Genomic rearrangements discovered using DNA microarrays are expected to reveal genetic regions important to human health

Mountain View, CA ¾ March 3, 2003 ¾ Perlegen Sciences, Inc. today announced the publication of a scientific paper in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Genome Research. The paper, “Genomic DNA insertions and deletions occur frequently between humans and nonhuman primates,” describes novel findings suggesting that genomic rearrangements, not single base pa

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have identified a protein that leads to the development of preeclampsia, a serious and potentially life-threatening complication of pregnancy.

These findings, which could help lead to the development of diagnostic tools and therapies for this baffling condition, appear in the March 2003 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Also known as toxemia, preeclampsia occurs in an estimated 5 percent of all pregnancies, a

New research into the origin of kidney stone formation published in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation may well change the direction of the most basic level of research in that area.

The study, conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, Clarian Health Partners and the University of Chicago, will dispel the current beliefs of where stone formation begins, said Andrew P. Evan, Ph.D., the article’s lead author. Dr. Evan, who is a professor of anatomy and c

Using a simple intervention, clinicians and health scientists working in Haiti successfully cut the incidence of congenital syphilis in a rural region of that impoverished nation by 75 percent — meaning that far fewer babies will inherit the dangerous illness from infected mothers.

The scientists decentralized prenatal syphilis screening, shifting blood testing from a regional hospital out to 14 community dispensaries. Those dispensaries enjoy almost none of the amenities people in develo

In order for the body to grow, reproduce and remain cancer free, the cells of the body must have a mechanism for both detecting DNA damage and a feedback mechanism for telling the rest of the cell’s machinery to stop what it’s doing until the damage may be fixed. This feedback mechanism relies on checkpoints during different stages of the cell’s division cycle. Eric Brown and David Baltimore at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) have now further defined how the ATR k

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute are working to develop a non-surgical approach to brain cancer that uses radiation and the injection of specially cultured bone marrow cells into the tumor. The combination sets in motion a local and systemic immune response to kill surviving tumor cells.

The novel approach has provided promising results in a study on rats, described in the March 3 issue of the Journal of Immunotherapy. Human trials are expected to beg

The timing of treatment may be a key factor in whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can slow heart vessel disease, report researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Tufts-New England Medical Center in the winter issue of Menopausal Medicine.

“Mounting evidence points to the conclusion that HRT can help prevent heart vessel disease – if the therapy begins around the time that the body stops making its own estrogen,” said Thomas B. Clarkson, D.V.M., of Wake Forest.

Infants accustomed to sleeping on their backs who are then placed to sleep on their stomachs or sides are at an increased risk for SIDS-greater than the increased SIDS risk of infants always placed on their stomachs or sides. The study, conducted by Kaiser Permanente in Northern and Southern California and supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders (NIDCD), appears in the current issue of

Dartmouth researchers report in the March 1 issue of Cancer Research they have discovered an effective combination therapy to treat tumors. In the journal, which is a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, the researchers report that administering light-activated, or photodynamic, therapy (PDT) immediately before radiation therapy appears to kill tumors more effectively than just the sum of the two treatments.

“Our study shows that the close combination of the two trea

Researchers who are now at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center have identified a gene that promotes metastases, the spread of cancer cells through the body. This new understanding of how cancer metastasizes, linking a gene product and migration of cancer cells, may lead to therapies to stop this spread. The results of the study are published in the May 2003 issue of the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell. An advance copy of the paper can be viewed after the embargo is lifted at htt

It is common that babies are born with fetal fat and develop red spots on their skin. Pediatricians have always explained this as a passing and normal skin reaction in newborn children. Now Giovanna Marchini at the Karolinska Hospital, Sweden, together with her research team, has discovered that this is a sign of a powerful immune defense system.

Fully 2000 years ago in Mesopotamia, an area roughly corresponding to today’s Iraq, doctors described spots on the skin of newborn babies as benign

Exercise is an important part of staying healthy and reducing the societal cost of health care. We tend to stop exercising when our bodies signal that we are tired or fatigued. Previously, it was thought that fatigue happened when our energy store became depleted or when the waste products from producing energy accumulated in our muscles causing cramp.

However, research on patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome or “Yuppie Flu” has shown that fatigue occurs even though their abilit

In what is a first for biology, a team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is reporting that the human body makes ozone.

Led by TSRI President Richard Lerner, Ph.D. and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry Paul Wentworth, Jr, Ph.D., who made the original discovery, the team has been slowly gathering evidence over the last few years that the human body produces the reactive gas—most famous as the ultraviolet ray-absorbing component of the ozone layer—as p

Research is key step in detoxifying endosulfan toward improving soil and water quality

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside report in the Journal of Environmental Quality (JEQ) that they have isolated microorganisms capable of degrading endosulfan, a chlorinated insecticide widely used all over the world and which is currently registered to control insects and mites on 60 U.S. crops. JEQ, established in 1972, is published jointly by the American Society of Agronomy,

Dartmouth Medical School geneticists studying the biological clock have opened yet another window into the role of an unusual form of RNA known as antisense that blocks the messages of protein-encoding genes.

They found that antisense RNA appears to regulate core timing genes in the circadaian clock that drives the 24-hour light-dark cycle of Neurospora, a model organism better known as bread mold.

The results are reported in the February 27 Nature by Drs. Jennifer Loros and Jay C.

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a powerful new technique for deciphering biological information encoded in the human genome. Called “phylogenetic shadowing,” this technique enables scientists to make meaningful comparisons between DNA sequences in the human genome and sequences in the genomes of apes, monkeys, and other non-human primates. With phylogenetic shadowing, scientists c