University of Florida researchers have uncovered how the inhaled form of anthrax disarms bacteria-fighting white blood cells before they can fend off the disease, which kills most victims within days.
The lethal toxin in anthrax paralyzes neutrophils, the white blood cells that act as the body’s first defense against infection, by impairing how they build tiny filaments that allow them to crawl throughout the body and eat invading bacteria.
Just two hours of expo
Research published in Science demonstrates the value of high-throughput sequencing in small RNA analysis
Solexa, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLXA) today announced that its researchers in collaboration with the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the University of Delaware reported the most comprehensive analysis to date of the small RNA component of the transcriptome. The research, “Elucidation of the Small RNA Component of the Transcriptome,” was published in the September 2, 2005 issue of t
The link between humans and animals may be closer than we may have realised. Research by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has found that our furry relatives may share many of the same emotions that humans experience in everyday life.
Dr Filippo Aureli, reader in Animal Behaviour and co-director of the Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology at LJMU will present his findings today (September 6) at the BA Festival of Science in Dublin.
He exp
Researchers have capitalized on the unique properties of a sperm cell to follow cell membrane fusion as it occurs during fertilization, tracking the full cascade of events for the first time. The findings could reveal new ways to enhance or block fertilization, as well as how to control the secretion of neurotransmitters and hormones such as insulin.
Luis Mayorga, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar, and colleagues at the National University o
Currently, the best way to predict whether a breast cancer is likely to recur is to determine whether tumor cells have invaded the lymph nodes near the breast. But new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that looking at the immune cells in those lymph nodes – instead of the tumor cells – will yield a more accurate forecast. The finding could help clinicians determine which cancers to treat more aggressively to ensure the cancer goes away and doesn’t come back.
A new study has confirmed that research done with zebrafish may be able to play a critical role in learning about the genetic basis of cancer and the mutations that can lead to it – and identified one gene in particular, B-myb, whose function is essential to preventing tumors.
The findings were published in a professional journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from Oregon State University and two Boston hospitals, the Brigham and Women’s H
The key to preventing asthma and reducing allergies may lie in an unexpected source: parasitic worms. Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have managed to cure experimental asthma in the lab using a live worm, the first time a human parasite has been used for this purpose. Dr Padraic Fallon from the Department of Biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin will present these findings at the BA Festival of Science on Monday 5 September.
The UK and Ireland are experiencing an asth
Scientists in Cambridge are developing a potentially life-saving new way of finding and killing cancer cells.
Using the field of epigenetics – the way the body’s cells control which genes are off or on – it is possible to identify proteins in the body that determine a cancer cells fate, whether it grows or not, and destroy them.
Cambridge firm CellCentric are working with leading scientists in epigenetics to try to exploit this new technology.
Cancer spread
Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Parc Científic de Barcelona (IRB-PCB) have now added key evidence to claims that some types of cancer originate with defects in stem cells. The study, reported this week in the on-line edition of Nature Genetics (September 4) shows that if key molecules aren’t placed in the right locations within stem cells before they divide, the result can be deadly tumors.
An international team of researchers has discovered that human embryonic stem cell lines accumulate changes in their genetic material over time.
The findings do not limit the utility of the cells for some types of research or for some future clinical applications, the researchers say, but draw attention to the need to closely monitor stem cell lines for genetic changes and to study how these alterations affect the cells’ behavior. The researchers’ work is described in the
UCL (University College London) scientists have found that the closest living relative to the extinct Irish Elk (giant deer) lives on our shores. The team tested for DNA and skeletal features to prove that the giant deer – which roamed across Europe and Siberia with prehistoric man and is the subject of numerous cave drawings – has its DNA in common with the fallow deer, one of the most widespread deer in the UK since their introduction by the Normans in the eleventh century.
The results,
About 60,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year, says the American Cancer Society, and 10,000 of those cases will be fatal. If not caught in the early stages, melanoma can be a particularly virulent form of cancer, spreading through the body with an efficiency that few tumors possess. Now, researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have discovered one of the reasons why this particular skin tumor is so ruthless. Unlike other cancers, melanoma is born with its meta
A group of scientists in Italy have developed a vaccine with the potential to protect against fungal pathogens that commonly infect humans, according to a study by Torosantucci and colleagues in the September 5 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Although these fungi pose little threat to people with healthy immune systems, they can cause fatal infections in those whose immune systems have been weakened by cancer treatments or post-transplant immunosuppressive therapies. No anti-fungal va
University of Oregon work appears on cover of Inorganic Chemistry
Not all libraries contain books. In chemistry, the word library is used to refer to a collection of molecules. University of Oregon chemist Jim Hutchison’s new way of rapidly generating libraries of tiny particles with great promise for research and development at the nanoscale is featured on the cover of the Sept. 5 issue of Inorganic Chemistry.
“We’ve discovered a method for generating a diver
Tumor cells can grow without control by weakening specific cells of the immune system, the T-cells, which normally detect and destroy tumor cells. The findings of Dr. Gerald Willimsky and Prof. Thomas Blankenstein (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, MDC, Berlin-Buch and Charité) were generated in transgenic mice over a period of seven years and have now been published in the scientific journal Nature* (doi:10.1038/nature03954). Until now, the notion was that tumor cells escape recognition
The ”four-legged fish” Ichthyostega is not the ”missing link” between marine and land animals, but rather one of several short-lived ”experiments”. This is what scientists from Uppsala and Cambridge universities maintain in an article in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.
The ”four-legged fish” Ichthyostega lived in Greenland during the Devon Period, some 355 million years ago, and is one of the very oldest land vertebrates. Since it was discovered back in the 1
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