A team of researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has developed new miniature sensors for analysing DNA. The sensors have the same size and thickness as a fingernail and reduce the time needed to identify DNA chains to several minutes or a few hours, depending on each chain. These sensors can be applied to many different tasks, ranging from paternity tests and identifying people to detecting genetically modified food, identifying bacterial strains in foodborne illnesses and testing g
Ebola virus infection in humans provokes a violent haemorrhagic fever. It usually flares up as intense epidemics. These kill 80 % of the people infected. Seven such outbreaks have hit Gabon and the Republic of Congo since 1994, leading to 445 cases resulting in 361 deaths. Ebola virus thus constitutes a grave public health problem in these countries. No medicine or vaccine is currently available, only prevention and rapid control of epidemics by isolation of disease victims can limit its spread
Provides unique drug targets to prevent spread
Tufts University researchers have identified several proteins on the surface of cancer cells that contribute to the cells’ ability to metastasize. When the researchers destroyed these particular proteins, the cancerous cells show a significant decrease in their ability to invade healthy cells – a finding that provides a new target for badly needed drugs. Although most cancer deaths occur from metastasis, not from the original canc
And it creates resistance to weight gain and lowered inflammation
The Salk Institute scientist who earlier discovered that enhancing the function of a single protein produced a mouse with an innate resistance to weight gain and the ability to run a mile without stopping has found new evidence that this protein and a related protein play central roles in the body’s complex journey to obesity and offer a new and specific metabolic approach to the treatment of obesity related dise
Tumor cells use VEGF-A to stimulate lymphatic vessel growth beyond primary site
Production of the protein VEGF-A, already known to stimulate the growth of blood vessels associated with tumors, also contributes in unexpected ways to the spread of cancer. In the April Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology describe finding that VEGF-A promotes the development of lymphatic vessels that can
May lead to improved diagnosis and prevention of stomach-esophagus cancer
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a chain of molecular signals that generate the specialized lining of the stomach during fetal development – a discovery that could lead to better diagnosis, treatment and prevention of stomach and esophageal cancer in adults.
Damage to the stomach lining, such as from acid reflux or helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infections, might reactiva
Collaborating researchers at New York University and Rockefeller University have discovered that microRNA genes, which have recently been shown to have key roles in gene regulation, can team up and regulate target genes in mammals. MicroRNAs are a recently discovered large class of regulatory, non-coding genes, which bind to partially complementary sites in target messenger RNA to regulate their stability and translation. However, little has been known about the biological function of microRNAs–a pr
Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have taken another step toward a potential treatment for Huntington’s disease (HD). Using an approach called RNA interference (RNAi), the scientists reduced levels of the disease-causing HD protein in mice and significantly improved the movement and neurological abnormalities normally associated with the disease.
HD is a devastating, inherited, neurodegenerative disease that is progressive
Researchers have discovered that natural killer T (NKT) cells, the immune system’s sentinels, patrol the labyrinthine blood vessels of the liver for invaders or signs of tissue damage and demonstrate a dogged behavior not seen before in other T cells.
The new studies show that NKT cells crawl along vessel walls, even upstream against blood flow. They halt only when they receive a chemical signal to unleash an immune-system assault on marauding microbes, other invaders or dam
Scientists at New York University School of Medicine viewing the actual journey of immune cells in the liver have found that these cells travel in the liver’s blood vessels with surprising speed and agility.
It is the first time that the movement of live immune cells called natural killer T (NKT) cells has been seen in the liver, according to a study published in the April 5, 2005, issue of the Public Library of Science, an open-access, online journal.
NKT cells ar
Harnessing the strength of a natural process that repairs damage to the human genome, a researcher from UT Southwestern Medical Center has helped establish a method of gene therapy that can accurately and permanently correct mutations in disease-causing genes. The findings are available online in Nature.
By artificially initiating a DNA repair process known as homologous recombination, Dr. Matthew Porteus of UT Southwestern, working with scientists from Richmond, Calif.-based
Besides adding flavor to food, onions also may be good for your bones. Researchers at the University of Bern in Switzerland have identified a compound in the popular vegetable that appears to decrease bone loss in laboratory studies using rat bone cells. Although further studies are needed, the current study suggests that eating onions might help prevent bone loss and osteoporosis, a disease which predominately affects older women. The disease results in an estimated $17 billion in medical costs
A specialist of the Vavilov Institute of Natural History and Engineering, Russian Academy of Sciences, A.G. Nazarov has considered Vernadsky’s famous concept on biosphere transmutation into noosphere (“sphere of human thought”) from the ecological point of view and has come to the conclusion that noospheric reconstruction of biosphere has no prospects and is unreal.
V.I.Vernadsky had no time to develop himself an integral doctrine about noosphere. In the 20s of the last century he
An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of Dundee have announced that cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) found throughout the world may produce a toxin linked to certain types of neurological disease.
Researchers have previously proposed a link between beta-methyl-amino-alanine (BMAA), a neurotoxic amino acid found in cyanobacteria and an Alzheimer’s-like neurodegenerative disease suffered by the Chamorro people on Guam in the Pacific. The Cha
Meningitis and pneumonia bacteria smash into our lungs and cells to steal sugar, which helps them survive, according to research presented today from King’s College and Guy’s Hospital London, (Monday, 04 April 2005) at the Society for General Microbiology’s 156th Meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.
The way bacteria grow and spread is a key to the way they cause infectious diseases, say scientists trying to find ways to stop antibiotic resistant strains
Lupus is a chronic, autoimmune disease that causes inflammation, particularly of the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys. Patients with lupus produce antibodies against their own proteins. Patients also have immune T cells that produce a protein called IL-2, which normally usually protects against infection, at lower than typical levels. In a study appearing in the April 1 print edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, George Tsokos and colleagues from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Resea
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