Life Sciences and Chemistry

Using a gene resurrected from the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, recorded history’s most lethal outbreak of infectious disease, scientists have found that a single gene may have been responsible for the devastating virulence of the virus.

Writing today (Oct. 7, 2004) in the journal Nature, virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, describes experiments in which engineered viruses were made more pote

Nerve cells with a mutant calcium channel don’t communicate as effectively as those with a normal calcium channel, according Saint Louis University research that is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition the week of Oct. 4.

“The research helps us understand the basic mechanism that underlies how neurons communicate,” said Amy Harkins, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacological and physiological science at Saint Louis University

While questions still remain about the nature and function of stem cells found in fat, a group of researchers and clinicians convened today in Pittsburgh at the Second Annual Meeting of the International Fat Applied Technology Society (IFATS) agreed that research should move forward with the ultimate goal of performing human clinical trials to test the cells’ therapeutic potential for specific indications.

Today concludes scientific sessions exploring how adipose tissue, or f

The pathogen responsible for a precooked chicken recall last summer will become easier to detect in ready-to-eat meats, thanks to a new biosensor developed by scientists at Purdue University.

A team of food scientists has developed a sensor that can detect the potentially deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes in less than 24 hours at concentrations as low as 1,000 cells per milliliter of fluid – an amount about the size of a pencil eraser. The sensor also is selective enough to r

Researchers from The Rockefeller University have uncovered specific mechanisms by which cells that are genetically programmed to commit suicide stimulate growth in surrounding cells. The research, published online in Developmental Cell, provides new information about how normal, healthy tissues are maintained and may shed some light on a pathway that may contribute to tumor growth.

It has been known for some time that cells that die as a result of injury-provoked programmed cell deat

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2004 “for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation” jointly to

Aaron Ciechanover
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel,

Avram Hershko
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel and

Irwin Rose
University of California, Irvine, USA

They have discovered how useless proteins are labelled wit