Life Sciences and Chemistry

Gene therapy techniques enhance the virus’s effectiveness in mice.

Mosquitoes are notorious for their ability to spread disease, but in some cases they may prove to be a boon instead of a bane. In a recent study, researchers at New York University School of Medicine found that one mosquito-borne virus automatically targets and kills tumor cells in mice. Most importantly, it does so while leaving healthy cells alone, a feature that may make it a promising treatment for some forms

Scans have pinpointed circuits in the monkey brain that could be precursors of those in humans for speech and language. As in humans, an area specialized for processing species-specific vocalizations is on the left side of the brain, report Drs. Amy Poremba, Mortimer Mishkin, and colleagues in NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center (CC), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the University of Iowa. An area near the left temple re

Using the latest terascale ASCI computers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have revealed details of the reactive states and faster relaxation of molecules at the water-to-air interface.

Scientists Christopher Mundy and I-Feng Kuo created the first ab initio calculations of a stable aqueous liquid-vapor interface. The simulations serve as a robust predictive tool in the investigation of electronic properties of molecules at interfaces.

These complex theoretical m

A pint-sized, tree-dwelling Brazilian monkey has proven to be strikingly similar to humans when it comes to sexual responses, a national research team has discovered.

Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborating institutions for the first time peered into the brains of fully conscious nonhuman primates to learn what’s really on their minds when it comes to sex. The research appears in the February 2004 issu

Chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have uncovered the molecular activity of an enzyme responsible for naturally turning a small protein into a potent antibiotic known as a lantibiotic.

The finding is described in the Jan. 30 issue of the journal Science. The research details how the enzyme performs two biosynthetic reactions that lead to the formation of fused cyclic structures required for antimicrobial activity. The discovery unlocks a door that could lead to a ne

Chemical engineers at Purdue University have shown how to make yeast cells double the activity and boost productivity of a type of enzyme plants need to create important chemicals such as anticancer compounds.

The work is related to efforts aimed at developing techniques to use plants and microorganisms as natural factories for producing pharmaceuticals. Such techniques would be safer and more environmentally friendly than conventional methods for making drugs, which often require hazardous