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Infectious Disease :: GreeneChip – New diagnostic tool identifies multiple pathogens

Researchers in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and their colleagues in the WHO Global Laboratory Network have developed a new tool for pathogen surveillance and discovery — the GreeneChip System. The GreeneChip is the first tool to provide comprehensive, differential diagnosis of infectious diseases, including those caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites.

Osteoporosis :: Biocompatible glass helping damaged bone regenerate

Researchers from Lehigh and Princeton Universities join with colleagues from Egypt and Portugal to take aim at osteoporosis and other bone disorders. Their goal is to tailor a biocompatible glass so it can serve as a scaffold that promotes the regrowth of damaged or diseased bone.

Arthritis :: How movement lubricates bone joints

Researchers have shown that sliding forces applied to cartilage surfaces prompt cells in that tissue to produce molecules that lubricate and protect joints, an important step toward their goal of eventually growing joint tissue for transplantation.

RNA :: Peering into the shadow world of RNA

The popular view is that DNA and genes control everything of importance in biology. The genome rules all of life, it is thought. Increasingly, however, scientists are realizing that among the diverse forms of RNA, a kind of mirror molecule derived from DNA, many interact with each other and with genes directly to manage the genome from behind the scenes.

Leukemia :: New hope for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Patients treated with lenalidomide for relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia or disease that no longer responds to chemotherapy have experienced a major response to therapy, according to a phase II study conducted by Asher Chanan-Khan, M.D., Department of Medicine, Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The results are published in the December 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Hormones :: Low doses of arsenic have broad impact on hormone activity

Dartmouth researchers report that three different steroid hormones all show similar responses to arsenic, suggesting a broader effect and a common mechanism of arsenic on how these hormones function.

Gene :: New clues to how sex evolves

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have found clues to part of the complex question of how sex evolves, through ongoing studies of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. They have identified a key family of genes that code for closely related zinc-finger proteins that help bring C. elegans chromosomes together during meiosis, the specialized cell division that produces gametes, or sex cells.

Psychiatry :: New direction for development of psychotropic drugs

A panel of academic, industry and government representatives, presenting at the ACNP Annual Meeting, concluded that several factors have impeded the development of novel treatments for mental illness, including: incomplete understanding of the impact of mental illness on the brain; continued skepticism of results from animal models for certain disorders, and an outdated paradigm of treatment and the industry preference toward so-called “me-too” drugs.

Vaccine :: Super enzyme may lead way to better tumor vaccines

A “super” form of the enzyme Akt1 could provide the key to boosting the effect of tumor vaccines by extending the lives of dendritic cells, the immune-system master switches that promote the response of T-cells, which attack tumors, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in the “advance online publication” section of the current issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Genome :: DOE JGI releases IMG 2.0 with all genomes refreshed from RefSeq

Version 2.0 of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) data management system of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute has been released to the public. The content of IMG 2.0 has been entirely refreshed and extended with the latest versions of genomes available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) Reference Sequence collection (RefSeq).