Two Johns Hopkins scientists have figured out a simple way to make millions upon millions of drug-like peptides quickly and efficiently, overcoming a major hurdle to creating and screening huge “libraries” of these super-short proteins for use in drug development.
“Our work dramatically increases the complexity of peptide libraries that can be created and the speed with which they can be made and processed,” says Chuck Merryman, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who developed the new technique. “
Scientists glean new insight from prematurely old mice
The relationship between genome integrity and aging is the subject of a new report in the upcoming issue of Genes & Development. Drs Lin-Quan Sun and Robert Arceci at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a novel mouse model to study premature aging, and the genetic events that contribute to normal development and longevity.
“The inability of an organism to maintain the integrity of its genome has bee
Using magnets and video microscopy to measure the length of individual DNA molecules under experimental conditions, researchers have demonstrated that Condensin, a complex of proteins widely conserved in evolution, physically compacts DNA in a manner dependent on energy from ATP. The finding is significant because the Condensin complex, which is essential for life, has been known to play a key role in the dramatic condensation of genomic DNA that precedes mitosis and cell division. The new work puts
Grasses typify the Great Plains, so it’s not surprising that more than 108 species of grasshoppers are at home on the range in the central United States.
However, a grasshopper that doesn’t love grass lives in Kansas too, a recent discovery at Kansas State University’s Konza Prairie Biological Station shows. This newfound hopper prefers trees.
The first specimen was actually collected in September 2001 by a student from Fort Riley Middle School, according to Valerie
HIV-AIDS did not come from oral polio vaccine contaminated with chimpanzee virus, reports a research team led by a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist.
Belief that polio vaccine can spread AIDS has hampered the World Health Organization’s efforts to stamp out polio. In Nigeria, several states recently banned use of the vaccine. Nigeria now has the highest number of polio cases in the world.
Although scientists agree that HIV comes from a chimpanzee simian immunodeficie
Saddle-shaped structure provides the spring to generate powerful punch
Forget boxers Oscar de la Hoya and Shane Mosley. The fastest punches are delivered by a lowly crustacean – the stomatopod, or mantis shrimp.
With the help of a BBC camera crew and the loan of a high-speed video camera, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have recorded the swiftest kick, and perhaps most brutal attack, of any predator. The shrimp flail their club-shaped front leg at peak speeds
In energy consuming biological reactions the level of ATP is the essential indicator for enzyme activity or cell viability. The Biaffin ATP Determination Kits offer convenient bioluminescense assays for quantitative determination of small amounts of pre-existing ATP or ATP formed in enzymatic reactions. Catalysed by firefly luciferase the substrate D-luciferin is oxidized in an ATP-dependent process generating chemiluminescence at 560 nm (pH 7.8):
Genetically modified mosquitoes that cannot transmit malaria are one hope for battling the disease that still kills over one million people a year. But that plan faces some serious snags, according to UC Davis researchers who are suggesting an alternative strategy.
Other scientists have proposed controlling malaria by releasing into the wild mosquitoes genetically engineered to resist malaria. If the resistant mosquitoes breed and spread their genes through the population, malaria transmiss
New research findings about T-cell transport shed light on how the normal immune system functions and could have implications in fighting autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, say researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Two molecules on the surfaces of T-cells – a type of immune cell – must work in tandem to help the T-cells cross from the bloodstream into infected tissues, where the T-cells initiate an immune or inflammatory response, researchers at UT Southwestern have di
International consortium provides the first step towards a comprehensive functional link between the genome sequence scaffold and human diseases
The announcement of the human genome sequence three years ago was widely hailed as one of the great scientific achievements in modern history. But sequencing the genome is just a first step — the monumental task of ascribing biological meaning to those sequences has just begun. The H-Invitational international consortium, led by Takashi Gojo
Reducing Enzyme Involved in Recycling Vitamin C Increases a Plant’s Responsiveness to Drought Conditions
University of California, Riverside researchers reported the development of technology that increases crop drought tolerance by decreasing the amount of an enzyme that is responsible for recycling vitamin C.
Biochemist Daniel R. Gallie, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside together with Zhong Chen of his research group reported their find
Kidney disease may affect as many as one in twelve people, and causes millions of deaths each year. Currently, the diagnosis of kidney function relies mainly on blood and urine tests, an indirect means of figuring out how well they’re working.
Standard MRI scanners, used to view many organs of the body, do not always show the whole picture for kidneys. This is because the MRI equipment found in hospitals and clinics works by imaging water molecules in the body. But in water-logged kidn
Team work is just as important in your brain as it is on the playing field: A new study published online on April 19 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that groups of brain cells can substantially improve their ability to discriminate between different orientations of simple visual patterns by synchronizing their electrical activity.
The paper, “Cooperative synchronized assemblies enhance orientation discrimination,” by Vanderbilt professor of biomedical engineeri
Close look at structure of transport proteins could aid search Red-blooded genealogists take note: The discovery in microbes of two oxygen-packing proteins, the earliest known ancestors to hemoglobin, brings scientists closer to identifying the earliest life forms to use oxygen. According to the project’s lead investigator, University of Hawaii microbiologist Maqsudul Alam, the research may also aid in the search for blood substitutes as new
For the first time, Imperial College London researchers at the Hammersmith Hospital studying a rare bone marrow disease have found an association between ’telomere shortening’ – changes in the lengths of DNA repeats at the end of chromosomes – and the time of development and severity of disease symptoms in patients.
Reporting in Nature Genetics today (18 April 2004), the Hammersmith team, collaborating with scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in the USA, is
The phrase “biological clock” has expanded from scientific observation to American slang. When we hear this phrase, many of us assume it refers to the amount of time left for a woman to start a family. For the scientist, the biological clock refers to a process that took millions of years to evolve – the conditioning of plants and animals by a light cycle that starts with dawn and ends with sunset.
The cycle of dawn and dusk changes with the seasons everywhere in the world (except at the eq
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