How the Biotech Revolution Is Changing the Way We Fight Disease
...g the Way We Fight Disease (Prometheus Books, $26) biochemist and veteran lab researcher Frank H. Stephenson tells the compelling story of how scientists on many fronts are succeeding in the battle against disease. According to Stephenson, efforts to understand the nature of disease, down to its component mo...National Academy of Sciences elects 2 Brandeis University scientists to membership
...s to its membership. Neuroscientist Eve Marder and biochemist Chris Miller were elected to the Academy in recognition of their "distinguished and continuing achievements in original research," according to the NAS. Membership in the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. s...Researchers identify key gene that may be a marker of breast cancer metastasis
...pendent of estrogen," said Fox Chase Cancer Center biochemist Joan S. Lewis-Wambi, Ph.D, who presented the results of the study of aggressive AI-resistant breast cancer cells. "Our laboratory has developed several AI-resistant breast cancer cell lines and have found that these cells are very invasive compared t...RNA enzyme structure offers a glimpse into the origins of life
...University of Texas, Austin, working in the lab of biochemist Andrew Ellington. Starting with a mixture of randomly synthesized RNA molecules and selecting for the desired properties, researchers are able to evolve RNA enzymes from scratch. In the Ellington lab, Robertson evolved the ligase ribozyme (called the...Scientists genetically engineer tomatoes with enhanced folate content
...beneficial worldwide," said Andrew Hanson, a plant biochemist at the University of Florida at Gainesville who developed the tomato along with colleague Jesse Gregory. "Now that we've shown it works in tomatoes, we can work on applying it to cereals and crops for less developed countries where folate deficiencie...Triptolide: A potential drug for polycystic kidney disease
...has been identified by a research team led by Yale biochemist Craig Crews , according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Over 12 million people worldwide suffer from PKD, a genetic disorder that causes uncontrolled growth of cells lining tubules in the kidneys, and results in...New success in engineering plant oils
...al biotechnological applications," said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, lead author on the paper. For one thing, the new tropical-like oil has properties more like margarine than do temperate oils, but without the trans fatty acids commonly found in margarine products. Furthermore, engineered oils could ...Scientists use nanoparticle to discover disease-causing proteins
...ples in a laboratory dish, said Andy Tao, a Purdue biochemist and senior author of the study. Because molecular interactions and protein functions are disturbed when samples are collected, researchers can't obtain an accurate picture of biochemical mechanisms related to illnesses such as cancer and heart diseas...Lipid plays big role in embryonic development
...ryonic tissues develop, says Dr. Erhard Bieberich, biochemist at the Medical College of Georgia. Probably 90 percent of ceramide gathers at the top or apical end of these early stem cells, literally helping cells have direction. "We have cell polarity, an up and down, a head and foot of the cell, and that is ...Spanish scientists reveal dynamic map of proteins
...tions in a cell), over time. In the near future, a biochemist will be able to understand the behaviour of a protein, or design a drug that can interact with that protein, drawing on not only the knowledge of a single structure, but of an entire repertory spontaneously occurring in physiological conditions," say...USC team reveals structure of APOBEC family protein
...inase protein, and a weakened immune system. USC biochemist Myron Goodman and his former graduate student Ronda Bransteitter collaborated with Chen's group to examine how the genetic mutations common in HIGM-2 patients might affect the structure, and therefore the function, of the AID enzyme. A professor of b...Linchpin discovered in insulin metabolism
...etimes science resembles a relay race: in 1996 the biochemist Professor Waldemar Kolanus discovered a group of cellular proteins, the cytohesins, and described their function in the immune system. Two of his colleagues at the LIMES Centre in Bonn have now found a totally new and completely unexpected function o...Common ancestry of bacterium and plants could be key to an effective new treatment for chlamydia
...arles Gilvarg from Princeton University. "He's the biochemist who characterized the lysine pathway back in the 1950s, and so he had intimate knowledge about the steps of the pathway," said Leustek. "And he's the one that alerted us to the fact that plants do it differently. This is still the case, with the exce...Scientists convert modern enzyme into its hypothesized ancestor
...eal with reactive oxygen species," said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, lead author on the paper. Oxygen, while essential for many life processes, can also exist in potentially toxic forms, such as superoxide and hydroxyl radicals, as well as hydrogen peroxide. After the first photosynthetic organisms app...Scientists' cell discovery unearths evolutionary clues
...sor Sandie Baldauf, of the University of York, and biochemist Professor Pauline Schaap, of the University of Dundee, have produced the first molecular 'dictionary' of the 100 or so known species of social amoeba. Using this family tree, they have devised a model system to establish how single cell organisms c...Structure of enzyme offers treatment clues for diabetes, Alzheimer's
...ed "an especially elusive pharmacological target," biochemist Malcolm Leissring of the Scripps Research Institute and neurobiologist Dennis Selkoe of Harvard Medical School wrote in a commentary that accompanies the Nature article. Using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, Tang and co...Venomous cone snail biologist named to Institute of Medicine
...ologist Jesse D. Jennings; chemist Cheves Walling; biochemist Sidney Velick; biologist John R. Roth; chemist Josef Michl; geneticist Ray White; late anthropologist Julian Steward; and anthropologist Jeremy Sabloff. National Academy of Engineering: the late R. Peter King; Adel Sarofim; Sun Wang Kim; Gerald Str...Uncovering DNA's 'sweet' secret
... unsolvable - scientificmysteries. But Vanderbilt biochemist Martin Egli, Ph.D., isn't content to simplystudy these molecules as they are. He wants to know why they are the waythey are. "These molecules are the result of evolution," said Egli, professor ofBiochemistry. "Somehow they have been shaped and optim...Suspicion lingers over bisphenol A and breast cancer
...sorbed by breast tumor cells," said IU Bloomington biochemist Theodore Widlanski, who led the project. "We've shown that modified versions of bisphenol A likely to be formed in the body do stimulate breast tumor cell growth in vitro. Enzymes present on the surface of breast tumor cells appear to convert the mod......rpinning of the familiar process of flowering, the biochemist emphasizes that much of the fine biochemical detail remains to be worked out....