A fast, sensitive laboratory test that measures the molecular components involved during the critical moment when HIV infects a normal cell has been developed.
The advance was made by researchers in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and VA San Diego Healthcare System.

Described in the December 2001 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the test makes it possible to study and design new compounds to block the action of these molecular componen

A vaccine against one of the world’s leading killers could one day be manufactured by livestock, researchers report. According to a study released today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have developed mice that secrete malaria vaccine proteins into their milk. The purified experimental vaccine protected 80 percent of monkeys subsequently exposed to a lethal dose of the malarial parasite.

Anthony Stowers and Louis Miller of the National Institute of All

Sloshing proteins help bacteria find their waists.

Chemical waves may help a bacterium to divide by pinpointing its middle, according to a new model of protein interactions 1 .

Bacteria such as Escherichia coli multiply by dividing. Bacterial division (called binary fission) is simpler than human cell division (mitosis). Human cells erect scaffolding to transport components to the two nascent daughter cells at either end; bacteria just pinch in two.

Using tiny rust-containing spheres to tag cells, scientists from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have successfully used magnetic resonance imaging to track stem cells implanted into a living animal, believed to be a first.

In the December issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, the research team report that the neuronal stem cells take up and hold onto the spheres, which contain a compound of iron and oxygen. The iron-laden cells create a magnetic black hole easily spotted by magnetic resonan

Taking up regular drinking in middle age might cut the risk of heart disease, finds research in Heart. But the catch is, it increases the risk of dying from something else.

The researchers studied 7735 men from general practices in 24 British towns. The men were screened for heart disease between 1978 and 1980 when they were aged between 40 and 59. And they were asked about lifestyle, including smoking and drinking, and their medical history. Five years later, 7157 of them completed question

New techniques that might allow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to be used to give doctors subtle information about a tumour’s physiology and how it reacts to drug therapy are being developed.

The work is being carried out by doctors and medical physicists at the University of Aberdeen, with funding from the Swindon based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Doctors treating cancerous tumours with drugs need to know quickly if the drug is having the desired effect t

Chemists make the world’s smallest building blocks.

US researchers have made the world’s smallest building blocks. The nanocubes are just a millionth of a millimetre (a nanometre) across 1 . Stacked like bricks, they could make up a range of materials with useful properties such as light emission or electrical conduction.

Many chemists are currently trying to develop molecular-scale construction kits in which the individual components are single molecules to

According to a new study, when it comes to smoking, adolescents may be emulating the movie stars they see on the big screen. Writing in the December 15 issue of the British Medical Journal, researchers at Dartmouth College report that they have found a link between tobacco use in movies and smoking amongst young people.

James D. Sargent and colleagues questioned 4,919 New England middle school students between the ages of nine and 15 about their smoking habits and movies they had seen. “For

When it comes to locating a meal, insect-eating bats generally employ one of two foraging tactics: capturing prey in the air or snatching it from a substrate. Accordingly, the animals use different kinds of echolocation during these activities. Whereas aerial hunters tend toward longer calls with constant frequency, substrate-gleaning species generate short calls that sweep from low to high frequencies (FM echolocation). Less clear, however, is how effective the latter is at distinguishing the prey i

American Society for Cell Biology Meeting, Washington, December 2001

Microscope captures mitochondria bopping to a beat.

An intricate mesh of tubes wiggle, worm-like across the screen. “They’re speeding,” says Tim Richardson proudly, watching mitochondria, the cell’s energy generators, zoom around the cell. His controversial microscopic method is shooting the cell’s innards as they’ve never been seen before.

Live cell imaging has revolutionised cell biology over th

Vaccinations may increase death toll.

Inadequate vaccines can the encourage emergence of nastier bugs, placing the unprotected at risk, a new mathematical model shows. The effect could undermine future vaccination programmes.

Many vaccines save people from dying of a disease, but do not stop them carrying and transmitting it. Over a few decades this may cause more virulent strains to evolve, predict Andrew Read and his colleagues of the University of Edinburgh, UK 1

American Society for Cell Biology Meeting, Washington, December 2001

Stem cells’ fates are a multiple choice.

A single stem cell from adult mouse muscle can form enough blood cells to save another animal’s life – and still switch back to making brawn, researchers announced at the Washington meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology this week.

Stem cells found in mashed up muscle can migrate into the bone marrow and make blood cells 1 . Muscle

Bacteria give skin cells their marching orders.

Bacteria that cause potentially lethal ’flesh-eating’ infections make their entrance by telling skin cells to step aside. The bugs hijack the body’s signal for skin cells to become mobile.

Group A streptococci (GAS) normally infect the surface lining of the throat. But occasionally they penetrate skin or the tissues lining the airways, invading deep into the body and causing life-threatening disease.

Finding out how s

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a receptor that plays a key role in restricting embryonic stem cells’ pluripotency, their ability to develop into virtually any of an adult animal’s cell types.
The work is the first demonstration of a mechanism by which pluripotency is lost in mammalian embryos, one that operates with nearly the precision of an on/off switch in mouse embryos.

With further study, the receptor, dubbed GCNF, could open the door to new ways of c

World’s smallest reptile is discovered in the Caribbean forest.

At just 16 mm from nose to tail, the Jaragua lizard is the world’s smallest. In fact, it’s the smallest vertebrate that can reproduce on dry land 1 .

The newly discovered lizard lives on Isla Beata, a small, forest-covered island in the Caribbean off the Dominican Republic. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, together with Richard Thomas of the

For more than 150 years, people around the world have made ample use of the explosive trinitrotoluene, otherwise known as TNT. Its use has had unintended consequences, however: the manufacture, storage and disposal of TNT—which ranks among the most toxic explosives employed by the military—have left large areas of land contaminated and polluted. So far, effective and affordable cleanup technologies have remained out of reach. But new research suggests that help may come from what might seem an unlike