Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry have developed methods for making RNA duplexes and single-stranded RNAs of desired length and sequence. This exciting technology is most applicable to commercial RNA providers and companies with large in-house requirements for RNA molecules as it will greatly increase cost-effectiveness.

Small interfering ribonucleic acids (siRNAs) are powerful laboratory tools for directed post- transcriptional gene expression knockdown and inhi

Preliminary findings from Hong Kong investigators fast-tracked for publication on THE LANCET’s website-www.thelancet.com – outline how severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may have a less serious effect on young children compared with teenagers and adults.

There have been no childhood deaths from SARS up to April 25, 2003. Tai Fai Fok from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues prospectively studied the first 10 children with SARS who received treatment during the early phase

A new magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique using hyperpolarized helium lights up the lungs’ airways, providing, for the first time, clear resolution of even the smaller, seventh-generation airways. The technique, dynamic hyperpolarized 3He (helium) MR imaging, should help physicians better understand and treat asthma, as well as other chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported their findings in the May issue of the journal Radiology.

Cooking with sesame oil in place of other edible oils appears to help reduce high blood pressure and lower the amount of medication needed to control hypertension, researchers reported today at the XVth Scientific Meeting of the Inter-American Society of Hypertension. The meeting is co-sponsored by the American Heart Association’s Council for High Blood Pressure Research.

Using sesame oil as the sole cooking oil for 60 days along with drug treatment lowered patients’ blood pressur

A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered rare genetic mutations in a subset of people who come down with a particular kind of severe sepsis, an acute and often deadly disease.

These rare mutations in a human gene called TLR4 lend susceptibility to meningococcal sepsis, which strikes over 2,500 people a year in the United States. About half of those who contract meningococcal sepsis are younger than the age of two, and the disease has an overall case

Scientists have finally laid hands on the first member of a recalcitrant group of proteins called the Wnts two decades after their discovery. Important regulators of animal development, these proteins were suspected to have a role in keeping stem cells in their youthful, undifferentiated state – a suspicion that has proven correct, according to research carried out in two laboratories at Stanford University Medical Center. The ability to isolate Wnt proteins could help researchers grow some types of

Contrary to prevailing wisdom concerning one of the most famous textbook examples of a tightly co-evolved mutualism, not every fig species is pollinated by its own unique wasp species. In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Drude Molbo, postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and collaborators report that two genetically distinct species of wasps are present in at least half of the fig species surveyed.

This new result forces a major

The genome sequence of the bread mold Neurospora crassa has been revealed by a group of 77 researchers from seven nations, among them Prof. Oded Yarden of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences.

The achievement, reported in the current issue of Nature magazine, represents a further stage in the history of research on this fungus. A half-century ago, George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum won a Nobel Prize for their work on

Three new studies by researchers at UC Davis Cancer Center provide new pieces to the puzzle of why some prostate cancers become resistant to androgen suppression therapy. The studies were presented Sunday afternoon at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Urological Association.

Of the nearly 190,000 men in the United States who develop prostate cancer every year, a substantial proportion will require androgen suppression therapy to reduce levels of male hormones — a treatment that can sh

A team of researchers headed by Douglas R. Cavener, professor and head of the Department of Biology at Penn State University, has announced important findings about the causes of three human diseases: severe, juvenile-onset diabetes; osteoporosis; and Wolcott-Rallison Syndrome, a rare condition whose sufferers exhibit a combination of diabetes, retarded growth, and skeletal abnormalities. Their work suggests promising lines of research for the therapeutic treatment of these diseases. The work will be

Researchers at EMBL and Harvard gain new insights into hemochromatosis

Like most nutrients, iron is good for people – in the right doses. When the body has enough iron, our cells stop absorbing it from food; if there is too little, they absorb more. This system breaks down in the most common inherited disease in the Western world: hemochromatosis, which affects about one in every 250 people and is often fatal if it is not recognized and treated. Now researchers at the European Molecu

The method that Staphylococcus aureus (staph) infection uses to inactivate the body’s immune response and cause previously healthy B cells to commit suicide, is described for the first time by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine in the May 5, 2003 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The paper was selected for early online publication on April 28.

Normally, B cells mount an early defense against invading bacteria. From this immunol

Insulin resistance, a condition commonly associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, is likely a major cause of heart disease in people with type 1 diabetes, according to study results published by University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) researchers in the May 2003 issue of Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.

“Heart disease is a major complication for people with diabetes, including those with type 1 diabetes, and until now t

New research dismisses a widely held assumption about how cells grow

Research published today in Journal of Biology challenges an assumption about cell growth that underpins modern cellular biology. Ian Conlon and Martin Raff, of University College London, show that mammalian cells do not regulate their size in the way scientists have assumed they do since the 1970s.
Conlon and Raff conducted a series of experiments, using Schwann cells from the sciatic nerve of rats, to establish

Women with breast cancer are five times as likely to have pesticide residues in their blood of organochlorines (DDT), which contain oestrogens, reveals a study of 159 women in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The possibility of such a link has attracted controversy, admit the authors, but say that their new study adds to the growing body of evidence for an association between environmental oestrogens and the rising incidence of breast cancer.

The authors base their findings

Researchers compare reproduction rates in North Atlantic whales with genetic variation

A recent study focusing on the humpback whales of the Gulf of Maine revealed that differences in reproductive success of whale mothers may play a significant role in changing genetic variation in the population, according to scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the American Museum of Natural History and their collaborators. Specifically, certain maternal lines of whales have prod