Genetic clues found for common congenital brain disorder
...searchers show that in humans, loss of one copy of each of two adjacent genes, known as ZIC1 and ZIC4, causes Dandy-Walker. The researchers then used this finding to create a mouse model to allow them to study the developmental basis of the disorder. "Dandy-Walker malformation is an important clinical pr...Managing occupational exposures to potential bioterrorist agents
... however, that these are guidelines only, and that each case must be evaluated individually. The USAMRIID team also compared their recent experience with data on laboratory acquired infections during the offensive biological warfare research program conducted by the U.S. between 1943 and 1969. During tho...Scientists reinvent DNA as template to produce organic molecules
... attached organic molecules to single DNA strands, each containing 10 DNA bases (A, C, G, or T). When two ...ng to develop an entirely new class of enzymes for each different type of molecule." The 10-base DNA strands used by Liu's team are large enough to be stabl...Illustrated guidebook published for Chinese biomedical scientists and students
...iated website ( http://chinese-english.cshl.org ), each of the English terms used in the book can be listened to, as an aid to learning pronounciation. Dr John Inglis, Executive Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, comments: "We were delighted when Dr Samet and his colleagues approached us w...Counting foxes before the last tally-ho
...h estimates of the number of faeces a fox produces each day, and with the proportion of faeces that can be found during field surveys, to produce the final population numbers. Previous attempts to estimate Britain's fox population, using far less precise methods, gave a figure of 252,000 adult foxes in 19...... connection. All of the original species found in each stream in Meek and Hildebrand's initial, 1916 survey, are still there. This is a significant contribution to our understanding of biological invasion because it shows that dispersal played a more significant role than local ecological interactions in...Newly discovered protein may be key to muscular dystrophy
... is found in C. elegans, in mice and in humans. In each species, defects in the complex can cause muscle degeneration, but the exact role of the complex in disease has not been clear. In a genetic screen, the scientists identified 12 mutations which produced defects in coordinated movement just like...Nucleic acid-amplification testing further safeguards nation's blood supply
...fections and 56 hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections each year since it began being used in the United States as an investigational screening test in mid-1999. The study is published in the August 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine . "Risks to blood recipients from transfusion-transmitted vir...... the body. The liver, the heart, and the kidneys each have their own distinct clocks. The liver, for ins...tic chasmthe location where the optic nerves cross each other. This master clock synchronizes independent clocks that reside in peripheral tissues, and ev...Embryonic stem cell therapy shows steady benefits in rebuilding infarcted heart
...s, heart disease causes 700,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, with the number of adults diagnosed with heart disease exceeding 23 million, or 11.5% of the adult population. Previously thought of as concentrated in rich countries, ischemic heart and related cerebrovascular diseases alone caused an estimate...When is a mouse like a test tube?
...interact with the molecules in the body, only with each other. But her in vivo chemistry has great potenti...ted the experiment, but on the eighth day injected each mouse with a phosphine attached to a fluorescent molecule called FLAG. After only 90 minutes, the FL...Gene linked to cleft lip and palate identified
...,000 births in the U.S., or more than 4,000 babies each year. A cleft is an opening or separation in a body structure. Clefts that occur in the oral-facial region often involve the upper lip, the roof of the mouth (hard palate), or the soft tissue in the back of the mouth (soft palate). More than 70 pe...The first engineering of cell surfaces in living animals
...idine, is for azide -- but they rapidly react with each other under physiological conditions. Suitably modified by Bertozzi's methods, the ligation product formed from these compounds is stable under physiological conditions. The trick is to get the azide half of the reaction to show up on cell surfaces....New model can aid in understanding immune system diseases
...hemical messengers that cells normally use to tell each other where and when to go, so we will use the 'mi...in. The team will breed mice that have one copy of each gene. These models may reveal whether the normal protein can suppress the abnormal protein, a functi...Institute for OneWorld Health nominated for the 2004 World Technology Awards
...ic disease that kills approximately 200,000 people each year, mostly in the Indian subcontinent. The company will seek regulatory approval in India next year, and finalize distribution plans to make the drug, paromomycin, an affordable, safe therapy to cure VL. The Institute for OneWorld Health, the firs...Using statistics to decipher secrets of natural mutation
...tions in the sequence as evolving independently of each other, rather than taking into account context effects, in which the identity of neighboring nucleotides influences the nature and rate of mutations. "While a few other investigators have been working on how to take into account context effects, I ...Stanford researcher's findings may shed light on common, deadly birth defect
... brain structures and facial features, influencing each phase of development in slightly different ways. Like an architect overseeing a complicated building process, a key protein required early in development for embryonic survival exerts a waning but vital influence throughout the sequential constructio...Gene duplication allowed pigs to have more babies
... the three enzymes bind to different molecules, so each aids the formation of different products. It is the evolution of these different catalytic activities that might have caused changes in the pig's reproductive biology. Obviously, the evolution of the aromatase genes is likely to be only a small par...X marks the spot: Vector insertion is viral specific
...d more randomly throughout the entire genome. That each studied virus preferred a unique integration pattern or site suggests that viruses home in on certain chromosomal features for inserting themselves within the genome. This work appears in the August 17 issue of PLoS Biology, a new open-access journal...Rare mutations can significantly increase risk factor for heart disease
...mulative effect of many common genetic variations, each of which influenced HDL levels in a small way. However, rare variations with stronger effects are also likely to be involved. "What we wanted to know," Hobbs said, "was how much do single gene defects with major effects contribute to complex traits?"...