New study indicates arsenic could be suitable as first-line treatment in type of leukaemia
...for being a favourite 'weapon' of choice in murder mystery novels, is being re-invented as a treatment for a rare type of leukaemia. It is already licensed as an orphan drug (the term for drugs intended to treat rare conditions) for patients who have relapsed after initial therapy for acute promyeloctytic le...Anthrax enzyme images reveal secrets of antibiotic resistance, suggest new drug design
... anthrax bacterium enzyme are helping to solve the mystery of how slight mutations in the shape of this protein can make it resistant to the antibiotics called sulfa drugs. These findings, by scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, appear in the September issue of Structure. Based on these new i...Resveratrol synthase uncovered: Cyclization specificity of type III polyketide synthases
...family that generates stilbenes, but until now one mystery remained: How are stilbene synthases regulated to conduct the specific cyclization reaction required to produce stilbenes? For example, stilbene synthase (STS) and chalcone synthase (CHS) share 75%90% amino acid sequence identity and generate the sam...Wiley publishes Welcome to the Genome: A User's Guide to the Genetic Past, Present, and Future
...the ongoing saga of our attempts to understand the mystery of the genome and how understanding its codes can better our lives. This fascinating book delves into the past discoveries that led to the sequencing of the human genome, presents genomics challenges facing today's scientists as well as society in g...Essential smell gene may provide key to new insect repellents
...oks like the fruit fly Or83b gene. Solving an old mystery The ubiquitous Or83b gene has perplexed scientists since 1994, when Vosshall and her colleague Hubert Amrein, now at Duke University Medical Center, first identified it in fruit flies while they were postdoctoral fellows in Richard Axel's laboratory...Researchers uncover secrets of immune system's munitions factory
... antigen cargo and how to dispose of it. A central mystery in the field of immunology, said Alt, has been how AID acts on antibody genes. In previous studies, Alt and his colleagues showed that the enzyme acts on single-stranded DNA and that, for class switch recombination, such single-stranded DNA can be un...Researchers find clues about how antibodies specialize
...ildren's Hospital Boston have begun unraveling the mystery of how B lymphocytes -- key infection-fighting cells in the body -- are able to create many different kinds of specialized antibodies through selective gene mutations, while being protected from random mutations that could give rise to cancers. Th......rom Great Britain, France and Denmark to solve the mystery of the resistance mechanism and to highlight the c...e need for agro-chemical fungicide treatment. The mystery underlying this mildew resistance strategy was disclosed when the research groups of Ralph Panstruga...Two-month study of life in mid-Atlantic yields trove of species, new insights & questions
...of life, and the Sub-Polar Front. A new deep-sea mystery in the form of burrows left by an animal at 2000 meters on a seamount north of the Azores. The lines of evenly-spaced, 5 cm-wide holes create the impression of someone having "used a sewing machine to create this landscape," according to the researc......ublished this week in Science have resolved this mystery by establishing that Argonaute2, a signature protein component of the RNA interference machinery, provides the cutting action that carries out RNAi-mediated messenger RNA cleavage. The studies were conducted at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory by resear...DNA tests point to extinction of 2 distinctive arctic bird populations
...ty of California, Dr. Montgomerie is resolving the mystery of why ptarmigan males delay molting from their winter plumage each spring: an unusual pattern in birds. When the snow melts away from the tundra, their white winter plumage stands out against the darker landscape, making them much more conspicuous t...New model explains why costly insect 'outbreaks' hard to predict
... most outbreaks are not regular." Another mystery that Dwyer's team appears to have solved is the question of why insect populations of the same species, even when they are thousands of miles away from each other, surge simultaneously. This is the only outbreak model that portrays what scientists ca...Study reveals evolution on the (butterfly) wing
...nd the evolution of color patterns, said Reed. The mystery still remains of how the two genes actually function to determine wing patterns. And as the scientists pursue the mystery, they hope to gain new insights into the intricacies of evolution at the molecular level and how natural selection drives evolut...LSU researcher discovers new bird
... master's from LSU in 1999, says his quest for the mystery bird dates back to 2000. As a part-time international bird-watching tour guide for WINGS Tours, Lane was one of the leaders of a group near the Manu National Park in Peru. He and fellow guide Gary Rosenberg, also an LSU graduate, spotted the bird alo...'Trap' crop saves Texas cross timbers melon production
...be spreading the disease, but which one remained a mystery for some time. At first the chief suspect was a little known species of leafhopper. But as more data was accumulated, it became obvious that another insect, the squash bug, was the culprit. The proof involved "Koch's postulates," a series of rules f...How DNA repair machinery is a 'Two-Way Street'
...ng the correct complementary nucleotide. A central mystery is how the mismatch repair system is flexible enough to recognize such a triggering strand break on either side of the mismatch along the DNA strand, said Modrich. In the Molecular Cell paper, he and his colleagues have defined the protein components...Bacterial protein recycling factor possible key to new class of antibiotics
...nthesis within human cells is shrouded in complete mystery and nothing is known. This fundamental step must be elucidated before we can take advantage of the fact that the same step is catalyzed by RRF in bacteria." Other scientists contributing to this work are: Rajendra K. Agrawal, Manjuli R. Sharma, and...A fly's taste experience is much like our own
...rom the second set. The remaining neurons remain a mystery - they may be specific to salt or sour. Once the researchers had killed a taste neuron, they tested whether the altered flies could taste bitter or sweet. The typical test involved the proboscis extension reflex - if you stick a fly's foot in sugar w...Harmless virus helps slow HIV by boosting immune proteins
...of Iowa (UI) researchers have unlocked part of the mystery of how a harmless virus known as GBV-C slows the progression of HIV and prolongs survival for many patients. The report appears in the June 19 issue of The Lancet, the leading British medical journal. The findings provide the clearest insight yet i....... Our findings, however, have begun to unravel the mystery of adjuvants and will lead us in the future to better understand how they have helped prevent disease in millions of people. By understanding how they work we may be able to design new and more effective adjuvants"....