A biologist at The University of Texas at Austin has presented a new theory that sheds light on how organisms, including viruses like HIV, rapidly evolve in the face of vaccines and antibiotics.
Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers says the new model could help identify genes that increase a pathogen’s ability to evolve quickly against immune responses. Knowing those genes could help scientists develop new and better vaccines.
Meyers’ model predicts that populations can evolve “geneti
New phage display technique successful in identifying compounds that show potential to overcome drug resistance
A simple, harmless virus might hold the key to the more effective and efficient development of HIV and anti-viral drugs, UCI chemical biologists have found. In order to better identify compounds that can outmaneuver a virus’ effort to mutate and multiply, Gregory Weiss and Allison Olszewski employed this virus, called a bacteriophage, to learn how a HIV protein could
The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum uses different pathways to invade red blood cells, evading the body’s immune system and complicating efforts to create effective vaccines against the disease. A research team led by Australia’s Alan F. Cowman, an international research scholar with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has identified a gene that the parasite uses to switch back and forth between invasion pathways.
Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute
Plasmodium falciparum, the most lethal malaria parasite, is a housebreaking villain of the red blood cell world. Like a burglar searching for a way in to his targeted premises, the parasite explores a variety of potential entry points to invade the red blood cells of its human victims. When a weak point is found, the intrusion proceeds.
Scientists have known about the parasite’s housebreaking habit for a decade, but just how it breaks in to blood cells has been unknown.
A drug derived from an ancient Chinese herb has been shown to reduce the risk of death from severe malaria by a third, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives in nations on our doorstep.
A trial in malaria patients from four countries has shown a clear benefit over standard treatment with quinine, says Professor Nicholas Anstey of the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Australia, which participated in the trial in partnership with the Indonesian Ministry of
A special stretch of genetic material may turn off the immune suppression that stymies attempts to fight cancer with a vaccine, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) at Houston.
In a report in today’s issue of the journal Science, Dr. Rong-Fu Wang, a professor in the BCM Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and Department of Immunology, and his colleagues describe a new strategy to turn off the function of a special group of T cells to suppress immune response to
New research shows that people have greater difficultly maintaining a fixed speed, or keeping their car safe in a single lane when performing tasks that simulated conversing on a mobile phone, than if they were driving without the distraction. Contrary to expectation, the speaking and listening were equally distracting. The research was conducted at the University of Illinois and will be published in the next edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Almost 100 students took experiments in
Discovery may lead to promising new research tools
University of Oregon scientists report their discovery of the basis for the blue coloration found in many coral reef formations in an article published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jim Remington and Nathan Henderson of the university’s Institute of Molecular Biology describe the crystal structure of a cyan (greenish-blue) fluorescent protein from a sea anemone in the report, which
With an advanced imaging technique and a savvy strategy, researchers at Cornell University’s Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics (LAASP) have shown how adding charge-carrying atoms like oxygen to a superconductor can increase the material’s ability to conduct electricity overall and — paradoxically — to decrease it in localized spots.
The discovery, published in the Aug. 12 issue of Science, could lead to the eventual development of more effective supercondu
Asteroid dust may influence weather, study finds
Dust from asteroids entering the atmosphere may influence Earth’s weather more than previously believed, researchers have found.
In a study to be published this week in the journal Nature, scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division, the University of Western Ontario, the Aerospace Corporation, and Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories found evidence that dust from an asteroid burning up as it descended
Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that patients who have two specific gene variants are more than three times as likely to suffer a stroke after heart surgery.
Furthermore, since the two implicated genes are involved in the body’s immune response to insult or injury, the researchers said that their findings strongly suggest that inflammation plays an important role in post-operative stroke.
The researchers said that if the findings are conf
How a newly discovered mechanism keeps inflammation under control
When macrophages, the first line defender cells of the immune system become activated, they produce an inhibitor, which acts back on them to suppress their activity. This has been revealed by the work of scientists at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF) in Braunschweig together with colleagues at the Hannover Medical School and at the University of Münster. The suppressor turned out to be an “old acqu
A device called “passive chemical dosimeter” will help to identify the quantity of poisonous substances and to determine particular substances inhaled by interlocutors of a smoker. The device is being developed by the Kazan chemists, financial support being provided by the International Science and Technology Center.
The smoking-room of the Lenin State Library – this is the proper place for catching eligible bachelors, as a heroine of the Oscar-winner film “Moscow Does Not Believe
If living cell is replaced by a test-tube with DNA and a set of substances, it is possible to get proteins in a more simple and inexpensive way. That was done by Russian biochemists synthesizeing insulin without help of transgene Escherichia coli. The researchers’ concept was funded by the Ministry of Science and Molecular and Cellular Boioplogy, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Insulin for diabetics has been obtained so far by utilizing biotechnological synthesis. The basic materia
Human beings are genetically adapted to conditions of scanty and irregular nutrition. In case of food abundance this advantage turned into a significant part of population’s predisposition to “diseases of civilization”. This conclusion has been made by I.S. Liberman, Doctor of Sciences, based on his own data and findings of other investigators.
Atherosclerosis, type II (insulin-independent) diabetes, primary hypertension, and obesity often accompanying them are called diseas
The Da Vinci Code, the best selling novel and soon-to-be-blockbuster film, may also be linked some day to the solving of a scientific mystery as old as Leonardo Da Vinci himself — friction. A collaboration of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University have used Da Vinci’s principles of friction and the geometric oddities known as quasicrystals to open a new pathway towards a better understanding of friction at the atomic
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