Brain Protein "Rescues" Neurons From Atrophy
...rders. "Many kinds of failures of neurons to grow, form and maintain connections might be traced to defects in neurotrophin signaling," Katz said. "These disorders might include certain forms of mental retardation such as Down's syndrome, in which brain cells have fewer dendrites." In some cases, such as ...Bacterial Toxin Surprises Scientists
... The scientists discovered that to form an open channel, an enormous chunk of coli...tches (see images), the protein is able to form an open channel by transporting just one more large stretch of amino acids across th...Duke Researchers Discover Central Role Of Nitric Oxide In Hemoglobin Action
...amler suspected that NO had to exist in some other form in the blood,apart from the "free" NO that is made in the vessel and destroyedby hemoglobin. So he and Jia worked with the Bonaventuras, who are expertson hemoglobin, designing investigations using blood from humans and rats. After a series ...Dangerous Chemical Combination Presents Possible Scenario For Gulf War Illnesses
...factor arises in some individualswho have a faulty form of BuChE, resulting in low enzymatic activity andthus a diminished ability to inactivate drugs or pesticides. This risk factor,which affects only 3 to 4 percent of the population, may boost the toxicityof these chemicals. "Individuals with genetic ...Enzyme's "Magic" May Hold Key to Anticancer and Antimicrobial Drugs
...sphate (Pi), and the enzyme returns to its form in (2). Although the enzyme would normally...apy. Antibiotics that target the bacterial form of topoisomerase II have been used since 1977. Now, by exploiting their developing k...New Cancer Switch Discovered By Duke Medical Center Pharmacologists
...st reported discovering that a purposely "damaged" form of GRB-2 could suppress activation of ras and reverse the cancerous growth of human leukemia cells in test tubes. "These results suggest that inhibition of GRB-2 interactions may provide a useful therapeutic target for treatment of [chronic myelogeno...Researchers Pinpoint Site For Petit Mal Seizures In Brain
...tion in the brain that causes the common childhood form of epilepsy. The findings may lead to more specific drugs for the disorder with fewer side effects, said Dr. David Hosford, assistant professor of neurology at Duke and the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Petit mal or "absence" seizures affe...New 'Twist' In Proteins Offers Possible Route To Improved Antibiotics
...ts of three identical subunits that fit togetherto form the functioning enzyme. Each subunit consists of ...ests that other enzymeswith similar sequences also form the left-handed helix. "There is a long list of similar hexapeptide repeats in the scientifi...... limestone crystals as they form. The most common form of uranium, U-238, is unstable. At a slow but steady rate, it sends off subatomic particles. The process transmutes U-238 first into another uranium isotope, U-234, and then into an isotope of the element thorium, Th-230. Thorium, unlike uranium, do...Heat-loving Microbe Repairs Its DNA With Light
...ss requires assistance from the environment, inthe form of visible light. This light-driven repair of DNA, knownto microbial geneticists as "photoreactivation," is the first DNArepair process to be measured in a hyperthermophile. Grogan presented his findings May 19, 1996 at the 96th GeneralMeeting of th...From Corn Rootworms To Art, Cornell's Reactor Is At The Core
..." Now he uses neutron induced autoradiography as a form of art itself. "It has always been used for analysis, but I was really interested in the images it produced," Taft said. So he started making radiographs of his paintings, which have been exhibited in California, Washington, D.C., and Ithaca. "The ...Duke Researchers Find Second Gene Linked To Blood Vessel Disorder
...iscovery that offers insightinto how blood vessels form and heal in response to injury. The finding lin...ical problems. About 30 percentof people with this form of HHT develop these lung problems. "We are developing a genetic screen that would identify these...Transgenic Rice Plants Resist Insects, Drought And Salt Damage
...no effect on humans, and it is present in raw the form of a related plant -- tomatoes. Nor are insects themselves likely to ever develop resistance to the proteinase inhibitor, as they eventually do to many toxins and chemical pesticides, because the protein has a different type of action on their syste...Protein Glitch May Be Early Problem In Inherited Alzheimer's
...r of presenilin, a protein linked to an inherited form of Alzheimer's disease. In a report published in t...mbranes of nerve cells. It is found in an altered form in nearly 60 percent of all "early onset" familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD) cases, cases where symp...... human gene ifan analogous gene fromany other life form isalready known. While other techniques alreadyexist to find cross-species geneanalogs, this method is far moreaccurate. The new method --devised through the collaborativeefforts of U.S. and Russianresearchers working at USC -- islikely to find ready...Salvage Gene Is At The Root Of Many Mutations
...tural part of its existence." The most common form of DNA damage is sporadic loss of individual molecules of adenine and guanine -- two of thefour bases that encode genetic information along a strand of DNA. Such losses result in genetic gaps known as "abasic"sites. "Formation of these abasic s...Duke Ecologist Says Logging Is Creating 'Mahogany Deserts'
... growth rings of mahoganies she has examined don't form at annualintervals, Snook can only guess at the species' maximum age. Based on extrapolationand evidence, including old photographs of huge harvested logs and four-foot-wideboards, she speculates that mahoganies may live up to 600 or more years. Hig......goliash and Yu measured the electric impulses that form the musical instructions by outfitting 13 male finches with special headgear with brain electrodes. The four electrodes were poised above a region called the HVc, known to be part of the bird's song production system, or another region called the RA,...Discovery Could Help Understand Breast-Cancer Therapies
... alanine-scanning mutagenesis,in which a different form of amino acid is substituted one at a time intospecific positions along the receptor protein. Anti-estrogens bind to the same receptor as estrogens. In fighting breastcancer, tamoxifen blocks the binding of estrogen, enabling the drug to workagainst...Researchers Identify A New Cellular Structure: The "Dumposome"
...of a structural protein known as Pdd1p coalesce to form about a dozen circular dumposomes -- each only one...posomes seem to target heterochromatin, a distinct form of highly repetitive DNA that contains few active genes."It's been said that heterochromatin is a ba...