A team led by biologists at the University of California, San Diego has discovered a molecule in roundworms that makes them susceptible to Bacillus thuringiensis toxin, or Bt toxin—a pesticide produced by bacteria and widely used by organic farmers and in genetically engineered crops to ward off insect pests.

Their findings should facilitate the design and use of Bt toxins to prevent insects, which the researchers believe also possess the molecule, from developing resistance to Bt

A 115-million-year-old fossil of a tiny egg-laying mammal thought to be related to the platypus provides compelling evidence of multiple origins of acute hearing in humans and other mammals.

The discovery of the prehistoric jawbone, reported in the Feb. 11, 2005, issue of Science, suggests that the transformation of bones from the jaw into the small bones of the middle ear occurred at least twice in the evolutionary lines of living mammals after their split from a common ancesto

Critical connections that neurons form in the brain during development turn out to rely on common but overlooked cells, called glia. These cells were known to support the neurons in adults, but had never been fingered as players in forming the connections between neurons, known as synapses.

The Stanford University School of Medicine researchers who conducted the work, led by Ben Barres, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology, also discovered two of the proteins made by glial cell

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have discovered a cluster of 12 genes on the X chromosome in mice that appears to play an important role in reproduction. Reporting in the journal Cell, the scientists showed that knocking out just one of the genes resulted in reduced fertility in male mice.

The researchers found the cluster, which they dubbed the reproductive homeobox X-linked (or Rhox) genes, is selectively expressed in male and female reprod

Plays roles in flowering, methylation

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered an entirely new cellular “machine” in plants that plays a significant role in plant flowering and DNA methylation, a key chemical process essential for an organism’s development. A team headed by Craig Pikaard, Ph, D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered a fourth kind of RNA polymerase found only in plants and speculated to have been a

(1) Genetics Research and Obesity
(2) Osteoporosis Prevention and Vitamin B12

Genetics Research Unlocks a Key Regulator of Weight in Women

“He can eat like a horse.” “She eats like a bird.”

Recently, Jose Ordovas, PhD, and colleagues shed some light on a genetic factor in obesity. Ordovas, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University uncovered two variants in

The Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), a national program aimed at determining the three-dimensional shapes of a wide range of proteins, has now determined more than 1,000 different structures. These structures will shed light on how proteins function in many life processes and could lead to targets for the development of new medicines.

The PSI is a 10-year, approximately $600 million project funded largely by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part

A recent study attempting to quantify misclassification of HIV/AIDS deaths concluded that for the year 2000–01, the number of deaths related to HIV/AIDS was likely to be almost three times as high as that published in the Government’s statistical report compiled from death certificates. The study suggests that 80% of the excess deaths in men and 70% in women attributable to HIV were classified as tuberculosis or lower respiratory tract infections.

Social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS pr

Treating chest infections in young cystic fibrosis patients with an antibiotic once instead of three times daily is as effective and less toxic, conclude the results of a randomised trial published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.

Aminoglycoside antibiotics are widely used for the management of patients who have cystic fibrosis and chronic chest infection with a bacterium called Pseudomonas aerginosa. Currently patients are given aminoglycosides three times daily. The drugs ca

Over 380,000 people have been protected from dengue fever in Vietnam thanks to the implementation of a novel strategy to control mosquitoes in the country, concludes a report in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.

Dengue fever is the most common insect-borne virus infection, causing more than 50 million infections, 500 000 cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever and at least 12 000 deaths per year. The mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is the major global vector of dengue viruses. It needs stagnan

Resistance to antibiotics is more common in southern and eastern Europe than in northern Europe because the regions have high rates of antibiotic use, suggests a study published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.

Herman Goossens (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and colleagues compared antibiotic use with antibiotic resistance rates in 26 European countries from the beginning of 1997 to the end of 2002. To control for the different population sizes the investigators expressed d

Scientists at the Institute for Medical Research at North Shore-LIJ have made a discovery that refutes two longstanding beliefs about the most common leukemia in the western hemisphere. Due to the relatively slow disease progression of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), doctors thought it was caused by a gradual accumulation of leukemia cells that could not die. The new findings, published online today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, prove the exact opposite. The study will appear in

Acute treatment of moderate to severe depression with hypericum extract WS 5570 (St John’s Wort): randomised controlled double blind non-inferiority trial versus paroxetine BMJ Online First

A specially manufactured extract from the herb St John’s Wort is at least as effective in treating depression as a commonly prescribed anti-depressant, according to new research published on bmj.com today.

St John’s Wort* and the anti-depressant drug Paroxetine** were used in

Rectal artemether versus intravenous quinine for the treatment of cerebral malaria in children in Uganda: randomised clinical trial BMJ Vol 330,pp 334-6/Editorial: Rectal artemether and intravenous quinine for treating severe malaria BMJ Vol 330,pp 317-8

A simple drug, given to children with severe malaria before they reach hospital, has the potential to save many lives, say researchers in this week’s BMJ. Every year over a million children die of malaria in Africa. The ma

Researchers in California, Israel, and Germany have compared three distantly related species – baker’s yeast, a worm, and the fruit fly – and reported that protein “wiring” connections in one species are often conserved in all three. This first-of-its-kind analysis of three higher level organisms published in the February 8 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports both the concept of a basic wiring diagram for all eukaryotic cells, and the idea that more selective pha

Potential for replacing damaged tissue

The first evidence of cardiac progenitor cells – rare, specialized stem cells located in the newborn heart of rats, mice and humans – has been shown by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. The cells are capable of differentiation into fully mature heart tissue. Called isl1+ cells, these cardiac progenitor cells are stem cells that have been programmed to form heart muscle during fetal growth. Unti