Researchers also find current immunosuppression drug therapy may be harmful for transplanted Islets

Treating pancreatic islet cells with a growth factor can dramatically reduce the number of these cells needed for transplants to reverse Type 1 diabetes, according to a study by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers. In the animal model study, researchers also found that the triple-drug immunosuppression therapy currently used after human islet cell transplants is harm

Dutch research has shown that a diet of low-fat products is better than smaller portions of normal high-fat food for preventing diabetes in obese people. Mice put on a low-fat diet were more sensitive to insulin than mice that received the same amount of energy in the form of high-fat food.

Martin Muurling put obese mice on different diets in which the total energy intake and the final body weight were the same. He then studied the effect of these diets on insulin sensitivity.

Mice

A Purdue University researcher has successfully engineered plants that may not only lead to the production of anti-carcinogenic nutritional supplements, but also may be used to remove excess selenium from agricultural fields.

By introducing a gene that makes plants tolerate selenium, David Salt, professor of plant molecular physiology, has developed plants capable of building up in their tissues unusually high levels of a selenium compound. His interest in selenium stems in part from recent

Wart-like bumps of stinging cells cover the feeding arms and bell of a newly described deep-sea jelly, published by MBARI biologists in this month’s issue of the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. This softball-sized, translucent jelly moves through the water like a shooting star, trailing four fleshy oral arms–but no tentacles–behind it. This and other unique features resulted in the jelly’s categorization as a new genus and species.

The MBARI researcher

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University of Rome “La Sapienza” have found a way to restore some of the “regenerative” ability of tissues, which happens naturally in animals at the embryonic stage of development, but is lost shortly after birth. The scientists’ work, published this week in PNAS, gives new insight into how stem cells can be mobilized across the body, and how they take on specialized functions in tissue.

“Many labs have reported th

Scientists from the Glenn T. Seaborg Institute and the Chemical Biology and Nuclear Science Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia (JINR), have discovered the two newest super heavy elements, element 113 and element 115.

In experiments conducted at the JINR U400 cyclotron with the Dubna gas-filled separator between July 14 and Aug. 10, 2003, the team of scientists observed atomic decay

In a report set for publication in the journal Biology of Reproduction, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Davis, describe a technique that yields fertile primate sperm when tissue from the testes of young rhesus monkeys are grafted into mice.

The research team, headed by Dr. Ina Dobrinksi of the Center for Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research in the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, believes that this method could b

We all know that cancer happens more often in older people. The reason seems to be that cancer develops slowly, first passing through a series of benign stages. Our understanding of how cancer develops over a lifetime is limited by the extreme difficulty of monitoring these slow changes, but new work reported this week aids this effort by employing mathematical modelling to analyze epidemiological data on the relationship between age and cancer and generating ideas about how cancer progresses over ti

Project’s results might help officials battle emerging viruses such as bird flu

Researchers at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia National Laboratories and Kansas State University have shown that chemical formulations previously developed at Sandia to decontaminate chemical and biological warfare agents are likely effective at killing the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

In a series of tests conducted at Kansas State on Bovi

DNA from inactivated “probiotic” bacteria triggers a specific anti-inflammation immune response in mice with experimental colitis, researchers supported by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have discovered. Led by Eyal Raz, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the investigators provide a possible explanation for the observed benefits of consuming probiotics, supplements from bacteria and other microbes, regarded by some as helpful in main

A Portland company is using an emerging microtechnology from Oregon State University to develop a portable kidney dialysis machine that will make in-home treatment a reality, enabling hundreds of thousands of people afflicted with kidney failure to treat themselves at home instead of traveling to dialysis clinics three days a week.

“Current dialysis machines are based on 30-year-old technology and employ filter systems that are only about 28 percent efficient,” said Michael Baker, chief exec

The outermost layer of the skin – the epidermis – is a rapidly renewing tissue and relies on the regenerative capacity of keratinocytes. Skin grafts using human cultured epidermal cells have been successful in treating patients with severe skin wounds. The notion that the ability to regenerate functional epidermal tissue is an exclusive property of epidermal stem cells is a general assumption in the stem cell biology field. In the February 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Pritinder K

The mystery of where Earth’s first snakes lived as they were evolving into limbless creatures from their lizard ancestors has intrigued scientists for centuries. Now, the first study ever to analyze genes from all the living families of lizards has revealed that snakes made their debut on the land, not in the ocean. The discovery resolves a long-smoldering debate among biologists about whether snakes had a terrestrial or a marine origin roughly 150 million years ago–a debate rekindled recently

A subtle structural change that may play a role in the molecular machinery for making HIV-1 (the virus that causes AIDS) has been identified by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Maryland working at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB). If confirmed in living cells, the mechanism, described in the Jan. 20 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, might provide a new target for antiviral drugs.

Gene therapy techniques enhance the virus’s effectiveness in mice.

Mosquitoes are notorious for their ability to spread disease, but in some cases they may prove to be a boon instead of a bane. In a recent study, researchers at New York University School of Medicine found that one mosquito-borne virus automatically targets and kills tumor cells in mice. Most importantly, it does so while leaving healthy cells alone, a feature that may make it a promising treatment for some forms

Scans have pinpointed circuits in the monkey brain that could be precursors of those in humans for speech and language. As in humans, an area specialized for processing species-specific vocalizations is on the left side of the brain, report Drs. Amy Poremba, Mortimer Mishkin, and colleagues in NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center (CC), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the University of Iowa. An area near the left temple re