In a significant scientific advance, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have identified or confirmed 490 proteins in human blood serum — nearly doubling the number of known serum proteins, according to a paper accepted for publication in the December issue of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics.

“We have performed the most extensive identification of proteins in serum to date,” said Joel Pounds, corresponding author and a PNNL staff scientist. “We s

People looking forward to eating raw oysters over the holidays will welcome news that scientists are making progress in the fight against a rare but deadly disease associated with the tasty bivalves.

Two University of Florida researchers report curing mice of the disease by using a virus to attack its bacterial source – Vibrio vulnificus. The scientists say the research may lead to techniques to purify oysters after harvest but before they reach raw bars and seafood markets – and might one

Two scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), Research Associate John S. Reader, D.Phil, and Professor Gerald F. Joyce, M.D., Ph.D., both of the institute’s Department of Molecular Biology, have succeeded in creating an enzyme based on a “binary” genetic code–one containing only two different subunits.

This research, described in the latest issue of the journal Nature, demonstrates that Darwinian evolution can occur in a genetic system with only two bases, and it also suppo

POLYMAT, the University of the Basque Country’s Institute of Polymer Materials, is helping to solve the problem of contamination of polymers obtained through polymerisation processes involving emulsions. With European funding obtained four years ago, the project on removing monomer residues from polymers was undertaken. POLYMAT has been working in this field with the collaboration of three other universities (from Germany, Greece and Switzerland) as well as three foreign companies.

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending EUR 300 million to finance the final phase of construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The loan will also help to finance the instrumentation to record and analyse the high-energy particle collisions at the LHC. A loan to enable construction of this major project was foreseen by CERN’s governing Council when it approved the LHC in 1996.

The EIB, the European Union’s long term

New Method Shown to be Effective for Detecting Down Syndrome at Mid-Trimester Scan

Looking at the nasal bones of fetuses at the mid-trimester scan could improve the detection of Down Syndrome during pregnancy, according to results to be published in the January 2003 issue of Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official journal of the International Society of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology, which will be available online on 17 December 2002.

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