Health and Medicine

Work has implications for repairing human heart muscle after heart attacks

Experiments on zebrafish provide important clues that could eventually lead to the ability to regenerate damaged human heart muscle, say researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston. Reporting in the Dec. 13 issue of Science, a team led by HHMI investigator Mark T. Keating, MD, senior associate, department of Cardiology, showed for the first time that zebrafish can reg

Scientists all over the world hunt for anti-mutagens, substances protecting against mutations. Where they can find them? It was suggested and later proved that most anti-mutagens are located in those organs and biological liquids, which are connected with the process of reproduction. The latter is the key point in the life cycle, in which genome disorders should be minimal. Anti-mutagens were found in seeds, spores, eggs, and sperm. It was also established that anti-mutagens are formed in certain bac

In stunning color images using time-lapse microscopy, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have for the first time captured the very earliest stages of HIV infection in living cells.

The researchers filmed individual HIV particles as they traveled to the nucleus of a human cell and began taking over its genetic machinery — the first step in the destruction of the body’s immune system that leads to AIDS.

The movies not only offer tantalizing glimpses of HIV in acti

The simple worm has at least one talent that could benefit most Americans.

It can convert Omega-6 — a group of fatty acids abundant in the Western diet with the potential to promote inflammation – into Omega-3, another class of fatty acids that decreases inflammation, helping keep vessel walls smooth and blood free-flowing.

The question one Medical College of Georgia researcher is asking is whether the enzyme these C. Elegans, or nematodes, use can work the same magic in peo

Could Spare Half of Women From Chemotherapy

Oncologists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center are testing a new technique called gene expression profiling that subtypes each breast cancer tumor by its genetic defects so that doctors can tailor their treatment to inhibit that particular tumor.

The researchers believe the technique could spare millions of women from needlessly receiving toxic chemotherapy, and they are leading a national clinical trial to study gene profili

New analysis challenges results of previous research

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and other institutions conclude that the increase in the incidence of malaria in East Africa parallels warming trends over the last several decades. The new findings challenge the results of a study, “Climate change and resurgence of malaria