A comprehensive examination of research by a panel of independent experts finds insufficient evidence to draw a link between serious adverse health consequences and commonly used ’silver’ fillings
For many of us, having a dental cavity filled can be a frightening experience. Others take such dental repair in stride. Regardless of how you approach a trip to the dentist, you can take comfort in a new report, which concludes that the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature pub
Northwestern University researchers have identified a key molecular “signal” that allows malarial parasites to release virulence proteins inside human red blood cells.
The investigators, led by Kasturi Haldar and N. Luisa Hiller, also found that the process by which the malarial parasite remodels red blood cells is far more complex than scientists previously had realized. Haldar is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in Pathology and professor of microbiology-immunology a
A newly discovered genetic defect might represent an important risk factor for major depression, a condition which effects 20 million people in the U.S., according to Duke University Medical Center researchers. The mutation in the gene — whose protein product plays a primary role in synthesizing the brain chemical serotonin — could lead to the first diagnostic test for genetic predisposition to depression, the team said.
“Abnormalities in brain levels of serotonin have been wide
Scientists have found a “molecular Achilles heel” in the organism that causes pneumonia, providing a target for the development of a new class of antibiotics that could eventually eradicate the disease. Their report is scheduled to appear in the Dec. 28 edition of Biochemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
“Streptococcus pneumoniae places an enormous burden on the welfare of humanity,” says Thomas Leyh, Ph.D.,
The draft sequence of the wild chicken, Gallus gallus, will be published in the Dec 9th issue of Nature (cover story). The analysis of this genome is not about getting bigger eggs and tastier chicken – it’s giving scientists surprising insights into the human genome. Researchers can use these new data as a tool to identify similar sequences in humans – regions previously thought to be ‘junk’ DNA in the human. These sequences must have an important role if they have been conserved over the 310
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have played a major role in sequencing the chicken genome, published in Nature and Genome Research on Thursday 9 December. The chicken is the first farm animal to be successfully sequenced, as well as being the first bird.
The Sheffield team were responsible for determining the sequences of messenger RNAs, which have allowed an international team of scientists to analyse the chicken genome sequence and identify most chicken genes.
Use of a novel gene-based therapy before breast cancer surgery reduced tumor size by nearly 80 percent on average, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium meeting.
The therapy, known as Advexin, also showed evidence that the p53 protein it was delivering was actually being replaced in the targeted tumors, and that the treatment produced beneficial and possibly sustained local immune responses
Different molecular subtypes of breast cancer respond differently to chemotherapy, a research team from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium meeting.
The findings reinforce the emerging notion that breast cancer should be classified according to its gene expression profile, in order to make accurate predictions about the outcome of the disease and select the optimal treatment for patients, says the senio
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have found a potential predictor of response to the chemotherapy drug Taxol, which is commonly used before or after surgery for stage I-III breast cancers, even though only a subset of women ultimately benefit from this treatment.
Patients whose breast cancer cells have lost their ability to express a protein called “tau” are twice as likely to have a good response to Taxol treatment, the researchers report
The overall performance of the gene signature to be used in the first large-scale trial to study the role of such tumor signatures in breast cancer is encouraging and gives the green light to start the trial proper, Dr. Martine Piccart, head of the medical oncology department at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, Belgium, told the San Antonio Breast Cancer conference today (Wednesday 8 December 2004). Dr Piccart heads the TRANSBIG consortium, which intends to use the 70-gene prognostic signatur
The connection between species richness and area occupied, recognized by biologists for more than a hundred years as a fundamental ecological relationship in plant and in animal communities, has been discerned for the first time at the microbial level.
A pair of papers in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature, one focused on bacteria and another on a microbial fungi, shows that the number of species present – the diversity – increases as the area they occupy increases. “The resul
Scientists from Michigan State University have uncovered a previously unknown metabolic mechanism used by plants to create seed oil.
The results, described Wednesday in the British journal Nature, address a longstanding question in plant biology – why do oilseed plants rely on a seemingly inefficient metabolic process to produce such prodigious amount of energy-rich oil? The answer, according to the MSU team, is that plant seeds are more efficient than anyone thought. “Seeds ac
Like the famous living deserts of the Southwest, the so-called “gene deserts” in our DNA are teeming with activity. The trick is knowing where to look for it. A new roadmap to the location of DNA segments that are significant in medical, biological and evolutionary research could emerge from studies published today (Dec. 9) by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their colleagues. The work is reported in the online version of the journal Genome Research.
Developed by biologists at Argonne National Lab
Structural changes in proteins can now be seen in increased detail, using a new application of an existing technique. The application, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, could help produce lead drugs for disease therapy.
In research published in Chemistry and Biology, the scientists report the use of wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), an X-ray diffraction technique that has previ
Using only computers, a research team at Uppsala University in Sweden has managed to reveal both the structure and the function of a newly discovered enzyme from the most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. All that was needed was the amino acid sequence of the enzyme. The findings may represent a breakthrough for future pharmaceutical research.
The research was carried out within the framework of a project (RAPID) at the Uppsala University Center for Structural
Biochemists at Ohio State University and their colleagues have overcome one of the major obstacles to drug design, by trimming some of the fat from a molecular sponge that scientists use to study proteins.
In the December issue of the journal Structure, the biochemists report using their method successfully in experiments with two common cellular proteins. The results suggest that scientists could one day use the method as a step in designing drugs for diseases such as cystic fibr
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