ESF EURYI award winner aims to stop cancer cells reading their own DNA
...ese molecular motors that operate at the nanometer scale to process and manipulate the information stored within the DNA and RNA of our cells. Dekker is exploiting a variety of new highly sensitive manipulation and imaging techniques capable of resolving single molecules. These include force spectroscopy, ...OHSU turns mouse into factory for human liver cells
...mpe said. "We have a product. All we need to do is scale up and start selling it to anyone who wants to buy it." In the coming months, Grompe's lab will develop a library of human liver cells from common variations of human drug metabolism. "Different humans metabolize drugs differently. So we want to c...European Science Foundation's Forward Look reaches out beyond the endless frontiers
...ional initiatives in Europe (ERANets, SysMO, large scale investments of different countries, EU FP7, ESFRI, etc.) European Food Systems in a Changing World (to be completed in 2008, see also http://www.esf.org/activities/forward-looks/life-earth-and-environmental-sciences-lesc/current-forward-look...Smithsonian scientists show differing patterns of rainforest biodiversity
...tudy needs to be replicated across a large spatial scale in the Amazon Basin and the Congo Basin to see if the low beta diversity pattern holds. Researchers collected data for more than three years and built on data from a decade of fieldwork in New Guinea. A key to the projects success has been local re...Experiment suggests limitations to carbon dioxide 'tree banking'
...ay depend on the vagaries of the weather and large scale forest fertilization efforts, said Ram Oren, the FACE project director. "If water availability decreases to plants at the same time that carbon dioxide increases, then we might not have a net gain in carbon sequestration," said Oren, a professor of......sium, says that we need to better understand large scale regime shifts in order to develop policies that sustain, rather than degrade, the very systems upon which humanity depends. One of the reasons agricultural landscapes are so prone to regime shifts is that our management of them has tended to focu...Measuring nectar from eucalypts
... An estimate of nectar production at a compartment scale found a recently logged compartment produced half the amount of nectar as a compartment of mature forest. Most importantly, nectar was not a limited resource in 2005, when the research was undertaken, as extensive flowering was recorded across the ...Research teams uncover risk genes for multiple sclerosis
...he consortium could have completed a study of this scale and complexity, but by using a Collaborative Research Award from the National MS Society, they were able to form a truly effective international consortium that could deliver the most exhaustive search for MS risk factors ever published. The conso...Risk genes for multiple sclerosis uncovered
...y, none of us could have completed a study of this scale and complexity. But using a Collaborative Research Award from the National MS Society we formed a truly effective international consortium that was able to deliver the most exhaustive search for MS risk factors ever published. In an effort to see the...Surprising new species of light-harvesting bacterium discovered in Yellowstone
...environments are more alkaline, about pH 8.5 (on a scale of 1 to 14). Bryant notes, "Judging from their 16S rRNA sequences, the closest relatives of Cab. thermophilum are found around Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone and hot springs in Tibet and Thailand. As we look more closely, we may find relatives ...Renewable energy wrecks environment
...argues that technologies succeed when economies of scale form part of their evolution. No economies of scale benefit renewables. More renewable kilowatts require more land in a constant or even worsening ratio...Identified main genetic variants involved in response to HIV
...en the largest ever to have taken place in a large scale study on genetic differences between patients infected by HIV, and is the first study of this kind in the field of infectious disease. Catalan participants have been coordinated by Javier Martnez-Picado, ICREA research professor in the Foundation irs...Measuring the unseeable: Penn researchers probe proteins' dark energy
...king at are very small, but very fast, on the time scale of billions of movements per second, explains Wand. Proteins just twitch and shake. The internal motion represents a type of energy called entropy. Current models of protein structure and function used in research and drug design often do not accou...Synthetic adhesive mimics sticking powers of gecko and mussel
...ith even better adhesion. The challenge will be to scale up the technology and still have the geckel material exhibit adhesive behavior....Nature's secrets yield new adhesive material
...st tackle several practical problems before it can scale up its research. Any time that you fabricate an array of nano pillars of this type over large areas, you must have a very effective way of doing it without losing the efficacy of the approach, said Messersmith. Well also need to reduce the fabricat...Fruit fly research may 'clean up' conventional impressions of biology
...by only about 10 percent -- a quantity that on the scale of the tiny embryo amounts to only a few molecules of Bicoid. "This signaling requires a sensitivity approaching the limits set by basic physical principles," Bialek said. "Perhaps more important than the answers we have found so far, this work has...Tiny tweezers and yeast help St. Jude show how cancer drug works
...ells will die. Nanotechnology studies work at a scale of about 100 nanometers or less. For comparison, one nanometer is approximately 10 times the size of an atom; and 10 nanometers is one-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. In this first-of-its-kind study, researchers used the microscopic mag...Chronic fatigue -- clues in the blood
...ich have been comprehensively analysed, with large scale and longitudinal studies, like this, said Professor Lloyd. It sets a standard for highly sophisticated, comprehensive gene expression studies in the blood of all sorts of human diseases from rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis through to schi...Oldest DNA ever recovered suggests earth was warmer than previously believed
...ffers evidence that climate warming on the current scale is possible through natural conditions. However, he cautions that this research does not prove the current global warming trend is not human induced. "It could mean that our current warming is the result of both natural processes and human influ...Complementary therapy for infertile women may reduce chances of pregnancy
...bsequent 12 months. The study was the first large scale prospective evaluation of CAT use in an infertile population. We found that women who went on to use complementary therapies for example reflexology and nutritional supplements during their treatments were more distressed and emotionally affected...