Body
To the surprisingly inventive uses for banana peels — which include polishing silverware, leather shoes, and the leaves of house plants — scientists have added purification of drinking water contaminated with potentially toxic metals. Their report, which concludes that minced banana peel performs better than an array of other purification materials, appears in ACS's journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Scientists are reporting an "important step" toward development of a universal blood product that would eliminate the need to "type" blood to match donor and recipient before transfusions. A report on the "immunocamouflage" technique, which hides blood cells from antibodies that could trigger a potentially fatal immune reaction that occurs when blood types do not match, appears in the ACS journal, Biomacromolecules.
Scientists are reporting discovery of a potential biochemical basis for the apparent cancer-fighting ability of broccoli and its veggie cousins. They found for the first time that certain substances in the vegetables appear to target and block a defective gene associated with cancer. Their report, which could lead to new strategies for preventing and treating cancer, appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
Scientists are untangling how the tiniest pollution particles – which we take in with every breath we breathe – affect our health, making people more vulnerable to cardiovascular and respiratory problems. While scientists know that air pollution can aggravate heart problems, showing exactly how it does so has been challenging.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Researchers have created the first mouse models of human MYH9 genetic disorders, which cause several problems -- including enlarged platelets and sometimes fatal kidney disease.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node control heart rate, but what controls the ticking of these pacemaker cells? New research by Angelo Torrente and his colleagues of the M.E. Mangoni group's, reveals, for the first time, a critical functional interaction between Cav1.3 calcium ion (Ca2+) channels and ryanodine-receptor (RyR) mediated Ca2+ signaling.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Ten years ago, scientists seeking to understand how a certain type of feature on a cell called an L-type calcium channel worked created a knockout mouse missing both copies of the CACNA1D gene.
The CACNA1D gene makes a protein that lets calcium flow into a cell, transmitting important instructions from other cells. The knockout mice lived a normal life span, but their hearts beat slowly and arrhythmically. They were also completely deaf.
As many as 100 million Americans may currently be misclassified as having abnormal blood pressure, according to Dr. Brent Taylor from the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. Their findings1 show that these people are not actually more likely to die prematurely than those with 'normal' blood pressure, i.e. below 120/80.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are working to give melon growers some relief from cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus, or CYSDV.
In 2006, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant pathologist Bill Wintermantel with the U.S. Agricultural Research Station in Salinas, Calif., and university colleagues identified the plant disease that growers in California's Imperial Valley and nearby Yuma, Ariz., noticed was spreading through their cucurbit fields. Cucurbit crops affected included cantaloupe and honeydew melons.
A study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has shown that the body's ability to break down medicines may be closely related to exposure to sunlight, and thus may vary with the seasons. The findings offer a completely new model to explain individual differences in the effects of drugs, and how the surroundings can influence the body's ability to deal with toxins.
MINNEAPOLS / ST. PAUL (March 9, 2011) – University of Minnesota researchers are using salmonella – the bacteria commonly transmitted through food that sickens thousands of U.S. residents each year – to do what was once unthinkable: help people.
U of M Masonic Cancer Center researchers believe salmonella may be a valuable tool in the fight against cancer in organs surrounding the gut – such as the liver, spleen, and colon – since that's where salmonella naturally infects the body.
A history of alcohol abuse significantly impacts quality of life for patients after liver transplant, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital.
"Transplant recipients with alcoholic cirrhosis experienced less improvement in physical quality of life and reported greater pain and physical limitations than non-alcoholics after transplant surgery," says Anne Eshelman, Ph.D., Henry Ford Behavioral Health Services, lead author of the study.
MESA, Ariz. — March 8, 2011 — Predictive Biomarker Sciences (PBS-Bio) has uncovered how the experimental drug UNBS1450, produced by Unibioscreen, kills cancer cells.
Previous studies have shown that over-activity of a gene known as MCL1 can cause cancer cells to grow out of control. PBS-Bio, which is owned in part by the non-profit, Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), co-discovered that UNBS1450 effectively shuts off the gene and induces apoptosis, the cancer cell's normal process of cellular death.
Smut fungi are agents of disease responsible for significant crop losses worldwide. Principal Investigator, Dr. Thomas Smith and Research Associate Member, Dr. Dilip Shah at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center collaborated on a project to develop a variety of corn that is highly resistant to corn smut caused by the fungus, Ustilago maydis. The results of this research are published in the recent article, "Transgenic maize plants expressing the Totivirus antifungal protein, KP4, are highly resistant to corn smut," in Plant Biotechnology Journal .