Although it has been many years since the human genome was first mapped, there are still many genes whose function we do not understand. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the University of Toronto, Canada, have teamed up to produce and characterize a collection of nearly 800 strains of yeast cells that make it possible to study even the most complicated of genes.
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The part of bacterial DNA that often carries antibiotic resistance is a master at moving between different types of bacteria and adapting to widely differing bacterial species, shows a study made by a research team at the University of Gothenburg in cooperation with Chalmers University of Technology. The results are published in an article in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
BOSTON (April 11) --A study from Tufts Medical Center researchers published today finds that a novel drug shows promise for treating leukemia patients who have few other options because their disease has developed resistance to standard treatment.
Appearing in the journal Cancer Cell, the study is the first published report showing that the drug, DCC-2036, fights chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in a mouse model of the disease and is effective against human leukemia cells.
ATLANTA – The effectiveness of a unique two-pronged educational program has shown significant improvements in knowledge of quality principles by leaders as well as the successful design and launch of QI (quality improvement) projects by frontline staff, according to results outlined in an article in the April 2011 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (http://www.jcrinc.com/The-Joint-Commission-Journal-on-Quality-and-Patient-Safety/Current-Is
SEATTLE – Had a large stockpile of oral cholera vaccine been available and deployed to inoculate the majority of Haitians most at risk after the outbreak following last year's earthquake, the illness and death from the cholera epidemic could have been reduced by about half, according to new research.
The findings, by Ira Longini, Ph.D., and colleagues in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, are published in the April 11, 2011 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Tissue engineering makes biologists builders, but compared to their civil engineering counterparts, they don't know much about the properties of the materials and structures they use, namely living cells. To improve that knowledge, Brown University researchers have developed a simple and reliable system for measuring the power that cells employ to assemble into three-dimensional tissue. The research appears online the week of April 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a famous experiment first performed more than 220 years ago, Italian physician Luigi Galvani discovered that the muscles of a frog's leg twitch when an electric voltage is applied. An international group of scientists from Italy, the UK and France has now brought this textbook classic into the era of nanoscience. They used a powerful new synchrotron X-ray technique to observe for the first time at the molecular scale how muscle proteins change form and structure inside an intact and contracting muscle cell.
The meaning of the standard fecal coliform test used to monitor water quality has been called into question by a new study that identified sources of Escherichia coli bacteria that might not indicate an environmental hazard.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Most people have trouble telling them apart, but bumble bees, honey bees, stingless bees and solitary bees have home lives that are as different from one another as a monarch's palace is from a hippie commune or a hermit's cabin in the woods. A new study of these bees offers a first look at the genetic underpinnings of their differences in lifestyle.
WHAT:In a new study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, scientists describe successfully mutating specific genes of Chlamydia bacteria, which cause the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States as well as a type of blindness common in developing nations. The procedure they used will help advance scientists' understanding of how these bacteria cause human disease and expedite the development of new strategies to prevent and control these infections.
A chance observation by a Queen's researcher might have ended a decades-old debate about the precise way antifreeze proteins (AFP) bind to the surface of ice crystals.
"We got a beautiful view of water bound to the ice-binding site on the protein," says Peter Davies, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and a world leader in antifreeze protein research. "In a sense we got a lucky break."
WASHINGTON – Fluctuations in penguin populations in the Antarctic are linked more strongly to the availability of their primary food source than to changes in their habitats, according to a new study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Funded in part by the Lenfest Ocean Program, this research indicates that species often considered likely "winners" of changing conditions, such as large-scale ice melting, may actually end up as the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
FINDINGS: Certain differentiated cells in breast tissue can spontaneously convert to a stem-cell-like state, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. Until now, scientific dogma has stated that differentiation is a one-way path; once cells specialize, they cannot return to the flexible stem-cell state on their own. These findings hold true for normal mammary cells as well as for breast cancer cells.
A study appearing in the journal Investigational New Drugs and conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital, discovered that two new small molecule inhibitors are showing promise in blocking STAT3, a protein linked to the most common malignant bone tumor, osteosarcoma. These small molecule inhibitors – one derived from a portion of the turmeric spice – may serve as a new, non-toxic treatment for these deadly tumors.
New research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) details research in rats and mice that offers hope for stopping the devastating, and often fatal, effects of sepsis in humans. In the study, University of Michigan researchers show how neutralizing the effects of a key protein fragment, called C5a, used by the immune system to attract white blood cells may ultimately prevent heart failure.