A recent University of Iowa study reveals a new immune defense mechanism in normal airways and may help explain why people with cystic fibrosis (CF) are particularly susceptible to bacterial lung infections. The findings also may point the way to new approaches for treating the disease.
Anthrax, when inhaled, is nearly always fatal, in part because the bacteria have a very effective way of stealing iron from human cells to reproduce. This involves two molecules, siderophores, that compete with the body’s own iron-transport molecules. UC Berkeley researchers have now found that humans produce a protein that sidelines one of these siderophores, but not the other. A drug that blocks the second siderophore should be able to stop anthrax in its tracks.
The fruit fly gene “doublesex” is responsible for ensuring that male flies look male and females look female. New Brown University research led by biologist Michael McKeown shows that doublesex not only helps shape bodies but also shapes behavior, acting with together with the gene “fruitless” to guide flies’ courtship routines and responses. The finding, published in Nature Genetics, shows that sexual development in flies — and, perhaps, in humans — is a more complicated proposition than previously thought.
Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have visualized in a living animal how cells use a critical biological process to dice and splice genetic material to create unique and varied proteins.
A University of Manchester researcher has developed a treatment for lower back pain using the patient’s own stem cells, which could replace the use of strong painkillers or surgery that can cause debilitation, neither of which addresses the underlying cause.
A new archaeological find in Botswana by an archaeologist from the University from Oslo shows that our ancestors in Africa engaged in ritual practice 70,000 years ago — 30,000 years earlier than the oldest finds in Europe. This sensational discovery strengthens Africa’s position as the cradle of modern man.
There is as much as a four- to five-fold increased relative risk for late thrombosis, or blood clot formation, in patients with drug-eluting stents compared to those with bare-metal stents, according to a Cleveland Clinic-led meta-analysis appearing in the December issue of the American Journal of Medicine. This is the first published analysis of its kind.
Results from a brain-imaging study conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in collaboration with Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York indicate that levels of a brain protein proposed as a diagnostic marker for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are not positively correlated with the disease.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for Micronutrient Research at Annamalai University in India report that the consumption of milk fortified with specific micronutrients — zinc, iron, selenium, copper, vitamin A, vitamin C and vitamin E — significantly reduces diarrhea and acute lower respiratory illness among children in developing countries.
Integrating new location-aware computer networks with old-fashioned human networks, researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an innovative solution to the problem of isolation that faces women in the academic science and engineering workforce.