Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have devised an advanced technique that uses mass spectrometry to identify specific proteins that are over-expressed in cancer cells, blood, urine, or any substance that contains proteins.

Using this new technique, they have already identified two proteins – MIF and CyP-A — whose levels are elevated in lung cancer cells but not in normal cells, said Edward Patz, M.D., professor of radiology and pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke.

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 newly discovered disease, Sudden Oak Death (SOD), is quickly gaining a reputation, and it’s not a good one. SOD is tenacious and lethal, using as many as 26 different plants as hosts and spreading in ways scientists don’t completely understand. Now, recent research suggests that SOD is capable of using an even greater number of host plants than previously thought. While this is not necessarily good news, it does help shed light on why SOD has been so quick to spread.

“SOD is d

VTT’s new device promotes clean combustion technology with high plant efficiency

VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, offers new opportunities to improve power plant efficiency with its globally unique research equipment. Most power plant types, independent of their fuel, use steam to produce energy. The first of its kind, VTT’s equipment now enables steam to be brought to its supercritical state under research conditions. In this state, the steam may reach a temperatu

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