The world´s first human test of a vaccine against the prevalent subtype of HIV in sub-Saharan African and Asia, where millions have the virus that causes AIDS, is now under way. The clinical trial uses novel technology pioneered by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The phase I trial began July 17 at Johns Hopkins University. An adult male, at low risk for HIV infection, was th

How did life begin? What chemical combination launched the first organism with self-contained metabolism? And then what happened? Researchers in Robert H. White’s group at Virginia Tech are tracing the family tree of life on earth by tracing the biochemical mechanisms within the cell – specifically those that are used in the formation of peptide bonds.

The building blocks of enzymatic and functional structures in living organisms are proteins created by linking amino acids into pepti

University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center scientists have been studying a family whose members have an eye disease that looks like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), but that has a rarer pattern of inheritance that results in an exceptionally high incidence of the disease among family members in the study.

In the August issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS), Kellogg scientist Radha Ayyagari, Ph.D., and her collaborators from the U-M and other institutions identify

Green tea´s ability to fight cancer is even more potent and varied than scientists suspected, say researchers who have discovered that chemicals in green tea shut down one of the key molecules that tobacco relies upon to cause cancer. It´s a find that could help explain why people who drink green tea are less likely to develop cancer.

The finding by scientists at the University of Rochester´s Environmental Health Science Center appears in the July 21 issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology

Scientists often look to nature for inspiration in the search for ways to make new materials. A new study of the clamworm, an intertidal creature, shows that it has jaws made partly of zinc, making them strong, stiff and tough –– fundamental properties by which all materials are evaluated.

The properties of the clamworm jaws are described in this week´s online publication of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS). The research began with questions by scientists a

The promise of the genomics revolution – the ability to compare important genes and proteins from many different organisms – is that such detailed knowledge will produce new scientific insights that will improve human quality of life. In work on a key human enzyme, PBGS (porphobilinogen synthase), the laboratory of Fox Chase Cancer Center scientist Eileen K. Jaffe, Ph.D., has characterized a rare mutation that results in an unprecedented rearrangement of the enzyme´s structure. The discovery provides

Global Cancer Alliance calls on Cancer Control community to put words into action and save millions of lives

The Alliance for Global Cancer Control issued its first public statement today, calling for the rapid implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The Alliance, the first worldwide coalition addressing global cancer control, emphasised that eliminating tobacco use could prevent an estimated 30% of all cancer cases and 90% of all lung cancer cases.

Since the time when humans first learned to record their thoughts in written form, codes have kept sensitive information from prying eyes. But conveying information through a code requires someone who can read it as well as write it. The same is true for one of nature´s methods for transmitting information that activates or silences a gene: the “histone code.”

First formally proposed in 2000 by C. David Allis, Ph.D., and his postdoctoral fellow Brian Strahl, Ph.D., the histone code is

Scientists have inactivated almost three-quarters of all genes in the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a species widely used in plant research. The feat, which results in the largest so-called “knockout” gene collection of a complex multi-cellular organism, now allows researchers to study the function of each of those genes individually or together.

The findings, published in the August 1 issue of the journal Science, mark an important milestone in the field of plant genomics. Follow

Finding will aid drug design to combat depression, stroke and diabetes. Scientists are a step closer to understanding how essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals are ferried into cells.

For the first time, a member of the Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS) of transport proteins, found in almost every form of life, has been visualised by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reporting in Science today, the researchers reve

A signal that triggers half the stem cells in the developing brain to commit suicide at a stage where their survival will likely do more harm than good has been identified by researchers at the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Georgia.

Identifying the factors that result in the timely, massive cell suicide is important to understanding the developmental puzzle, the researchers say of the work featured on the cover of the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

Introduction – Enzymology in 2003

Why the 90th anniversary of v = Vmax x [S] / (Km + [S]) is as important as the 50th anniversary of the double-helical structure of DNA. Enzymology is essential, to find out how nucleic acids fulfil their biological functions. Moreover, genome analysis will always, at some stage in the process, have to advance from sequence gazing to enzymology, since the objective of the analysis must be to identify the reactions mediated by the products of each open

Which design principles unify the diversity of life on earth? To understand how biological designs emerged by natural selection, biomechanics studies organisms by applying engineering science and mechanics. Biomechanics studies life from molecules to ecosystems. Questions range ‘how do cells form tissue’, over ‘what shapes a muscle’ to ‘how do animals fly’ and ‘which mechanical constraints govern body shape and -dynamics when animals increase in size’. Biomechanics is applied not only to extant b

Patients to benefit from new ultrasound qualification developed by Sheffield Hallam University

A new postgraduate qualification in ultrasound practice has been developed by Sheffield Hallam University to ensure health professionals offering scans are competent and safe to practice.

The University has a national reputation for excellence in ultrasound education and training. It already offers six specialist postgraduate certificates in medical, obstetrics and gynaecological,

Living organisms operate with a variety of tens of thousands of protein structures and, though much research has been done on individual protein systems, little is understood about how different protein systems interact. Now an effort at Texas A&M University is bringing together all known information in an extensive, searchable internet site called Binding Interface Database.

“No one understands the rules of protein interaction,” said Dr. Jerry Tsai, Texas Agricultural Experiment Stat

Most people who get too hot and thirsty this summer can quickly grab a cool drink. Not so for plants. Their roots keep them lingering in stressful situations – sometimes to death. Now a Texas A&M University researcher has identified a system in a mutant arabidopsis, a type of weed, that signals to its cells to go on hold until stressful situations pass.

The involvement of “ER stress signal pathway” in plant stress adaptation was discovered by Dr. Hisashi Koiwa, assistant professor of