Rice study probes basic science related to Alzheimer’s, other diseases
Patients suffering from diseases as varied as Type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dozens of lesser known maladies have one thing in common: they suffer from a large build up of amyloids, tissue that’s created when millions upon millions of misfolded proteins stick together and form a mass that the body can’t get rid of on its own. Doctors don’t yet understand whether amyloids cause disease or result f
What happens to painkillers, antibiotics and other medicines after their work is done, and they end up in the wastewater stream? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is using laboratory experiments to help answer this question by studying what happens to pharmaceuticals when they react with chlorine–a disinfectant commonly used in wastewater treatment.
Scientists around the world often find drugs in water samples taken from streams and other waterways, but li
The first genetic instruction manual of a diatom, from a family of microscopic ocean algae that are among the Earth’s most prolific carbon dioxide assimilators, has yielded important insights on how the creature uses nitrogen, fats, and silica to thrive.
The diatom DNA sequencing project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and conducted at the DOE Joint Genome Institute, provides insight into how the diatom species Thalassiosira pseudonana prospers in the marine en
“The results of the research we have carried out on the genome of viruses, specifically on nucleopolyhedroviruses (NPVs; Baculoviridae) will help to understand how genetic systems evolve. This discovery is of great importance when we take into account that NPVs have shown to have great insecticide potential for the control of agricultural and forestry plagues, above all for the cultivation of maize in countries such as Mexico and Honduras”. This is one of the conclusions of the PhD thesis “Funct
Researchers have learned how to commandeer the complex machinery that cells use to recognize and respond to such important molecules as steroid hormones, thyroid hormones and vitamin D.
The development could provide a foundation for a new family of biologically-based mechanisms able to detect common drugs, chemical weapons and other small molecules. By allowing manipulation of this cellular protein machinery – known as nuclear receptors – the technique could also lead to new method
Scientists have discovered a DNA sequence that causes the destabilization, and hence decay, of the protooncogene bcl-2 (B-cell lymphoma/leukemia-2). Because the overexpression of bcl-2 is associated with cancer, this discovery may lead to new therapeutic strategies for treating the disease.
The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the October 8 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journal.
Bcl-2 i
Plants and animals living together in communities don’t rub shoulders too closely because evolution has caused them to compromise on key life measures, say ecologists at Imperial College London and Royal Holloway, University of London, writing in the journal Science today (1 October).
The researchers suggest a new basis for explaining how communities of species assemble: they have to give up being good at everything and ’trade off’ their life histories. ’Life histo
A well-known enzyme present in the skin and other tissues turns out to be a molecule-sized motor that extracts its fuel from the road it runs on, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Their discovery appears in the Oct. 1 issue of Science.
The enzyme, MMP-1, is a member of a group of enzymes that breaks down collagen, a fibrous substance that constitutes the foundation of the extracellular matrix that supports the cells in the body’
Leukemia, or cancer of the bone marrow, strikes some 700 Belgians each year. Medical science has been at a total loss regarding the origin or cause of some forms of this disease − including T-cell acute lymphatic leukemia, or T-ALL. But now, researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), connected to the Catholic University of Leuven, have discovered the possible cause of the disease in 6% of the T-ALL patients. The scientists have found small circular DNA fra
For the very first time, the genetic make-up of a planktonic marine alga has been sequenced. During this process, a team of international scientists found unexpected metabolic pathways in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana. The results will be published in the scientific journal ‘Science’ this week.
The fact that Thalassiosira pseudonana operates a urea cycle, has been a special discovery. Up to now, this metabolic pathway for ammonia detoxification was known only from the liver c
Technique could ease discovery of countless reactions by linking organic fragments to DNA strands
Scientists have developed a powerful way of mining the chemical universe for new reactions by piggybacking collections of different small organic molecules onto short strands of DNA, which then gives the reactants the opportunity to react by zipping together. Their work draws upon an innovative technique, known as “DNA-templated synthesis,” that uses DNA to code not for RNA or proteins
A team of researchers at the University of Georgia has discovered a new way that genetic entities called transposable elements (TEs) can promote evolutionary change in plants.
The research, published Sept. 30 in the journal Nature, was led by Dr. Susan Wessler, a Distinguished Research Professor of plant biology at UGA. The Wessler lab studies TEs, which are pieces of DNA that make copies of themselves that can then be inserted throughout the genome. The process can be highly effici
A revolutionary approach to angiogenesis[1] by a team of Belgian researchers could make cancer treatment more effective at killing tumours.
Dr. Olivier Feron and his team from the University of Louvain Medical School in Brussels have turned the whole concept of targeting tumour blood vessels on its head. Instead of the conventional approach of trying to starve tumour cells of the blood supply they need to grow, they are doing the opposite – opening up the tumour blood supply to allow
McGill research shows increased carbon dioxide levels decrease algae growth
The doomsayers may be right: our children may not inherit a bountiful and green world. According to researchers at McGill University, we have been overestimating the ability of plants to counteract the greenhouse effect. Their findings, published in the September 30 issue of Nature, suggest changing conditions in the earth’s atmosphere may have more harmful effects on plant life than previously believe
In a whole new approach to asthma research, scientists at Yale have discovered that a molecule called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) likely plays an important role in the development of the disease and raises the possibility of new asthma drugs that block VEGF receptors and signaling pathways.
VEGF is normally associated with the growth of new blood vessels in the lung and other organs. Yale researchers found, however, that in addition to this function, VEGF can also indu
An experimental cancer vaccine using defanged listeria bacteria is showing great promise in animal studies, successfully treating new cancers that have spread into the lungs of mice.
The mouse study, reported in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at Cerus Corp. in Concord, Calif., employs a genetically engineered listeria bacteria based on a strain created by coauthor and University of California, Berkeley, microbiologist
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