Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying vaccinia virus, a close relative of smallpox, have determined that a gene necessary for virus replication also has a key role in turning off inflammation, a crucial anti-viral immune response of host cells.

The discovery, reported this month in the Journal of Virology, potentially broadens the knowledge base of how all poxviruses cause disease and how they may be outwitted by improvements in vaccines against them, said Joa

Researchers are probing details of how HIV commandeers genes in infected cells to disguise itself from the immune system. The researchers, from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, have identified cellular proteins expressed during HIV infection that enable HIV-infected cells to avoid apoptosis, a common cell suicide event. This survival mechanism allows the virus to maintain the infection within the compromised cells.

These findings, as yet based on studies in cells, not in patien

’A genomic approach to the identification of genetic and environmental components underlying the quality of the grape’. This is the title of the R+D project financed by Genoma España in which the Department of Vegetable Physiology of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarre is participating.

Over the next three years the Fundación Genoma España will provide two million euros to identify the genes responsible for the quality of grapes. Six research teams are working on a dessert

Several mammal species other than ruminants and camels have a multi-chambered forestomach – kangaroos, hippos, colobus monkeys, peccaries, sloths – but they do not ruminate.

As studies on the digestive physiology of these species are largely missing, it is generally assumed that their forestomach functions in the same way as that of ruminants, the most prominent characteristic of which is the selective retention of larger particles. However, retaining larger particles (which are more

It all started with an aquarium his father bought for the family home in Venezuela. The fish swam and ate and created an environment that captivated the watchful eye of then-10-year-old Hernan Lopez-Fernandez.

“One of the first fish of my own was called a Texas Cichlid,” Lopez-Fernandez said. “I was hooked on fish.”

Little did the young South American boy realize the role Texas would play in his life. Now a doctoral student in Texas A&M University’s wildlife and fisheries sci

Gene cassettes using self-cleaving peptides allowed T lymphocytes to construct a key multi-protein immune receptor complex

A genetic trick used by viruses to replicate themselves has been adapted for laboratory use to build complex protein structures required by immune system cells, according to investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

This approach could also be used to develop new gene therapy vectors in cases when cells must be modified to make high le