Life Sciences and Chemistry

Building on their 2001 discovery of a cellular doorway used by anthrax toxin to enter cells, University of Wisconsin Medical School researchers have found a second anthrax toxin doorway, or receptor. The finding could offer new clues to preventing the toxin’s entrance into cells.

The researchers also have found that when they isolated a specific segment of the receptor in the laboratory, they could use it as a decoy to lure anthrax toxin away from the real cell receptors, preventing much o

Since Charles Darwin heralded evolution more than 150 years ago, scientists have sought to better understand when and how the vast variety of plants today diverged from common ancestors.

A new University of Georgia study, just published in Nature, demonstrates key events in plant evolution. It allows scientists to infer what the gene order may have looked like in a common ancestor of higher plants. And it shows one way plants may have differentiated from their ancestors and each other.

The desire for healthy-looking skin has existed throughout the centuries and has often led humanity to flowers and other plants in search of assistance. COSMACTIVE treads the same path, but uses the latest in biotechnology to identify and extract the active ingredients from a wide range of plants.

Under the umbrella of the EUREKA project COSMACTIVE, the French research company Greentech has developed a new way of identifying and selecting active ingredients that gives it, and its Spanish par

Implications for treatment, defense against chemical weapons

A study led by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers the first molecular explanation of how the body metabolizes and detoxifies cocaine and heroin. “We show for the first time how humans initiate the breakdown and clearance of these dangerous narcotics,” said Dr. Matthew R. Redinbo, assistant professor in the department of chemistry, and in the School of Medicine’s department of biochemist

USC researchers uncover mechanism of class- switching in antibodies

A team of scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of USC has, for the first time, described a new, stable DNA structure in both mouse and human cells-one which differs from the standard Watson-and-Crick double helix and plays a critical role in the production of antibodies, or immunoglobulins.
The research will be published online in the journal Nature Immunology this week, and will appear in print in the jou

May lead to sharper picture of human genome as well

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have used a powerful gene-mapping technique to produce the clearest picture yet of all the genes of an animal – the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (better known as C. elegans). Scientists believe the same technique may be used to bring the current, somewhat blurry picture of the human genome into sharper focus.

The study, which will be posted on the Nature Genetics website (