Case Western Reserve University chemist takes on HIV-1 virus with $1M support from NIH
...ed to the catalysis other than they knew it had to happen for the virus to grow. This is where we started working," she said. Barkley began work on the HIV-1's reverse transcriptase enzyme in 1998 through collaboration with Stuart Le Grice, the former director of the Center for AIDS Research at the Case S...Gabriela Cezar's stem cell research targets birth defects and cancer
...ing could help effectively predict what's going to happen with new drugs and chemicals in the environment," Quam says. Lab results are correlating with in vivo observation of birth defects, she adds. "We're starting to make a lot of progress." Cancer research in Cezar's lab focuses on isolating and chara...Ossur takes another giant step in prosthetic technology
...bility and muscular activity. "The next level will happen when the prosthetic device can actually anticipate the intention of the user," says Janusson. In other words, you'll think about taking a step and your foot will act. This can only be achieved when the prosthesis is able to be coupled to the human n...Trees appear to respond slower to climate change than previously thought
...te change in the past, to better predict what will happen in the future." In their study, the researchers analyzed chloroplast DNA from 24 spruce forests in Alaska and Canada. Because chloroplast DNA contains genes inherited from only one parent, there is no confusing genetic recombination to take into acc...Evidence of rapid evolution is found at the tips of chromosomes
...howed a massive DNA damage response, which did not happen in cells missing POT1b. In contrast, cells without POT1b had strangely altered telomere structures, something that didn't occur when POT1a was removed. "Wherever we looked, the two phenotypes were different," de Lange says. "To make it more extreme, ...Johns Hopkins researchers find link between cell's energy use and genome health
...elped along the way by enzymes that make each step happen faster. Focusing on two of these enzymes, closely related to each other, the research team separately removed each from the yeast cells to see if either or both were essential to the cell's survival. The researchers found that one of these enzym...Whether in mice or men, all cells age the same, Stanford study finds
...at age. Kim suggests that aging wouldn't have to happen if cells weren't programmed to fail. With a marker for aging in hand, he thinks future research will reveal what drives the process. "People think of aging and taxes as unavoidable," Kim said, "but in the case of aging, that's not true." ......ung", said Shum. "So, we then looked at what would happen when we removed this gene in mouse models: mice without aP2 areprotected from asthma attacks". "These findings suggest that blocking aP2 function is a novel approach for asthma treatment and other inflammatory lung diseases," he added. ...Boosting killer cells might improve breast-cancer drug
...ll the tumor cells," Roda says. But that didn't happen "This is very interesting because it suggests that interferon gamma production might be critical to the response to Herceptin, and I believe that we are the first to show this." Overall, says Carson , "Our results suggest that IL-21 might enhan...3-D model reveals secrets of metastasis
...ira. "His computational model predicted what would happen in virtual experiments and then he was able to go straight to test the predictions with these complicated 3D experiments. As a result, the sophisticated models of cell movement enhance our understanding of key biological processes, including metastas...Ancient raindrops reveal the origins of California's Sierra Nevada range
...mberlain noted. "To get an idea of what's going to happen if carbon dioxide levels double in the future, you'd have to go back 20 or 30 million years in time. If you knew what the topography of these six mountain ranges was then, you could include that in your computer models and see how they respond when y...Discovery of genetic mutation in Florida beach mice suggests extinct mammoth had light and dark fur
...daptation does not always occur gradually, but may happen in these relatively large jumps." Hoekstra and her colleagues--Rachel Hirschmann of UCSD's Division of Biological Sciences and Richard Bundey and Paul Insel of UCSD's Department of Pharmacology--discovered the single nucleotide mutation in the mel...Chewing up a key regulator of fat synthesis keeps mice lean despite a high-fat diet
...B3 made the mice lean," he reflects. "That doesn't happen very often." Additional contributors to this study included assistant professor Robert Screaton, Ph.D., formerly at the Salk, now at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario; Judith Y. Altarejos, Ph.D., Naomi Goebel, Michael Nelson, Ph.D., professor R...Researchers show how brain decodes complex smells
... researchers suspect that this integration doesn't happen in the olfactory bulb. Instead, the bulb likely passes the data to more advanced brain structures where it is assembled and recognized as a specific scent. Understanding how the olfactory system works in mice may also provide broader insights into hu...Basic work on E. coli identifies two new keys to regulation of bacterial gene expression
.... "The kinds of processes that we study in E. coli happen in a wide variety of bacteria of medical, environmental and agricultural importance," notes Rick Gourse, a professor of bacteriology who published the Cell paper along with a team from his lab. "This knowledge can ultimately be put to use in systems ...When it comes to gene transcription, random pauses arent quite so random, study finds
...e already figured out. The really long ones, which happen every 1,000 bases or so and last up to 30 minutes, often occur when the enzyme makes a mistake. Then, it's got to back up and correct the mistake. But for every one of those, there are roughly 10 ubiquitous pauses that only last about 1 second and oc...Drug that battles resistance to leukemia pill Gleevec 'extremely effective' against cancer
...nded that the agency approve the drug, which could happen before the end of the month, Sawyers said. Like Gleevec, Sprycel also is taken in pill form. Sawyers characterized the Phase I study results as remarkable, saying the first human trial confirmed the pre-clinical laboratory work and scientific discov...Diabetes research takes wing thanks to long-lived fruit fly
...at making findings important to human health would happen more rapidly using flies, then transferring the findings to people. He notes that the same molecular signals that control how cells divide in fruit flies control how cells divide in people. "We continue to be amazed at how similar a fruit fly is to a...UF scientists restore sight to chickens with blinding disease
...imal model and approach. One would hope this could happen in a human." Semple-Rowland, a College of Medicine faculty member, has worked since 1986 to first discover the malfunctioning gene, known as GC1, and then to develop a viral therapy to treat it. "I will always remember the first animal that we succes...... fish), although their decline probably started to happen soon after 1998. The survey also revealed that species diversity of the fish community had decreased by 50 per cent in the heavily impacted sites. Reduced biodiversity results in a more fragile and less stable ecosystem. Smaller fish have reduced ...