Life Sciences and Chemistry

Herpes viruses enter the body and hide away in cells, often re-emerging later to cause illnesses such as shingles, genital herpes and cancer. How these viruses evade the immune system remains poorly understood, but researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered that a mouse herpes virus uses molecules that mimic a cell’s own proteins to help thwart an immune attack.

The findings also suggest that a branch of the immune system known as the complement sys

DNA of Xenopus tropicalis will provide new clues to vertebrate development

In their continuing search for new clues to how human genes function and how vertebrates develop and evolve, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) are gearing up to map the DNA of a diminutive, fast-growing African frog named Xenopus tropicalis .

Frogs have long been a favorite subject for biologists because their growth from eggs to tadpoles to

Before the pancreas is a pancreas, it is just two tiny bumps–two groups of cells sprouting from a central tube. What makes these cells bud off from the main group? How do they go on to make all the cell types of the mature pancreas? These are the kinds of questions that drive the research efforts of Vanderbilt developmental biologist Chris Wright and colleagues. The answers could pave the way toward limitless supplies of pancreatic cells for transplantation therapy of diabetes.

“It has bee

Laboratory experiments led by Hopkins scientists have revealed that so-called “jumping genes” create dramatic rearrangement in the human genome when they move from chromosome to chromosome. If the finding holds true in living organisms, it may help explain the diversity of life on Earth, the researchers report in the current (Aug. 9) issue of Cell.

“Jumping genes,” or retrotransposons, are sequences of DNA that are easily and naturally copied from one location in the genome and inserted els

Find has implications for preservation of endangered species, livestock

With pinhead-sized grafts of testicular tissue from newborn mammals, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have induced mice to produce fully functional sperm from evolutionarily distant species. The result has important implications for preserving the germ lines of critically endangered species as well as prized livestock.
The study, in which male mice produced functional gametes first from other mice

Stress happens, and over the eons all species of living things have evolved all sorts of ways to cope. Now, new research has revealed that organisms as diverse as humans and plants share a common set of stress-protection maneuvers that are choreographed by the metabolic machinery in their cells.

The research led by Sarah M. Assmann, the Waller Professor of Plant Biology at Penn State, will be published in the 15 August 2002 issue of the journal Nature.

“We have shown, in more deta