The discovery by French scientists that cotton plants produce a kind of ‘plant aspirin’ in response to bacterial infection could lead to new ways of fighting crop diseases.

Researchers led by the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) found that salicylic acid — which has a chemical structure very similar to that of aspirin — and jasmonate acid are both released by cotton plants in response to infection by the bacterium Xanthomonas .

The two plant hormones play

Harmful bugs may lurk within leaves.

Healthy salad greens could be contaminated with bacteria that cause food poisoning, despite thorough rinsing. New research shows that harmful bugs can enter lettuce plants through its roots and end up in the edible leaves 1 .

Although uncommon, food poisoning caused by eating plants can occur. Vegetables that are fertilized with animal manure, which can contain pathogens, pose the biggest threat. Raw salad vegetables are n

Scientists have recognized for some time that people suffering from depression often experience a substantial reduction in symptoms when given a placebo. In fact, this observation has led some researchers to propose that up to 75 percent of the apparent efficacy of antidepressant medicine may actually be attributable to the placebo effect. Determining the cause of a patient’s improvement under such circumstances is no easy task. But the results of a new study may shed light on the matter. According

Meteorites could have sweetened the earliest life.

Sugar from space may have nourished the first life on Earth. Two meteorites contain a range of polyols, organic substances closely related to sugars such as glucose 1 .

George Cooper of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and co-workers have found these compounds in the Murchison meteorite, which fell over the Australian town Murchison in 1969, and in the Murray meteorite, that fell to Kentucky in 1950.

The structure of one of the basic members of the cell-membrane water-channel family, a protein called aquaporin 1 (AQP1), has been determined to a resolution of 2.2 angstroms (22 billionths of a meter).

The structure reveals the elegantly simple means by which AQP1 can transport water through the cell membrane at a high rate while effectively blocking everything else, even individual protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms.

Biophysicist Bing Jap led a team from Lawrence Berkeley Nat

Enzymatic films for bioactive surfaces

We encounter them every day in laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, or shower gel: surfactants – surface-active substances. Surfactants belong to a category of molecules called amphiphiles, molecular hermaphrodites consisting of a water-loving (hydrophilic) “head” and a water-hating (hydrophobic) “tail”. Most surfacants are small amphiphilic molecules. However, an international research team working with Roeland J. M. Nolte, University of Nijme

Without the help of fossils or any other record from the distant past, scientists have identified what they believe represents a common ancestor of all animals on Earth, a microscopic organism with key genetic traits that, until now, have been found only in true animals.
Writing in Tuesday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports the discovery of a key cell communication ge

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