Life Sciences and Chemistry

Johns Hopkins researchers have uncovered a key step in the body’s regulation of melatonin, a major sleep-related chemical in the brain. In the advance online section of Nature Structural Biology, the research team reports finding the switch that causes destruction of the enzyme that makes melatonin — no enzyme, no melatonin.

Melatonin levels are high at night and low during the day. Even at night, melatonin disappears after exposure to bright light, a response that likely contributes

An insidious fuzzy gray mold that often coats refrigerated strawberries and many other plants during growing and storage may be prevented by a gene identified by a Purdue University researcher.

The mold is caused by a fungus, Botrytis cinerea, that often enters plant tissue through wounded or dead areas such as wilted petals, bruised fruit or at the site of pruning. In the November issue of the journal The Plant Cell, Purdue plant molecular biologist Tesfaye Mengiste and his colleagues at Sy

Home testing of saliva to measure personal hormone levels is gaining popularity, with dozens of companies offering do-it-yourself, mail-in test kits. Battelle scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory envision a day when it may be nearly as easy to detect chemical exposure or even nerve gas poisoning — simply by analyzing a victim’s saliva. And the results would be almost immediate.

Using sophisticated mass spectrometry equipment at PNNL, researchers hav

Breast cancer patients have a lower chance of long-term survival if they carry an inherited mutation in the BRCA1 gene, according to research published in Breast Cancer Research this week. However, the poor prognosis associated with the mutated gene is mitigated by chemotherapy.

The breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, were identified over eight years ago, but the best way of treating women who develop hereditary breast cancer associated with mutations in these genes is still

Cumbre Inc. and University of Wisconsin-Madison research collaborator publish data on a new class of bacterial RNA polymerase inhibitor

Cumbre Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, announced today the publication of a research paper in the October 24, 2003 issue of Science entitled “A new class of bacterial RNA polymerase inhibitor affects nucleotide addition.” The paper describes the identification and characterization of the novel “CBR703” class of inhibitors through com

Researchers have found that a promising new class of antibacterial chemicals inhibits one of the most fundamental processes of life – a cell’s ability to express genetic material. Knowing exactly how these chemicals keep bacterial cells in check can help scientists make more effective antibiotics.

Like many bacterial inhibitors, this new class of compounds – called the CBR703 series – inhibits RNA polymerase, the key enzyme in gene expression. However, the unique mechanism that these compou