Study conducted in hamsters with same genetic defect as human muscular dystrophy shows great promise for treating adult heart failure
University of Pittsburgh investigators have for the first time used gene therapy to successfully treat heart failure and other degenerative muscle problems in an animal model that is genetically susceptible to a human muscular dystrophy. Reporting in the Oct. 25 edition of the journal Circulation, the authors say that this is the first successful attem
This classification conveys important information about the biochemistry and metabolism of disease-causing organisms. Here are three examples. 1) Pneumocystis, an opportunistic pathogen causing mortality in AIDS patients and immunocompromised individuals, is now known to be a fungus, indicating a different treatment regimen is needed. 2) Phytophtora, an organism causing potato blight, such as the one that caused the Irish famine in the 19th century, is now known not to be a fungus, which ex
Researchers at North Carolina State University are looking deep under water for clues on how to redesign plants for life deep in outer space. Some of the stresses inherent with travel and life in space – extreme temperatures, drought, radiation and gravity, for example – are not easily remedied with traditional plant defenses. So Dr. Wendy Boss, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Botany, and Dr. Amy Grunden, assistant professor of microbiology, have combined t
First-ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people—by up to 40 times—yet people appear to perceive colors the same way. The findings, on the cover of this week’s journal Neuroscience, strongly suggest that our perception of color is controlled much more by our brains than by our eyes.
By comparing the human genome with that of the chimpanzee, man’s closest living relative, researchers have discovered that chunks of similar DNA that have been flipped in orientation and reinserted into chromosomes are hundreds of times more common in primates than previously thought. These large structural changes in the genome, called inversions, may account for much of the evolutionary difference between the two species. They may also shed light on genetic changes that lead to human dis
Researchers at Stanford University have created a larger-than-normal DNA molecule that is copied almost as efficiently as natural DNA. The findings, reported in the Oct. 25 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may reveal new insights into how genetic mutations-tiny mistakes that occur during DNA replication-arise. The discovery was made in the laboratory of Eric Kool, a professor of chemistry at Stanford and co-author of the PNAS study.
The expression of two specific genes is almost completely downregulated in ovarian cancer tumours. An extensive analysis of gene expression in ovarian cancer tumour cells has revealed this important finding, which should be an aid to early diagnosis. The insights gained by the research at the Medical University of Vienna with the support of the Austrian Science Fund FWF are also central to a recently launched EU project aimed at optimising ovarian cancer diagnosis.
Some 63,000
The parts of the genetic make-up that are thought to determine an individual’s maximum possible longevity, so-called telomeres, are inherited from the father but not the mother. This is shown by a research team at Umeå University in the coming issue of the U.S. scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Telomeres are genetic material with repetitive content at the ends of DNA, and their main function is believed to be to protect the rest of the genetic
Over the past ten years, separate outbreaks of the deadly Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) have killed hundreds of humans and tens of thousands of great apes in Gabon and the Republic of Congo–which harbor roughly 80% of the last remaining wild gorilla and chimpanzee populations. In a new study, Peter Walsh, Roman Biek, and Leslie Real combined genetic data with information on the timing and location of past ZEBOV outbreaks to support the hypothesis that a “consistently moving wave of ZEBOV inf
An EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) team led by professor Melody Swartz has demonstrated for the first time that the presence of very slow biological flows affects the extracellular environment in ways that are critical for tissue formation and cell migration. Their results will appear online the week of October 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A major challenge for tissue engineering is to identify the essential environmental ingredients that
Many baffled parents have wondered whether their teenagers would ever stop growing. The answer is obvious, but researchers have never really quite understood just how an organism determines when it has reached its optimal size and growth should cease.
Now University of Washington biologists studying the physiology of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, have discovered an organ that assesses the size of the juvenile and signals when it has reached a critical weight t
Clinically annotated results are publicly available online
The International Genomics Consortium’s (IGC) Expression Project for Oncology (expO) today announced that it has collected its 1,000th frozen cancer specimen, which exceeds original expectations for the project while marking a milestone that is recognized by researchers, industry and academia. Gene expression analysis with clinical information on hundreds of these specimens is now publicly available online.
Researchers have identified a gene in mosquitoes that helps the insects to fight off infection by the Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria in humans. Anopheles mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite to nearly 550 million people worldwide each year with these cases resulting in more than 2 million deaths annually. The protective gene was identified in a study conducted by a team of investigators from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Malaria Research Institute, the Im
An enzyme inside a bacterium that grows in the soil of potato fields can — in a split second — break down residues of a common powerful pesticide used for killing worms on potatoes, researchers have found.
That may be expensive for farmers but lucky for the environment because University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists have now discovered that if that particular enzyme weren’t there, it would take 10,000 years for just half of the widely used pesticide to decompo
A human red blood cell is a dimpled ballerina, ceaselessly spinning, tumbling, bending, and squeezing through openings narrower than its width to dispense life-giving oxygen to every corner of the body. In a paper published in the October issue of Annals of Biomedical Engineering, which was made available online on Oct. 21, a team of UCSD researchers describe a mathematical model that explains how a mesh-like protein skeleton gives a healthy human red blood cell both its rubbery ability to stret
’Nature’ article says gold catalysts achieve cleaner, more efficient oxidation
The selective oxidation processes that are used to make compounds contained in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and other chemical products can be accomplished more cleanly and more efficiently with gold nanoparticle catalysts, researchers have reported in Nature magazine.
A team of 13 U.K. researchers and one U.S. researcher reported in the Oct. 20 issue of the British journal that the carbon-
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