Biology News

Between the grains of sand on the sea floor there is an unknown and unexplored world. Pierre De Wit at Gothenburg University knows this well, and has found new animal species on the Great Barrier Reef, in New Caledonia and in the sea off the Gullmarsfjord in the Swedish county of Bohuslän.

The King Cobra continues to weave its charm with researchers identifying a protein in its venom with the potential for new drug discovery and to advance understanding of disease mechanisms.

For centuries, seafarers were plagued by wood-eating gribble that destroyed their ships, and these creatures continue to wreak damage on wooden piers and docks in coastal communities.

Immune cells ensnare dangerous cells that are on the run with a bungee-like nanotube, according to research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, shows that natural killer (NK) cells use this bungee to destroy cells that could otherwise escape them.

Today, during the 39th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research, convening at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, lead researcher O.A. Gonzalez (University of Kentucky, Lexington) will present a poster of a study titled "TLR2 and TLR9 Activation by Periodontal Pathogens induce HIV-1 Reactivation." Although oral co-infections (e.g. periodontal disease) are highly prevalent in HIV-1 patients and appear to positively correlate with viral load levels, the potential for oral bacteria to induce HIV-1 reactivation in latently infected cells has received little attention. The researchers involved in this study have proved that periodontal pathogens enhanced HIV-1 promoter activation in T-cells, monocytes/macrophages and dendritic cells; however the mechanisms involved in this response remain undetermined.

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist is helping to sort through the jumbled genetics of Echinacea, the coneflower known for its blossoms--and its potential for treating infections, inflammation, and other human ailments.

Dr. Marc McKee, of McGill's Faculty of Dentistry and the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, is collaborating closely with Enobia Pharma Inc, a Quebec biotech company, to develop innovative treatments for serious genetic bone diseases. McKee's research looks into the reasons why calcium-phosphate mineral fails to crystallize properly to form strong bones and teeth. While osteoporosis later in life is an example of bone density deficiency, this research applies to patients, especially children, who never properly mineralized their skeletons to begin with.

Researchers at the South West Liver Unit, based at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust and supported by the Peninsula Medical School, are working to save more lives and improve the health of Hepatitis C sufferers around the world by developing a vaccine for the disease.

Nitrogen fertilization is essential for profitable corn production. It also is a major cost of production and can contribute to degradation of the environment. Is it possible to "teach" corn to fix its own nitrogen, thus eliminating the need for nitrogen fertilizer applications? University of Illinois agricultural engineer Kaustubh Bhalerao believes it may be, through research in an emerging area of engineering called synthetic biology.

Two Dartmouth biologists have found that brown anole lizards make an interesting choice when deciding which males should father their offspring. The females of this species mate with several males, then produce more sons with sperm from large fathers, and more daughters with sperm from smaller fathers. The researchers believe that the lizards do this to ensure that the genes from large fathers are passed on to sons, who stand to benefit from inheriting the genes for large size.

In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when microbes started building closets for all their stuff, storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all the energy machinery inside mitochondria.

Adding a new link to our understanding of the complex chain of chemistry that keeps living cells alive, a team of researchers from the University of Vermont (UVM), the University of Utah, Vanderbilt University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has demonstrated for the first time the specific activity of the protein NEIL3, one of a group responsible for maintaining the integrity of DNA in humans and other mammals. Their work reported last week* sheds new light on a potentially important source of harmful DNA mutations.

CSIRO scientist Dr Tara Sutherland and her team have achieved another important milestone in the international quest to artificially produce insect silk.

The same antifreeze proteins that keep organisms from freezing in cold environments can also prevent ice from melting at warmer temperatures, according to a new Queen's University study.

Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, released a special issue of the journal Antiviral Research (www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01663542), marking the 25th anniversary of antiretroviral drug development. The guest editors, José Esté from Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, Barcelona, Spain and Tomas Cihlar, from Gilead sciences Inc., CA, USA were able to attract the key players in the field who all contributed a variety of review articles to this special issue, thereby creating a must-read for anybody interested in AIDS treatment.

A new study is providing insight into how estrogen fuels many breast cancers, and researchers say the findings could lead to new cancer-fighting drugs.

With concern over mercury contamination of tuna on the rise and growing information about the health effects of eating contaminated fish, scientists would like to know exactly where the pollutant is coming from and how it's getting into open-ocean fish species.

A heart patient's own skin cells soon could be used to repair damaged cardiac tissue thanks to pioneering stem cell research of the University of Houston's newest biomedical scientist, Robert Schwartz.

A nanoparticle growing in popularity as a bactericidal agent has been shown to be toxic to fish, according to a Purdue University study.

Researchers at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center have figured out how ATP is broken down in cells, providing for the first time a clear picture of the key reaction that allows cells in all living things to function and flourish.