Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researches and their colleagues have discovered that escort molecules are required to usher pheromone receptors to the surface of sensory neurons where they are needed to translate chemical cues.

In an interesting twist, the researchers found that the escort molecules belong to a family of proteins, called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which plays an important role in the immune system. The researchers speculate that in addition to being

Authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how screening for Down’s syndrome based on maternal age and four markers in maternal blood should be used worldwide-the quadruple test is far more effective than screening based on maternal age alone.

Screening for Down’s syndrome is widely practised early in the second trimester of pregnancy (weeks 14 to 22). The quadruple test calculates the risk of a Down’s syndrome term pregnancy from maternal age and the concentr

A close relative of a common little-understood human virus that causes an estimated 23 million episodes of intestinal illness, 50,000 hospitalizations and 300 deaths each year has been discovered in mice. The finding by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is reported in the March 7 issue of the journal Science.

Discovery of the new virus, known as murine norovirus 1 (MNV-1), may lead to a better understanding of its disease-causing cousins known as No

While studying mice with a mutant gene whose counterpart causes inherited glaucoma in humans, researchers have discovered a second gene mutation that worsens the structural eye defect that causes this type of glaucoma.

The newly discovered gene mutation affects production of L-DOPA. The researchers suggest that it might be feasible to prevent glaucoma by administering L-DOPA, which is used in treating Parkinson’s disease.

The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Scientists at the University of Manchester have turned back the evolutionary clock to reveal a hidden mechanism for differentiation between species of the same family, according to an article published in the journal Nature this week. The finding sheds new light on how different species may have arisen and questions the very notion of how we define individual species.

The work, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Wellcome Trust, was c

UCLA chemists report in the Feb. 28 issue of Science a room-temperature chemical method for producing a new form of carbon called carbon nanoscrolls. Nanoscrolls are closely related to the much touted carbon nanotubes — which may have numerous industrial applications — but have significant advantages over them, said Lisa Viculis and Julia Mack, the lead authors of the Science article and graduate students in the laboratory of Richard B. Kaner, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Biochemist Daniel R. Gallie at the University of California, Riverside and his research team of Zhong Chen, Todd Young, Jun Ling, and Su-Chih Chang report in the March 18, 2003, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that they have developed technology that increases the amount of vitamin C in plants, including grains, by increasing the amount of the enzyme that is responsible for recycling vitamin C. “The ability to increase the level of vitamin C in plant food will enh

UK scientists have made a major scientific advance by establishing proof of principle that the development of prion disease can be prevented in mice using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). The work lays the foundation for further research to explore the potential of mAbs to treat specific prion diseases such as CJD and vCJD. The work is published today (6 March 2003) in Nature.

Mice in the 17 month study treated with mAbs remain clinically healthy almost a year after the untreated mice succumbed

The JNK signaling pathway allows cells to respond to changes in their extracellular environment and in doing so, controls many aspects of cell function including cell proliferation, differentiation and death. Studies have also shown that this pathway plays a role in cancer, although it has been unclear whether active JNK signaling can accelerate or protect cells from becoming cancerous. Several studies using cultured cells have suggested that JNK signaling may be important for promoting tumor cell de

Patients who have had colorectal cancer may reduce their risk of suffering a recurrence by taking an aspirin daily, according to a new study conducted by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physician and colleagues around the United States.

The study showed that subjects who took 325 milligrams of aspirin each day had a 35 percent lower risk of developing polyps in their colons during the period examined than did patients who received an inactive placebo. Polyps are considered pre

New work by researchers in the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins may allow them to halt the smoking-induced cellular events that lead to 99 percent of all small cell lung cancers (SCLC). The research is reported in the March 5, 2003, issue of Nature.

The researchers found that a primitive cellular pathway, called Sonic Hedgehog (named for the cartoon character and spiky hairs it develops on fruit flies) stays turned on long after it should be turned off in some lung cancers.

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Mutants from a lowly weed. That’s where many solutions to maladies – from salt stress in plants to HIV in humans – may lie in wait for scientists to discover.

“I look for mutants. I take a sick plant and find out what’s wrong,” said Dr. Hisashi Koiwa, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station horticulturist.

It’s the Arabidopsis plant, a common weed, that attracts Koiwa and other researchers because of its simple genetic makeup. Scientists have looked at every nook and cranny of the

Unlike humans, bears seem to recover from bone loss caused by inactivity
Wild black bears may hold some secrets to preserving bone in humans.

Researchers at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Michigan Technological University recently studied the animal’s unique ability to rebound from significant bone loss suffered each year during hibernation. Their study, published in the March 2003 issue of Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research, shows that wild black bea

Defects in a protein called alphaV beta3 ntegrin appear to contribute to the development of osteoporosis, and these effects can be reversed by enhancing a protein called macrophage-colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF), according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The study appears in the first March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and is published online March 4.

“Because of our previous research with these proteins, new drugs already

Arf gene became more effective in stemming cell growth when it joined forces with p53

Researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have looked back in evolutionary time and identified what may be a gene that was once only moderately effective in slowing down cellular reproduction, until it linked up with a more efficient set of genes to create a powerful anti-cancer response.

The gene, called Arf, was already known to have cancer-suppressing activity. Arf respon

Some of the most important compounds are the shortest lived — transient molecules that exist for only thousandths of a second or less during chemical reactions. Characterization of such “reaction intermediates” can play a key role in understanding the mechanisms by which molecules change, shedding light on processes ranging from basic chemical reactions to complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Yet by their very nature, reaction intermediates exist for brief periods too short to be seen by most