Genetic clues found for common congenital brain disorder
...evelopment to cause this malformation. We now know some of the genes involved and have a mouse model to study to figure this out." This work may also have broader implications. Understanding what goes wrong in Dandy-Walker malformation could provide clues about autism, in which similar but much milder ...U of T study identifies possible stem cells in pancreas
...hemselves over the entire life of the organism and some ability for the parent cell to generate varied cell types for example islet cells and exocrine cells. Pancreatic stem cells could provide a plentiful supply of beta cells for transplant treatments. A finding Smukler considers equally exciting is the...Why damaged DNA gets a case of the bends
...ry in Richland, Wash. "The current picture is that some enzymes bend damaged DNA in order to repair altered fragments. But no one knew why damaged DNA was more susceptible to bending." Haranczyk and colleagues' simulation, reported Sunday at the American Chemical Society national meeting, offers an explan...Clemson University spin-off uses corn to make plastics, provide cleaner air
...id is a byproduct of corn. It currently is used in some pill coatings and sutures because it easily dissolves -- a property not desirable in drink containers, boat coatings and packaging. Clemson University professor Dennis Smith and his research group have found a new way to replace up to 50 percent of ...Virus known for its photo ops makes its movie screen debut
...r scientists like those on Rossmann's team and why some medical professionals seek to use altered viruses ...he proteins within the baseplate could still stand some improvement," he said. "We'd like to look under the hood of this car, so to speak, and determine pre......esistance arose only once, presumably in Ethiopia, some time after the crop had been domesticated by native Ethiopians," says Ralph Panstruga. Today's agriculturally used cultivars of Barley are genetically closely related: there are not more than three basic kinds in contrast to the almost unlimited nat...Plumbing trees' plumbing reveals their engineering skill
...nto those caves from above are the roots of trees, some of which reach depths of 60 feet. The Texas state ...ear-round foliage, it has the deepest roots, going some 60 to 75 feet into the bedrock to find water." In their studies, the researchers did genetic fingerp...Counting foxes before the last tally-ho
...d by hunting with dogs in Britain every year, with some 100,000 dying on our roads....Study suggests cell-cycle triggers might be cancer drug targets
...s of the breast, head and neck and stomach, and in some blood cancers. The main function of the D cyclins is a linking one. They respond to signals outside the cell and turn the cell-cycle machinery on when needed, enabling the cell to adjust to changes in environment. How this process is carried out in t...Heartless worms hold clues to cardiac arrhythmias, sudden death
... life-threatening arrhythmias. It is not clear why some individuals receiving a HERG-blocking drug develop the syndrome, Petersen said. "It's a serious problem," she said. "The FDA now requires that every drug be assayed for HERG block before it is approved." Even medicines that might be beneficial for th...Researchers report new gene test for isolated cleft lip and palate
Researchers report they now can predict whether some parents are more likely than others to have a seco...linked to "syndromic" cleft lip and palate, hoping some might also play a role in causing the isolated condition. Syndromic cleft lip and palate refers to ...Newly discovered protein may be key to muscular dystrophy
...tylcholine transporter could lead to therapies for some of these diseases based on altering acetylcholine levels, he said. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of the disease, primarily affects boys -- about one in 3,500 male births. It typically begins in early childhood. Children ofte...... with daylight, we sleep during the nighttime, and some of our vital signs follow this pattern. Our blood ...d as clock genes. The scientists speculated that some of these other genes may be part of the mammalian circadian clock, and they reasoned that if they we...Sweet success in targeting sugar molecules to cells in living animals
...that are characteristic of disease. There are even some reports in changes of glycosylation in the brains of people who have prion disease or Alzheimer's disease," she said. Additional studies suggest that glycosylation patterns on embryonic cells may serve as developmental markers because they change as ...Anti-bacterial additive found in Maryland streams
...nd influent of wastewater treatment facilities. In some instances, they detected concentrations of triclocarban in waterways at levels 20 fold higher than previously reported. The study furnishes the first peer-reviewed environmental data of triclocarban contamination in U.S. water resources. It is publis...Embryonic stem cell therapy shows steady benefits in rebuilding infarcted heart
...2000, WHO reported. A contributing cause of what some have called a pandemic is that in contrast to many other organs in the body, the heart has only a minimal capability for self-renewal, leaving most current therapies to address symptoms with little hope of rehabilitating the injured heart itself afte...The first engineering of cell surfaces in living animals
... have harmful effects -- indeed they are useful in some drugs: the A in AZT, azidothymidine, is for azide ...ly into the abdomen, where cells in the spleen and some other organs took it up. Later examination of spleen cells, which are rich in sialic-acid sugars, sh...New model can aid in understanding immune system diseases
...n to go, so we will use the 'mimic' mice to see if some of these chemical messenger are altered when LMP1 is present," Bishop said. The team has other projects planned. The mice used in the study either had only a gene that coded for the normal protein or only a gene that coded for the viral protein. The...International symposium on nutritional genomics
...t and genes to heart disease, diabetes, asthma and some cancers. Nutritional genomics is the study of how...es such as type II diabetes and heart disease, but some individuals are more susceptible to these problems than others. The symposium will honor Bruce N. A...New mechanism for display of foreign proteins to immune system
...en processing (TAP) for display. However, there is some evidence that an alternative mechanism that does not involve TAP may also contribute to crosspresentation. A research team led by Dr. Kenneth L. Rock from the Department of Pathology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester exam...