Life Sciences and Chemistry

A technique developed by University of California, San Diego biologists, which uses bright fluorescent dyes to reveal the activity of genes in individual cells of an organism, promises to be a boon to developmental biologists, and may provide new insight into how cancerous tumors begin and grow.

The advance, described in the August 6 issue of Science, allows researchers, for the first time, to simultaneously visualize the activity of multiple genes in the same cell. The combination o

First evidence of the molecular link between inflammation and cancer has been shown by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Featured as the cover article in the August 6, 2004 issue of the journal Cell, the study also demonstrated that inactivation of a gene involved in the inflammatory process can dramatically reduce tumor development in mice with a gastrointestinal form of cancer.

The investigators found that a gene called I-kappa-B kinas

A new gene-silencing technique that takes place in the nucleus of human cells, has been demonstrated by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the VA San Diego Healthcare System. The technique, called transcriptional gene silencing (TGS), provides a new research tool to study gene function and, if continuing studies prove the concept, it could potentially become a method for therapeutic modification or the expression of disease-producing genes.

In a study to be published in Science online Aug. 6, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that genes involved in suppressing the body’s defensive “killer” immune cells are a potential key factor in spontaneous recovery from hepatitis C. The viral infection of the liver can lead to cirrhosis, cancer and even death. This genetic factor was found in people assumed to be exposed to a low dose of virus at the time of infection.

“Our findings may help explain why some of the 20 per

A genetic mutation related to a more aggressive form of breast cancer occurs four times more often in African American patients than their white counterparts, Yale researchers report in the August 9, 2004 online edition of the journal Cancer.

In the United States, African-American women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than white women, but they have a higher mortality rate. The disease also develops at an earlier age and is more aggressive in African-American women. To

Further investigation into how the common organism Escherichia coli regulates gene expression has given scientists new ideas for designing antibiotics that might drastically reduce a bacterium’s ability to resist drugs.

The findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Cell, suggest that bacteria rely on a key protein in order to properly regulate gene expression — a process fundamental to cell survival. This protein, called DksA, coordinates the expression of numer