Bitter-tasting fescue takes over more quickly with help of plant-eating bugs, animals

New research by biologists at Rice University, Indiana University and George Mason University reveals how some non-native fescue grass gets a leg up over competing native plants: it’s passed over by plant-eating insects and animals because its leaves are laced with toxic alkaloids, thanks to a symbiotic fungus that has co-evolved with the grass.

In a 54-month study conducted at Indi

A Rensselaer researcher has developed a new tool to help unravel the function of an elusive DNA structure. The findings, which were presented today at the 230th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C., could lead to a better understanding of diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

The standard version of the human genome is a double-stranded helix of complementary bases: adenine binds to thymine and cytosine binds to guanine. “Our focus is on a

Research published by the University of Helsinki, Finland, indicates that cytostatic and radiation therapies administered before stem cell transplantation often damage children’s permanent teeth.

Detrimental effects of cytostatic and radiation therapies on dental development have been known for a long time, but knowledge about the dental consequences of high-dose anticancer therapy preceding stem cell transplantation has so far been scarce. Päivi Hölttä, Licentiate in Dentistry,

An international team of scientists that includes a researcher from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has determined the three-dimensional molecular structure of a promising malaria-vaccine component. This research may help lead to a successful vaccine for the disease, which currently infects approximately 400 million people worldwide and kills about two million people each year — mostly children. The study is described in the August 29, 2005, online edition of the Pr

Research by a Michigan State University cardiologist published in the September edition of Clinical Cardiology has shed new light on the role that cholesterol plays in causing heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events in humans.

The work of George Abela, a professor in MSU’s Department of Medicine and chief of the department’s cardiology section, finds that cholesterol that has built up along the wall of an artery and crystallized from a liquid to a solid state can expa

Although minimally invasive prostate removal aided by a robot can lead to less blood loss, shorter hospital stays and fewer complications, there is no evidence that the procedure improves cure rates, according to a new technology assessment.

In addition, robotic surgery, in high demand among patients, can lose money for hospitals because of its expense and special training required, according to the new review of studies by ECRI.

ECRI is a nonprofit health services res

If living cell is replaced by a test-tube with DNA and a set of substances, it is possible to get proteins in a more simple and inexpensive way. That was done by Russian biochemists synthesizeing insulin without help of transgene Escherichia coli. The researchers’ concept was funded by the Ministry of Science and Molecular and Cellular Boioplogy, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Insulin for diabetics has been obtained so far by utilizing biotechnological synthesis. The basic materia

How a newly discovered mechanism keeps inflammation under control

When macrophages, the first line defender cells of the immune system become activated, they produce an inhibitor, which acts back on them to suppress their activity. This has been revealed by the work of scientists at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF) in Braunschweig together with colleagues at the Hannover Medical School and at the University of Münster. The suppressor turned out to be an “old acqu

Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that patients who have two specific gene variants are more than three times as likely to suffer a stroke after heart surgery.

Furthermore, since the two implicated genes are involved in the body’s immune response to insult or injury, the researchers said that their findings strongly suggest that inflammation plays an important role in post-operative stroke.

The researchers said that if the findings are conf

Discovery may lead to promising new research tools

University of Oregon scientists report their discovery of the basis for the blue coloration found in many coral reef formations in an article published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jim Remington and Nathan Henderson of the university’s Institute of Molecular Biology describe the crystal structure of a cyan (greenish-blue) fluorescent protein from a sea anemone in the report, which

A special stretch of genetic material may turn off the immune suppression that stymies attempts to fight cancer with a vaccine, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) at Houston.

In a report in today’s issue of the journal Science, Dr. Rong-Fu Wang, a professor in the BCM Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and Department of Immunology, and his colleagues describe a new strategy to turn off the function of a special group of T cells to suppress immune response to

Plasmodium falciparum, the most lethal malaria parasite, is a housebreaking villain of the red blood cell world. Like a burglar searching for a way in to his targeted premises, the parasite explores a variety of potential entry points to invade the red blood cells of its human victims. When a weak point is found, the intrusion proceeds.

Scientists have known about the parasite’s housebreaking habit for a decade, but just how it breaks in to blood cells has been unknown.

The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum uses different pathways to invade red blood cells, evading the body’s immune system and complicating efforts to create effective vaccines against the disease. A research team led by Australia’s Alan F. Cowman, an international research scholar with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has identified a gene that the parasite uses to switch back and forth between invasion pathways.

Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute

A biologist at The University of Texas at Austin has presented a new theory that sheds light on how organisms, including viruses like HIV, rapidly evolve in the face of vaccines and antibiotics.

Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers says the new model could help identify genes that increase a pathogen’s ability to evolve quickly against immune responses. Knowing those genes could help scientists develop new and better vaccines.

Meyers’ model predicts that populations can evolve “geneti

How germ cells decide whether to be sperm or eggs

Johns Hopkins biologists have determined how developing embryos tell their specialized “germ cells” whether to develop into a male’s sperm or a female’s eggs.

Present in both male and female embryos, germ cells are the precursors to both sperm and eggs. Unable to “decide” on their own which to become, however, germ cells must take “advice” from other cells within embryos as to which is the appropriate sex. The Johns Hop

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have identified a previously unknown family of virulence factors that make the bacterium responsible for the plague especially efficient at killing its host.

In the process, the team not only demonstrated that the use of the common roundworm is a valid model for studying the virulence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. They also showed that the interaction between Y. pestis and the worm is quite similar to what occur