New research into one of the world’s most social bacteria – Myxococcus xanthus, has discovered that it has a gourmet style approach to its consumption of phosphates, which provides a key clue to what makes it the most “social” of bacteria.

Myxococcus xanthus is amazingly social and co-operative for a bacterium. It “hunts” as a pack, it makes a collective decision with other M. xanthus whether to go dormant or not, and it even has methods of policing the behaviour of individua

Tricking the body’s immune system into ignoring stem cells will be the key to successful stem cell transplants, according to Professor Maggie Dallman, Imperial College London, speaking today at the BA Festival of Science.

Professor Dallman is investigating how to trick the body into producing regulatory cells, which prevent the body’s immune system from attacking its own molecules, at the site of a stem cell transplant. If they were present when stem cells were introduced into

At the Institut Curie, the CNRS team of Yohanns Bellaïche has just discovered a new cellular component that participates in the organization of cells in the epithelium. This tissue, which forms a barrier between our body and the outside world, is an extremely coherent structure of myriad cells that fit together according to very precise rules. This cohesion holds together the tissues that compose the organs and controls the “comings and goings” of various substances between the outside world and o

The Innovative Regional Growth Core “BioOK” aims to establish the region Rostock-Schwerin – especially the AgroBioTechnikum Groß Lüsewitz – as a competence centre for the analysis, assessment and monitoring of agro biotechnological products and methods. Partners from science and economy co-operate to develop new, efficient and cost effective methods and to bring them to market in the One-top-Agency BioOK GmbH. The Initiative started with funding by the German Ministry of Education and Research,

MBL scientist invents backpack that empowers wearers to generate their own electricity

In an unprecedented breakthrough in the development of portable and renewable human-driven energy sources, an MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) biomechanics expert who studies how muscle moves skeletons in fish and frogs has invented a backpack that gives new meaning to the term power walking.

In a paper published in the September 9 issue of Science, Lawrence C. Rome, a University of

Human evolution, University of Chicago researchers report, is still under way in what has become our most important organ: the brain. In two related papers, published in the September 9, 2005, issue of Science, they show that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.

“Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution–the growth of brain size and complexity–is likely still going on,” said lead researcher for both p

What exactly makes a stem cell a stem cell? The question may seem simplistic, but while we know a great deal of what stem cells can do, we don’t yet understand the molecular processes that afford them such unique attributes.

Now, researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research working with human embryonic stem cells have uncovered the process responsible for the single-most tantalizing characteristic of these cells: their ability to become just about any type of ce

Biologists at New York University have discovered a system by which a random choice between two distinct cellular fates in the fruit fly eye becomes firmly established. Surprisingly, the genes involved are known ’tumor suppressor genes’, i.e. genes that are inactivated in some forms of cancer due to uncontrolled cell proliferation. Because the fly eye is highly amenable to genetic analysis, these findings, published in the latest issue of Cell, could help decipher the mechanisms by which

New research into one of the world’s most social bacteria – Myxococcus xanthus, has discovered that it has a gourmet style approach to its consumption of phosphates, which provides a key clue to what makes it the most “social” of bacteria.

Myxococcus xanthus is amazingly social and co-operative for a bacterium. It “hunts” as a pack, it makes a collective decision with other M. xanthus whether to go dormant or not, and it even has methods of policing the behaviour of individua

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a discrete region of the monkey brain that processes pitch, the relative high and low points of sound, by recognizing a single musical note played by different instruments.

Given the similarities between monkeys and man, humans may have a similar pitch-processing region in the brain too, which might one day help those with hearing and speech problems. The paper appears in the Aug. 25 issue of Nature.

By recording the activity

Emerging relationships between the two viruses could one day lead to a vaccine for human AIDS

A University of Florida researcher has discovered an unexpected link between the viruses that cause feline and human AIDS: Cats vaccinated with an experimental strain of the human AIDS virus appear to be at least as well-protected against the feline version of the disease as those immunized with the vaccine currently used by veterinarians.

The surprise finding may mean cats with f

Two Brown Medical School biologists have figured out the fate of healthy protein when it comes in contact with the infectious prion form in yeast: The protein converts to the prion form, rendering it infectious. In an instant, good protein goes bad.

This quick-change “mating” maneuver sheds important light on the mysterious molecular machinery behind prions, infectious proteins that cause fatal brain ailments such as mad cow disease and scrapie in animals and, in rare cases, Creut

In many patients with type 2 diabetes, the liver acts like a sugar factory on overtime, churning out glucose throughout the day, even when blood sugar levels are high. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered a key cellular switch that controls glucose production in liver cells.

This switch may be a potential new target for the development of highly specific diabetes drugs that signal the liver to reduce the production of sugar. The Salk researcher

Researchers have found that an important chemical compound, nitric oxide, appears to slow or reverse the aging of eggs in mouse ovaries. The finding suggests nitric oxide could one day help women in their 30s and 40s remain fertile longer and increase their chances of having healthy babies, the scientists say.

The finding, by investigators at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, was published in the Aug. 30 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal B

A type of chromosome change that was thought to predict a good response to treatment in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) might actually signal the need for a different therapy to achieve the best outcome. The findings from this new study may alert doctors that they need to change their treatment approach for certain AML patients .

The study compared AML patients whose cancer cells showed chromosome changes known as the 8;21 translocation with patients whose cancer cells

A new drug may help cancer patients mobilize the cells necessary to restore their blood-forming system after high-dose chemotherapy, according to results from a clinical trial at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and at other centers across the nation.

In the phase II trial, researchers were attempting to determine if patients with multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who received the drug AMD-3100 along with the standard