The crystallized form of a molecular machine that can cut and paste genetic material is revealing possible new paths for treating diseases such as some forms of cancer and opportunistic infections that plague HIV patients.

Purdue University researchers froze one of these molecular machines, which are chemical complexes known as a Group I intron, at mid-point in its work cycle. When frozen, crystallized introns reveal their structure and the sites at which they bind with various mo

Steve Palumbi is no stranger to controversy. A marine biologist at Stanford University, Palumbi incurred the wrath of the Japanese whaling industry more than a decade ago by conducting the first genetic study of whale meat sold in Tokyo food markets.

Japan harvests more than 300 Antarctic minke whales every year for scientific research. The Japanese government, arguing that minke whales are relatively abundant, allows the slaughtered giants to be sold as food.

In the earl

Advanced technologies reveal new knowledge about the lives and deaths of whales

Using genetics, Navy sonar, deep-sea submersibles, and toxicology, scientists are peering into the lives of whales – past and present – in ways never before possible. At a 3:00 PM press conference on February 19th at the annual meeting of AAAS, Steve Palumbi of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, Christopher W. Clark of Cornell University, Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii and Roger Payne of the Oc

Navy’sundersea microphones — but sound pollution threatens

Why do whales in the North Atlantic Ocean seem to be moving together and coherently? What is impelling them forward. How do they communicate with each other, seemingly over thousands of miles of ocean? And how can this acoustical habitat be protected?

For nearly nine years Cornell University researcher Christopher Clark — together with former U.S. Navy acoustics experts Chuck Gagnon and Paula Loveday — has b

Business as usual threatens future of fish – Scientists call on managers to incorporate new scientific understanding into fishery plans

In a scientific double whammy, researchers report that fishing pressure is causing fish to evolve to smaller sizes, just as new studies show that larger fish are critical to sustaining populations. In species such as Pacific rockfish, the big, old females not only produce exponentially more eggs than younger, smaller females, but their hearty larv

Findings could help with design of combination products that are not compromised by adverse host responses

Medical devices are traditionally thought of as fairly simple implants such as stents and hip replacements – pieces of plastic or metal that are placed in the body to handle a very specific function. But biomedical devices now on the drawing board are considerably more sophisticated and represent an unprecedented melding of man and machine.

Combination products, dev

The March 2005 issue of Biology of Reproduction contains a report of some intriguing findings in cloned offspring created when nuclei from one genus of fish were transplanted to enucleated eggs of another genus of fish.

The seven offspring, cloned from nuclei of common carp and egg cytoplasm of goldfish, were virtually identical to the nuclear donor species, Cyprinus carpio, in appearance and in most physical traits. The number of vertebrae in the clones, however, was in the ran

New marker in urine may improve on PSA testing, reduce unnecessary biopsies

Men middle-aged and older routinely get blood tests for prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, to screen for prostate cancer. However, PSA testing has shortcomings: many men with elevated PSAs don’t have prostate cancer and undergo unnecessary biopsies, which can cause infertility, incontinence, and impotence. Other men do have prostate cancer, but have normal PSAs, allowing the cancer to spread undetected.

Familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP), a hereditary disease characterised by abnormal deposits of insoluble protein in the organs, results from a mutation in a single gene (the transthyretin or TTR gene). Nevertheless, disease incidence and age of onset can vary significantly between patients what have always puzzled scientists. Now, in the latest issue of the journal Human Molecular Genetics, a team of researchers propose for the first time that other genes might be involved in the clinical s

Researchers have noted a higher incidence of depression among patients with epilepsy than the general population or others with chronic conditions such as diabetes. For a long time, depression was thought to be a complication of epilepsy.

But there is evidence that the connection between epilepsy and depression may be a two-way street, according to research carried out in Sweden and the United States and reviewed at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancemen

Expert says the government must do more to eliminate lead from the environment

Exposure to lead may be one of the most significant causes of violent crime in young people, according to one of the nation’s leading researchers on the subject. “When environmental lead finds its way into the developing brain, it disturbs neural mechanisms responsible for regulation of impulse. That can lead to antisocial and criminal behavior,” reported Herbert L. Needleman, M.D., professor of psychiat

A simple saliva test can predict for the first time whether children will get cavities, how many cavities they will get and even which teeth are most vulnerable, University of Southern California researchers say.

Developed by a USC School of Dentistry team led by professor Paul Denny, the test quantifies the genetic component of tooth decay (caries). Dentists have long known that even in areas with fluoridation and good oral hygiene education, some people just have bad teeth. T

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that joints whose cartilage lacks a specific type of collagen will develop osteoarthritis – the so-called “wear-and-tear” form of the disease – at a greatly accelerated rate.

The results of their experiments with mice provide new insights that could lead to potential treatments for a disease that afflicts more than 40 million Americans, said the researchers.

The researchers found that mice lacking the gene that cont

As the next phase of DTI’s Measurements for Biotechnology (MfB) programme to 2007 gets underway, a large DNA microarray dataset generated by an LGC-led consortium during the first phase is now freely available online at ArrayExpress, a leading public repository managed by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). The sharing of well-annotated data is a primary objective of the Microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) Society and this repository is stored in accordance with MGED recommendation

The body attempts to protect itself from HIV infection via the innate immune system. Defensins are proteins found in cells, which have been shown to have anti-HIV activity. However, the mechanism by which the defensins control HIV infection has not been known. Appearing online on February 17 in advance of publication in the March 1 print edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Theresa Chang and colleagues from Mount Sinai School of Medicine analyze how alpha-defensin-1, in particular,

Stem-cell researchers have shown how cosmetic surgery, such as wrinkle removal and breast augmentation, might be improved with natural implants that keep their original size and shape better than synthetics.

Cosmetic surgery might be performed with stem-cell generated natural tissues instead of synthetic implants. Saline and silicone implants for breast augmentation may rupture, leak, and interfere with breast cancer detection on mammograms. stem-cell generated natural tissue impla