v
As long-lived predators at the top of the marine food chain, albatrosses accumulate toxic contaminants such as PCBs, DDT, and mercury in their bodies. A new study has found dramatic differences in contaminant levels between two closely related albatross species that forage in different areas of the North Pacific. Researchers also found that levels of PCBs and DDT have increased in both species over the past ten years.
The differences in contaminant levels between black-footed and
When the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has enough to eat, enjoys the right temperatures and is not crowded out by its fellows, it produces a hormone, which binds to a receptor called DAF12 that allows it to reach reproductive maturity and live a natural lifespan.
When conditions are harsher, however, the worm – a classic model organism frequently studied in the laboratory – does not produce the hormone and enters a special stage called the dauer diapause in which it remains an immature
If you are not diabetic and you are hospitalized, your blood sugar level is probably the last thing on your mind. But the fact is that high blood sugar during hospitalization for serious illness increases your risk of infection and death.
Roughly one third of patients experience hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, during their hospital stay, and many of those patients don’t have diabetes or are undiagnosed. Blood sugar levels tend to go higher when a patient is critically i
First on East Coast — third in country — with artificial heart technology
A cardiac surgery team at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Pauley Heart Center has performed the first artificial heart implant on the East Coast. The CardioWest temporary Total Artificial Heart, or TAH-t, is the only total artificial heart approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The patient, a man in his late 50s from Virginia, was in stable condition today in the Pauley Center’s
“Da police are not here to create disorder; dere here to preserve disorder.” — Richard J. Daley, Chicago mayor, explaining to the media the role of the police during the riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Police keep order. That’s why, for example, they issue tickets for “disturbing the peace.” Thus the only logical conclusion to Mayor Daley’s famous quote above — other than dismissing it as the result of a tangled tongue — is sometimes disorder spawns order.
Sounds im
Brilliant reception
A team of researchers that includes biologists from Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that a gene involved in the development and function of the fruit fly antenna also gives the organism its color vision.
Claude Desplan, Ph.D., professor of biology at New York University, and his students made the discovery and provided the data. Ian Duncan, Washington University professor of biology, and his wife, research assistant Dianne Duncan, pr
Sample sizes were small, but eyebrow-raising results from a study on a western Illinois farm have researchers and veterinarians taking a broader look at how swine producers battle an endemic viral disease that adds to their costs and threatens reproduction in their herds.
A new approach (acclimatization) has producers inoculating newly arrived pigs with the wild-type strain of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRS) already existing on a farm. The hope is that
Lethal measures to control wolf attacks on cattle and sheep are ineffective in the long-term, new study finds
Costly and time-consuming efforts to eliminate wolves that prey on sheep, cattle and other domestic animals are ineffective on a long-term, regional scale, according to an examination of wolf control methods in Alberta and several U.S. states by University of Calgary researchers.
Results of the study were presented today at an annual meeting of wolf scientists,
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