Eradicating deadly E. coli O157:H7 from the bottoms of cows may prevent future outbreaks of food poisoning by this famous bug. According to an article in the August 2004 issue Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology, the majority of people with E. coli O157:H7, picked up the infection from cattle, either through direct contact with faeces or by consuming contaminated meat or milk.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with the
Taking something of a back-to-the-future approach, biologists from Boston University have looked into the past to find that flowering plants growing today blossom more than a week earlier than a century ago. Their findings, being presented at the Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting in New York City July 30 – August 2, show that among the plants studied in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, flowering times have moved forward over the decades, with the plants flowering eight days earl
A stroke leaves a permanent gap in the brain that can destroy a person’s ability to speak and move normally. Filling that gap with new cells has been a long sought-after goal of stem cell research, but all attempts have met with complications – until now. Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine report the first success using stem cells to populate the damaged region with new neurons in rats. If those cells also replace the function of the lost cells, they could help people recover
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida, has achieved another world record in magnet development with the successful testing of its 21.1 Tesla, superconducting, ultra-wide bore, NMR magnet. The magnet reached full field on July 21, 2004, and will remain at field for years — and even decades — to come. A team of engineers headed by Denis Markiewicz, Tom Painter, Iain Dixon, and Jim Ferner at the NHMFL developed, designed, manuf
Researchers have discovered a possible inherited component for lung cancer, a disease normally associated with external causes, such as cigarette smoking. An interdisciplinary consortium consisting of 12 research institutions and universities, including the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), identified a major lung cancer susceptibility region on a segment of chromosome 6. The findings appear
Competing theories about why brain cells die in Huntington’s disease may not be competitors after all, according to a report published July 23, 2004, in the early online edition of the Annals of Neurology.
Researchers report finding minor molecular abnormalities of the sort proposed by these different theories in cells throughout the brain and even in the skin. Yet only select groups of cells in a few movement centers of the brain are so vulnerable to these disruptions that they degener
A research study published this week has for the first time identified the specific precursor stem cell that gives rise not only to the important cells lining our blood vessels but also the blood itself.
Dr. Mick Bhatia and his colleagues at Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario, had demonstrated last year that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) can make blood cells; and they and others have known for some time that there is a connection between the development of the blood an
For many years, engineers have worked to efficiently filter valuable bio-process products on an industrial economic scale. The challenge has been to push rates up without incurring high shear rates and resultant cell lysis, which would cause loss of yield. High shear can destroy delicate and valuable biological materials such as proteins, blood, algae and yeasts, and also brings with it a requirement for higher flow rates, which in turn raises pumping costs.
Inventors at the University of Ox
Obscure mathematical ideas developed back in the 1980s could solve current problems of mixing fluids at the microscale, and revolutionise the technology, reports an article in Science.
The need to mix fluids at the microscale affects a whole range of developing technologies – from inkjet printers to DNA analysis – and finding ways to do it is becoming big business. Millions of dollars have already been poured into ‘lab-on-a-chip’ projects, but making miniature labs is not just a question o
Fish and mammal teeth are not created equal. Sometime after the move from spineless to having a backbone, the family of genes that controls tissue mineralization evolved to produce mammalian tooth enamel, bones and dentine, but fish enameloid developed from different genes, according to Penn State researchers.
“We also suggest that mammalian enamel is distinct from fish enameloid,” the researchers reported in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sc
Researchers have found a family of molecules that play a key role in the formation of synapses, the junctions that link brain cells, called neurons, to each other. The molecules initiate the development of these connections, forming the circuitry of the mammalian nervous system.
Scientists from Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis describe the findings in the July 23 issue of the journal Cell.
“This is very basic work, far from any clinical applications at
Research led by Anna Marie Pyle, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University reveals how a protein from Hepatitis C (HCV) unwinds RNA, potentially allowing it to be copied.
The work published in the journal Nature focuses on an enzyme, helicase NS3, that unwinds the RNA virus for replication inside cells. NS3 is one member of an extensive family of helicases and is used as a model for studying unwinding activities of motor proteins.
Their finding
Johns Hopkins researchers report that once a growing nerve “tastes” a certain protein, it loses its “appetite” for other proteins and follows the tasty crumbs to reach its final destination. The finding in mice, reported in the July 23 issue of Cell, appears to help explain how nerves connect to their targets and stop growing once there, a process important for the normal development of mouse and man.
During prenatal development, a nerve connects to its proper targets in part by obeying pr
US National Academy of Sciences member and Stanford Professor Winslow R. Briggs will speak at the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) annual meeting July 24, 2004 in Orlando, Florida about findings in his studies of how plants sense the direction of light.
Most casual observers have likely noticed that seedlings on a windowsill will grow toward the light. This phenomenon, known as phototropism, is a manifestation of a sensitive system plants have for detecting light. This light sens
At his presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) here July 24, 2004, Arizona State University Professor Charles J. Arntzen explained the newest advances in his research on plant-producing vaccines.
The development and introduction of new vaccines to improve global public health faces many challenges, Arntzen noted. The vaccines must address the need for lower costs, oral-administration (needle-free), heat stability, and they must include c
The gene therapy was able to perform in all muscles in the mouse, and would not necessarily have to carry the dystrophy gene
Researchers have found a delivery method for gene therapy that reaches all the voluntary muscles of a mouse – including heart, diaphragm and limbs – and reverses the process of muscle-wasting found in muscular dystrophy.
“We have a clear ’proof of principle’ that it is possible to deliver new genes body-wide to all the striated muscles of an
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