An international research team, led by Dr. Erwin Schurr and Dr. Thomas Hudson, Scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, have identified a gene on human chromosome 6 that makes people vulnerable to leprosy. The study will be published in the March 2003 issue of Nature Genetics.

“This discovery will now allow us to study how the gene works and how it influences the infectious process. This is an important step toward the development of innovative prevention

n high-risk postmenopausal women, at one year

Newly published data show that treatment with 5 mg Actonel® (risedronate sodium tablets) daily reduced the risk of spinal fracture in postmenopausal osteoporotic patients at higher risk of fracture because of age or low bone mineral density (BMD) at the hip. In these patients, fracture risk was reduced by 62 percent and 60 percent, respectively, at one year with Actonel compared with placebo. The analysis of combined data from two studies

Imagine information stored on something only a hundredth the size of the next generation computer chip–and made from nature’s own storage molecule, DNA. A team led by Richard Kiehl, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota, has used the selective “stickiness” of DNA to construct a scaffolding for closely spaced nanoparticles that could exchange information on a scale of only 10 angstroms (an angstrom is one 10-billionth of a meter). The technique allows the assembly

Duke University Medical Center researchers have developed a new statistical genetic “fishing net” that they have cast into a sea of complex genetic data on autistic children to harvest an elusive autism gene.

Moreover, the researchers said that the success of the approach will be broadly applicable to studying genetic risk factors for other complex genetic diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

In this case, the gene, which encodes part of a brain neurotr

Insect Antibiotic, Cecropin A, Bypasses Outer Defenses to Kill Bacteria From The Inside

For antibiotics, the best way to beat bacterial defenses may be to avoid them altogether. Researchers at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that Cecropin A, a member of a family of antibiotic proteins produced by insects, may kill bacteria and avoid resistance by entering bacterial cells and taking control of their genetic machinery.

While most antibiotics kil

Although sweet, bitter and umami (monosodium glutamate) tastes are different, researchers are finding that information about each of these tastes is transmitted from the various taste receptors via a common intracellular signaling pathway.

The identification of a common pathway runs counter to widespread belief among some researchers in the taste field who have long held the view that the different tastes require distinct machinery within the cell to transduce their signals to the brain, wh

French authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET describe the preliminary success of transplanting muscle stem-cells from the thigh to the heart to restore damaged cardiac tissue after heart attack.

The procedure was done in a 72-year-old man and resulted in improved left-ventricular and overall heart function. After the man’s death 18 months later, the grafted post-infarction scar showed that the undifferentiated stem cells transplanted from his leg had evolved into we

Amphidinolides, a family of natural compounds that have shown promise as powerful antitumor agents, pose problems for cancer researchers because they are found in only minute amounts, and only in microscopic marine flatworms that live off the coasts of Japan and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Nature keeps a tight lock on its supply of amphidinolide.

Work by University of Illinois at Chicago chemistry professor Arun Ghosh may solve this problem. He’s successfully developed a way to synthesize

New technique tracks RNAs associated with the protein responsible for Fragile X

The process of turning genes into protein makes the insides of cells terribly crowded and complicated places. Signals tell machinery to transcribe the DNA of genes into messenger RNA (mRNA) whose translation into protein has to be coordinated with everything else that is happening within the cell. Fortunately, there are RNA binding proteins to organize mRNAs. These proteins are so critical that the loss of

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have identified an over-active gene and the molecular events it triggers to cause acquired cases of pulmonary hypertension, a form of high blood pressure in the lungs that kills about one percent of the population each year.

The findings, published in the February 6, 2003 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, offer the first specific molecular targets for development of new therapies.

“Although

US fertility experts today (Thursday 6 February) published the first conclusive evidence that lead is linked to male infertility.

A report in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction[1] concludes that exposure to lead damages sperm function and may be a contributory cause of unexplained male infertility.[2]

The findings have led principal investigator Dr Susan Benoff to urge doctors to measure lead in seminal plasma when evaluating men from couples with unex

Dr. Tyler Jacks of MIT and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Karen Cichowski of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and their colleagues have discovered how neurofibromin, a key regulator of the ras oncogene, is, itself, regulated. This discovery has promising therapeutic implications for the treatment of neurofibromatosis type I (NF1), a common hereditary disease that results from mutations in the neurofibromin gene, as well as the ~30% of human tumors that have altered Ras a

The experiences of millions of people have proved that antidepressants work, but only with the advent of sophisticated imaging technology have scientists begun to learn exactly how the medications affect brain structures and circuits to bring relief from depression.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW Medical School recently added important new information to the growing body of knowledge. For the first time, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)–tech

When developing a treatment plan for cervical cancer, it is important to be able to determine a patient’s prognosis, ideally at the time of diagnosis. Existing methods to arrive at a prognosis can be time consuming, inaccurate and may require specialized software. Therefore, doctors from the Washington University School of Medicine developed – and validated – an accurate, reproducible and quick prognostic system.

The researchers created a grading scale to use in conjunction with a simp

Fatal, electrical chaos can develop in the hearts of otherwise healthy people who produce a defective accessory protein called ankyrin-B, reports W. Jonathan Lederer of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) and collaborators, in the February 6 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

By discovering the molecular and cellular causes of the electrical chaos-known as Long QT Syndrome Type 4, or LQT4-Lederer and collaborators open the door to possible therapies and diagnostics

’We consider these cells conditionally alive’, explains Professor Vladimir Repin, leader of the research team, ’because they were fixed in formalin to preserve after extracting them from the mammoth body in the field. However, the inner structure of these cells is undamaged, so we suggest that the rest frozen tissues contain similar cell layers, which could be defrozen’. The sensational finding was made by Oleg Taranov, a member of the research team.

The story is as follows. Last su