Troy, N.Y. — Robert Linhardt has spent years stitching together minuscule carbohydrates to build a more pure and safer alternative to the commonly used and controversial blood thinner heparin. At the national conference of the American Chemical Society on August 17, 2008, Linhardt announced that his research team may have accomplished this task by building the first fully synthetic heparin. Their creation is the largest dose of heparin ever created in the lab.
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When entrepreneurial geneticist Craig Venter sailed around the world on his yacht sequencing samples of seawater, it was an ambitious project to use genetics to understand invisible ecological communities. But his scientific legacy was disappointing – a jumble of mystery DNA fragments belonging to thousands of unknown organisms.
New research has discovered that infection and natural exposure to the 1918 influenza virus made survivors immune to the disease for the remaining of their lives. Antibodies produced by cells isolated from these survivors served as an effective therapy to protect mice from the highly lethal 1918 infection. The study entitled "Neutralizing antibodies derived from the B cells of 1918 influenza pandemic survivors," was released for advanced online publication by the journal Nature.
WALNUT CREEK, CA—Today's powerful sequencing machines can rapidly read the genomes of entire communities of microbes, but the challenge is to extract meaningful information from the jumbled reams of data. In a paper appearing in Nature Biotechnology August 17, a collaboration headed by researchers at the University of Washington and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) describes a novel approach for extracting single genomes and discerning specific microbial capabilities from mixed community ("metagenomic") sequence data.
WASHINGTON— African-American youth have proven they can bounce back after facing hardship and adversity, yet the majority of studies on this population still focus on the negative outcomes of risk factors, according to a task force of the American Psychological Association.
A report released today by APA's Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents calls for reframing research to better understand "how certain factors traditionally considered risk factors can be reconceptualized as adaptive or protective processes."
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Understanding the form and function of certain proteins in the human body is becoming faster and easier, thanks to the work of researchers at the University of Illinois.
By combining custom-built spectrometers, novel probe designs and faster pulse sequences, a team led by Illinois chemistry professor Chad Rienstra has developed unique capabilities for probing protein chemistry and structure through the use of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
PHILADELPHIA—Hyaluronic hydrogels developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers may provide a suitable scaffolding to enable bone regeneration. The hydrogels, created by Newell Washburn, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Jeffrey Hollinger, have proven to encourage the growth of preosteoblast cells, cells that aid the growth and development of bone. Doctoral student Sidi Bencherif will present this research, Sunday, Aug. 17 at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.
GALVESTON, Texas — Neuroblastoma is one of the most devastating diagnoses a child can receive. The cancer's victims average 2 years old when the disease is detected, most often by a parent feeling a lump in a child's abdomen. By then, the disease has often reached an advanced stage, and advanced neuroblastoma kills more than 50 percent of the children in whom it develops, despite aggressive treatment with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
A virus that commonly infects potatoes bears a striking resemblance to one of the key proteins implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and researchers have used that to develop antibodies that may slow or prevent the onset of AD.
BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Young horses may be easier to train if they temporarily lay off the sweets, says a Montana State University study where two-year-olds wore pedometers, wrist watches and Ace bandages.
A commercial mixture of corn, oats, barley and molasses -- sometimes called "sweet grain" or "sweet feed" -- gives horses the glossy coat and lively spirit that makes them attractive to prospective buyers, said Jan Bowman, an animal nutritionist at MSU.
When a cell begins to multiply in a dangerously abnormal way, a series of death signals trigger it to self-destruct before it turns cancerous. Now, in research to appear in the August 15 issue of Genes & Development, Rockefeller University scientists have figured out a way in mice to amplify the signals that tell these precancerous cells to die. The trick: Inactivating a protein that normally helps cells to avoid self-destruction.