A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator from Albany, New York, and an HHMI international research scholar from Buenos Aires, Argentina have combined their expertise to identify two peculiar features of the protein-making machinery of the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Their findings could help scientists develop a safe and effective drug for the disease, whose cardiac complications kill up to 30 percent of those infected.
The unusual structure of the ribosome, publis
A gene enabling an insect virus to enter new cells was likely stolen from a host cell and adapted for the virus’s use, researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) at Cornell University report.
Virologists have long thought of baculoviruses, a group of viruses that can liquefy their insect hosts in a matter of days but don’t induce so much as a sneeze in mammals, as potential pesticides. But the viruses would require tweaking to be effective since they kill insects
Rockefeller scientists show that microRNAs play an essential role in the development of the fruit fly
In a story reminiscent of David and Goliath, new research from Rockefeller University shows that sometimes the smallest molecules can be the most powerful. In the July 1 issue of Cell, Ulrike Gaul, Ph.D., and colleagues report that microRNAs serve very important, and very specific, functions during the early development of the fruit fly.
First discovered a few years ago
Research led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that damage to a cell’s DNA sets off a chain reaction that leads to the increased expression of a marker recognized by the body’s immune system.
The new findings, to be published July 3 in an advanced online issue of Nature, shed light on a long-standing question of how the natural killer (NK) cells – which are able to attack tumors – can differentiate cells that are cancerous from those th
The winner of the 2005 EMBO Science Writing Prize is Edwin Harold Rydberg of the Istituto di Ricerche di Biologia Molecolare (IRBM) P. Angeletti in Rome, Italy. The theme of the competition was ‘genes and behaviour’ and the winning entry deals with an area widely studied in behavioural genetics – the commonly misunderstood condition of schizophrenia. Rydberg’s elegant narrative reveals the personal impact of this distressing condition and the difference understanding the biology behind a conditi
New forms of drugs for dysbacteriosis and other gastrointestinal disturbances are being developed by the Novosibirsk researchers with support of the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC).
A lot of Russians suffer from malfunction of gastrointestinal tract. The frequent reason for that is dysbacteriosis – disturbances of normal intestinal flora. To fight dysbacteriosis, physicians prescribe eubiotic drugs to patients, which contain bacteria necessary for digestion, f
Cornell University researchers have learned how a common fish found along the West Coast can hum and hear outside sounds at the same time.
The study marks the first time that scientists have found a direct line of communication between the part of a vertebrate’s brain that controls the vocal muscle system and the part of the ear that hears sound. The researchers believe that understanding the auditory system of the plainfin midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus ) — a 6- to 10
Thanks to imaging and analysis techniques used by researchers at TU Delft, an international group of scientists has been able to gain more insight into the behaviour of cancerous cells. Delft researchers were the first to establish the changing positions of the ends of chromosomes (telomeres) in cells. It has been discovered that these telomeres behave differently in cancerous cells. An online article on this phenomenon has been published in the important American scientific journal PNAS.
Research published in this month’s edition of the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, describes a method that can detect a pattern of contamination on banknotes from drug related crime that is different from the pattern seen in general circulation. The process is significantly faster than other previous methods.
“People involved in drug-trafficking are not always involved in handling illicit drugs, but they may possess cash that has been held by others who come into contac
A protein that was thought to simply turn genes on and off now looks to be more like a cellular “dimmer switch,” researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, report in the July 1, 2005, issue of the journal Science.
The scientists showed for the first time that when certain parts of a protein molecule are modified – flexible, randomly structured regions believed to be only minor players in the protein world – they become important in turning genes on an
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found an enzyme vital for controlling the early stages of cell death – a beneficial and normal process when it works right, but malignant in a variety of cancers when it malfunctions.
The researchers are now examining tissue from cancer patients to try to determine how mutations in the enzyme’s gene may relate to cancer. “We think this gene will really be a hot spot in research,” said Dr. Qing Zhong, postdoctoral researcher
A group of LSU researchers, led by biological sciences Professor Mark Batzer, have unraveled the details of a 25-million-year-old evolutionary process in the human genome. Their study focused on the origin and spread of transposable elements in the genome, many of which are known to be related to certain genetic disorders, such as hemophilia.
“Effectively, we’ve devised a theory that allows us to explain the origin of about half of all of the human genome,” said Batzer.
Efforts to halt a fungus that deprives about 60 million people a year of food have led Purdue University scientists to discover the molecular machinery that enables the pathogen to blast its way into rice plants.
The fungus, Magnaporthe grisea, which is known as rice blast fungus, is the most deadly of the pathogens that attack rice, reducing yields by as much as 75 percent in infected areas. Learning how the fungus tricks rice’s natural defenses against pathogens to penetrat
MicroRNAs are a recently discovered large class of small, non-coding genes. Each animal genome contains hundreds of these genes, which have been shown to regulate the expression of protein coding genes by binding to partially complementary sites in messenger RNAs. However, little is known about the biological function of these tiny genes, which are encoded in a string of 21 to 24 DNA bases.
In a series of four high-profile papers in Nature, Nature Genetics, Developmental Biology,
With equipment designed to probe the smallest segments of the genetic code, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborating institutions have found something much larger: sections of the chromosomes of lung cancer cells where cancer-related genes may lurk.
In a study in the July 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research, the researchers used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technology, which focuses on the building blocks of individual genes, to identify regio
New research suggests novel treatment targets for the most common form of childhood epilepsy – with the potential to have fewer side effects than traditional therapy. The findings from Wake Forest University School of Medicine are reported today in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Through studies in animals, the researchers learned more about the possible brain pathways involved in absence, or petit mal, seizures and tested a drug that revealed a potential new targe
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