Preliminary trial offers encouragement for definitive tests of cardiac regeneration technique

Left ventricular function and exercise capacity increased, while the area of heart muscle damage shrank, in 18 patients given infusions of their own bone marrow stem cells up to eight years after a heart attack, according to a new study in the Nov. 1, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“This new therapy is able to treat until now irreversible heart

Researchers studying how proteins called helicases travel along strands of DNA have found that when the proteins hit an obstacle they snap back to where they began, repeating the process over and over, possibly playing a preventative role in keeping the genome intact.

Taekjip Ha, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, likens the biological scenario to Boston Red Sox baseball; the team rolls along

French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot first described amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1869, but, nearly 140 years later, little is known about the cause of the devastating neurodegenerative disease, and there is no cure.

What is known about Lou Gehrig’s disease, as it is commonly called, is that misfolded and damaged proteins clump together in cells to form aggregates and motor neurons die. But scientists have long debated whether or not the protein aggregates actually

A carbohydrate isolated from the liver lowers blood sugar levels after it is injected into diabetic rats, according to research carried out by a team of experts at the University of Virginia Health System. The UVa team believes this compound, called D-chiro-Inositol-Galactosamine, or INS2, acts as a messenger inside cells to switch on enzymes that regulate blood sugar, taking glucose from the bloodstream into the liver and muscles where it is stored. INS2 is naturally occurring in the body and

Research with cichlid fish offers support for a gene that regulates craniofacial diversity

Researchers at the Forsyth Institute have discovered that the genes that influence the jaws of cichlid fish, tropical freshwater fish renowned for head shape diversity, offer insight into overall vertebrate diversity. The scientific studies led by R. Craig Albertson, PhD., Staff Associate, show that the growth factor gene, bmp4, is both associated with and has the potential to alter jaw morpho

Faster Computation of Haplotypes Provides Insight into Genetic Basis of Human Disease

High-throughput sequencing of an individual’s DNA yields a map of genetic variation which can give clues to the genetic underpinning of human disease. The current technologies collect genotypes, or information from the individual’s two chromosomes. Yet many scientists believe that drilling down to the variations between individuals’ DNA at the level of each chromosome — so-ca

Early detection through screening mammography and improved adjuvant treatment have contributed almost equally to the substantial decrease in breast cancer death rates over the past 10 to 15 years, researchers conclude in an unprecedented effort to parse out the factors that have led to the decline.

The study, published in the Oct. 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, was supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and conducted by seven research groups, including

Minor and major depression linked to higher death rate for people with type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes and depression can be a fatal mix. Patients whose type 2 diabetes was accompanied by minor or major depression had higher mortality rates, compared to patients with type 2 diabetes alone, over the three-year period of a recent study in Washington state. The results appear in the November 2005 edition of Diabetes Care, published by the American Diabetes Association.

Research

Blocking a signaling lipid can keep nerves from developing the arm-like extensions they need to wire the body and may even cause neurons to die, researchers have found.

The researchers hope this piece of the puzzle of how the central nervous system develops in the first place will one day help them repair loss from injury or disease.

It’s already helped them understand the ailments of a spontaneous mouse mutant that has about 20 percent function of the protein that helps

Researchers from Monash’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have determined the structure of the protein JAK2 kinase, a discovery with huge implications for the design and development of new cancer drugs.

NHMRC Industry Research Fellow Dr Isabelle Lucet, from Monash’s Protein Crystallography Unit headed by Dr Jamie Rossjohn, was part of the team that determined the structure. JAK2 kinase was the driving force for many cancers and cardiovascular disorders,

Study conducted in hamsters with same genetic defect as human muscular dystrophy shows great promise for treating adult heart failure

University of Pittsburgh investigators have for the first time used gene therapy to successfully treat heart failure and other degenerative muscle problems in an animal model that is genetically susceptible to a human muscular dystrophy. Reporting in the Oct. 25 edition of the journal Circulation, the authors say that this is the first successful attem

This classification conveys important information about the biochemistry and metabolism of disease-causing organisms. Here are three examples. 1) Pneumocystis, an opportunistic pathogen causing mortality in AIDS patients and immunocompromised individuals, is now known to be a fungus, indicating a different treatment regimen is needed. 2) Phytophtora, an organism causing potato blight, such as the one that caused the Irish famine in the 19th century, is now known not to be a fungus, which ex

Researchers at North Carolina State University are looking deep under water for clues on how to redesign plants for life deep in outer space. Some of the stresses inherent with travel and life in space – extreme temperatures, drought, radiation and gravity, for example – are not easily remedied with traditional plant defenses. So Dr. Wendy Boss, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Botany, and Dr. Amy Grunden, assistant professor of microbiology, have combined t

First-ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people—by up to 40 times—yet people appear to perceive colors the same way. The findings, on the cover of this week’s journal Neuroscience, strongly suggest that our perception of color is controlled much more by our brains than by our eyes.

By comparing the human genome with that of the chimpanzee, man’s closest living relative, researchers have discovered that chunks of similar DNA that have been flipped in orientation and reinserted into chromosomes are hundreds of times more common in primates than previously thought. These large structural changes in the genome, called inversions, may account for much of the evolutionary difference between the two species. They may also shed light on genetic changes that lead to human dis

Researchers at Stanford University have created a larger-than-normal DNA molecule that is copied almost as efficiently as natural DNA. The findings, reported in the Oct. 25 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may reveal new insights into how genetic mutations-tiny mistakes that occur during DNA replication-arise. The discovery was made in the laboratory of Eric Kool, a professor of chemistry at Stanford and co-author of the PNAS study.