More than seventy percent of people who contract Hepatitis C will live with the virus that causes it for the rest of their lives and some will develop serious liver disease including cancer. However, 30 to 40 percent of those infected somehow defeat the infection and get rid of the virus with no treatment. In this week's Publication of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers working as part of an international team report the discovery of the strongest genetic alteration associated with the ability to get rid of the infection.
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A committee of scientists led by Johns Hopkins investigators has published a new guide to the biology, diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in never-smokers, fortifying measures for what physicians have long known is a very different disease than in smokers.
Using yeast genetics and a novel scheme to selectively remove a single protein from the cell division process called meiosis, a cell biologist at The Florida State University found that when a key molecular player known as Pds5 goes missing, chromosomes fail to segregate and pair up properly, and birth defects such as Down syndrome can result.
Attempts to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) are stymied by the fact that the disease-causing bacteria have a sophisticated mechanism for surviving dormant in infected cells. Now, a team of scientists led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College has identified compounds that inhibit that mechanism -- without damaging human cells. The results, described in Nature, include structural studies of how the inhibitor molecules interact with bacterial proteins, and could lead to the design of new anti-TB drugs.
Dr. Sylvain Meloche, Principal Investigator at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal, and his colleagues have uncovered the critical role played by the protein kinase Erk3 in fetal growth potential and lung maturation. The recent findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that the loss of Erk3 function in the mouse leads to fetal growth restriction and early neonatal lethality caused by respiratory distress.
A University of Utah sleep expert has joined with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Stanford University to identify a genetic variation in humans, which the scientists also developed in mouse models, that allows a rare number of people to require less sleep than others.
A new analysis of extinct sea creatures suggests that the transition from egg-laying to live-born young opened up evolutionary pathways that allowed these ancient species to adapt to and thrive in open oceans.
The evolutionary sleuthing is described this week in the journal Nature by scientists at Harvard University and the University of Reading who also report that the evolution of live-born young depended crucially on the advent of genes -- rather than incubation temperature -- as the primary determinant of offspring sex.
UPTON, NY — Attempts to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) are stymied by the fact that the disease-causing bacteria have a sophisticated mechanism for surviving dormant in infected cells. Now, a team of scientists including researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), Weill Cornell Medical College, and The Rockefeller University has identified compounds that inhibit that mechanism — without damaging human cells.
A new way to select and switch on one cell type in an organism using light has helped answer a long-standing question about the function of enigmatic nerve cells in the spinal cord.
Through targeted insertion of light-sensitive switches into these cells in awake zebrafish larvae, University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Francisco scientists have found that these mysterious cells trigger burst swimming —— the periodic tail twitching typical of larvae.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Florida used gene therapy to cure two squirrel monkeys of color blindness — the most common genetic disorder in people.
Writing online Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists cast a rosy light on the potential for gene therapy to treat adult vision disorders involving cone cells — the most important cells for vision in people.
Researchers in Hong Kong are reporting new evidence that green tea — one of the most popular beverages consumed worldwide and now available as a dietary supplement — may help improve bone health. They found that the tea contains a group of chemicals that can stimulate bone formation and help slow its breakdown. Their findings are in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. The beverage has the potential to help in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and other bone diseases that affect million worldwide, the researchers suggest.
In order to be able to ward off disease pathogens, immune cells must be mobile and be able to establish contact with each other. The working group around Professor Dr. Oliver Fackler in the Virology Department of the Hygiene Institute of the Heidelberg University Hospital has discovered a mechanism in an animal model revealing how HIV, the AIDS pathogen, cripples immune cells: Cell mobility is inhibited by the HIV Nef protein. The study was published in the highly respected journal "Cell Host & Microbe".
A common household nuisance, the fruit fly, is capable of intricate social learning much like that used by humans, according to new research from McMaster University.
The study, published online today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that inexperienced female fruit flies, known as Drosophila melanogaster, can learn from their more experienced counterparts, mated fruit flies.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — While studying a way to more safely and effectively collect snake venom, University of Florida researchers have noticed the venom delivered by an isolated population of Florida cottonmouth snakes may be changing in response to their diet.
Scientists used a portable nerve stimulator to extract venom from anesthetized cottonmouths, producing more consistent extraction results and greater amounts of venom, according to findings published in August in the journal Toxicon.
The study of venoms is important for many reasons, scientists say.
Researchers from several institutions including the University of Colorado at Boulder have sequenced DNA "barcodes" for as many as 25 hunted wildlife species, providing information that can be used to better monitor the elusive trade of wildlife products, or bushmeat.