Scientific fact : Development of gene therapy

Since the late 1980s, gene therapy, more than virtually any other type of therapy, has given rise not only to high expectations of treatment success but also great concerns regarding health risks. Since the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) issued its first memorandum in 1995, this field of research has developed enormously.

Wide-ranging experiments have shown the therapeutic potential as well as the risks of gene therapy. The second memorandum, which has just been presented by the DFG Senate Commission on Genetic Research, makes it clear that gene therapy already shows signs of success in certain areas, such as severe hereditary immunodeficiency diseases, while in other areas there is still considerable need for research. Moreover, the clinical application of gene therapy requires careful risk/benefit assessment, although in this respect it does not differ substantially from other therapeutic approaches.

Gene therapy is defined as the introduction of genes into tissues or cells via gene transfer, with the purpose of deriving a therapeutic or preventative benefit from the function of these genes. Gene transfer is achieved using a vector – a kind of vehicle that carries the gene. Somatic gene transfer only targets body cells (somatic cells). Introducing genes into the germline is illegal in Germany. The first well-documented gene therapy studies were launched in the early 1990s. By 2005 it was estimated that more than 1,100 gene therapy studies had been conducted worldwide, one-third of them in Europe, and a significant number in Germany. The DFG is currently funding a Priority Programme for research groups, some of which are international leaders in their field, that examine the entry and persistence of gene therapy vectors in target cells.

In spite of continued great difficulties with technical implementation, initial successes in somatic gene therapy are on the horizon, for example in treating adenosine deaminase deficiency and chronic granulomatous disease. There are also initial indicators that point to the efficacy of gene therapy in treating chronic lymphatic leukaemia and haemophilia B. But successes in clinical testing come with their share of setbacks, such as the currently slight margin of therapeutic effectiveness over unwanted side effects. This underscores the necessity to carefully assess risks and benefits and also shows that there is still a dire need for more research on gene therapy. Basic research should be conducted in direct collaboration across disciplines, using animal models and clinical studies. An acute need for research exists, especially regarding the development of efficient and safe vectors for gene transfer.

Source : Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

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The good, the bad and the 'green' -- harnessing the potential of bacteria

A diverse family of bacteria that can cause a potentially fatal illness in humans but could offer a greener alternative to petrol to power our cars will be the subject of a talk by a University of Nottingham academic at an international conference.

Professor Nigel Minton, one of the world's leading experts on the Clostridium bacteria, will be presenting at the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) annual Winter Meeting, being held at the Royal Society in London on January 12. In his presentation Professor Minton will discuss the potential exploitation of the anaerobic, Gram-positive Clostridium bacteria — a few strains of which have given the genus a bad name.

Clostridium difficile infection is the most significant cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea and is seven times more deadly than MRSA. The bacterium is present in the gut of up to three per cent of healthy adults and 66 per cent of infants. Usually it is kept in check by the healthy balance of bacteria in the gut but when this is disturbed by certain antibiotics, C.difficile can multiply rapidly and produce toxins that cause illness and death. The disease is spread through spores, usually from poor hygiene. The emergence of highly virulent clones means that cases and fatalities from the illness are on the increase.

In addition, there has been heightened public concern in recent years about the potential use by bioterrorists of the food-borne pathogen Clostridium botulinum, which causes the rare but serious paralytic illness botulism.M I B S I T B T

Being good moms couldn't save the woolly mammoth

New research from The University of Western Ontario leads investigators to believe that woolly mammoths living north of the Arctic Circle during the Pleistocene Epoch (approx. 150,000 to 40,000 years ago) began weaning infants up to three years later than modern day African elephants due to prolonged hours of darkness.

This adapted nursing pattern could have contributed to the prehistoric elephant's eventual extinction. The findings were published recently in the journal, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

By studying the chemical composition of adult and infant mammoth teeth, Jessica Metcalfe, an Earth Sciences PhD student working with professor Fred Longstaffe, was able to determine woolly mammoths that once inhabited Old Crow, Yukon didn't begin eating plants and other solid foods before the age of two (and perhaps as late as three) and considers predatory mammals like saber-toothed cats and a lack of sufficient vegetation to be the secondary reasons for delayed weaning.

"In modern Africa, lions can hunt baby elephants but not adults. They can't kill adults. But they can kill babies and by and large, they tend to be successful when they hunt at night because they have adapted night vision," explains Metcalfe, who examined fossil specimens alongside Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program. "In Old Crow, where you have long, long hours of darkness, the infants are going to be more vulnerable, so the mothers nursed longer to keep them close."

Metcalfe says delayed weaning by Old Crow mammoths may have further significance for understanding mammoth life histories and extinction. "Today, a leading cause of infant elephant deaths in Myanmar is insufficient maternal milk production," offers Metcalfe. "Woolly mammoths may have been more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and human hunting than modern elephants not only because of their harsher environment, but also because of the metabolic demands of lactation and prolonged nursing, especially during the longer winter months."

Metcalfe concludes that knowing more about the past, can only help researchers understand more about the present and the future. "Mammoths lived all over the world for thousands of years, even millions of years, and then became extinct about 10,000 years ago, which was around the time the climate started warming the last time," says Metcalfe. "Understanding their ecology, their adaptations and their behaviour not only gives us insight into why they became extinct but also, potentially, gives us a better understanding of modern day mammals and how they might respond to the current warming of the planet."

Source : University of Western OntarioM I B S I T B T

If junk DNA is useful, why is it not shared more equally?

The presence of introns in genes requires cells to process "messenger RNA" molecules before synthesizing proteins, a process that is costly and often error-prone. It was long believed that this was simply part of the price organisms paid for the flexibility to create new types of protein but recent work has made it clear that introns themselves have a number of important functions. And so attention is gradually shifting to asking why some organisms have so few introns and others so many.

It seems likely that new introns are added to DNA when double-stranded DNA breaks – which may arise from a variety of mechanisms – are not repaired "correctly" but the newly created ends are instead joined to other fragments of DNA. Farlow and colleagues at the Institute of Population Genetics of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna reasoned that introns may be lost by a similar mechanism. An examination of areas of DNA where introns are known to have been lost in organisms such as worms and flies provides support for their idea.

DNA breaks may be treated in one of two ways: correct repair (by a relatively time-consuming process known as "homologous recombination") or the rapid and error-prone joining of non-homologous ends. The two pathways are essentially separate and can compete with each other for DNA breaks to work with. The scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna now suggest that species-specific differences in the relative activity of these two pathways might underlie the observed variation in intron number.

The theory represents a fundamental change in the way we think about the evolution of DNA. Evolution has seen periods of large scale intron loss alternating with periods of intron gain and this has been interpreted as the result of changing selection pressure. However, the rates at which single species have gained and lost introns throughout evolution have been found to vary in parallel, consistent with Farlow's notion that the two processes are related. The new theory provides an alternative interpretation: changes in the activities of the "homologous" and "non-homologous" pathways for repairing DNA breaks could cause introns to be lost faster than they are gained, or vice versa.

The idea is consistent with what we currently know about intron numbers, which range from a handful in some simple eukaryotes to more than 180,000 in the human genome. And as Farlow says, "Linking intron gain and loss to the repair of DNA breaks offers a neat explanation for how intron number can change over time. This theory may account for the huge diversity we seen in intron number between different species."

Source : University of Veterinary Medicine -- ViennaM I B S I T B T

Animal with the most genes? A tiny crustacean

Complexity ever in the eye of its beholders, the animal with the most genes -- about 31,000 -- is the near-microscopic freshwater crustacean Daphnia pulex, or water flea. By comparison, humans have about 23,000 genes. Daphnia is the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced.

The findings are part of a comprehensive report in this week's Science by members of the Daphnia Genomics Consortium, an international network of scientists led by the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB) at Indiana University Bloomington and the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. A bullet-point list of the Science paper's most important findings appears at the end of this release.

"Daphnia's high gene number is largely because its genes are multiplying, by creating copies at a higher rate than other species," said project leader and CGB genomics director John Colbourne. "We estimate a rate that is three times greater than those of other invertebrates and 30 percent greater than that of humans."

Scientists have studied Daphnia for centuries because of its importance in aquatic food webs and for its transformational responses to environmental stress. Predators signal some of the animals to produce exaggerated spines, neck-teeth or helmets in self-defense. And like the virgin nymph of Greek mythology that shares its name, Daphnia thrives in the absence of males -- by clonal reproduction, until harsh environmental conditions favor the benefits of sex."More than one-third of Daphnia's genes are undocumented in any other organism -- in other words, they are completely new to science," says Don Gilbert, coauthor and Department of Biology scientist at IU Bloomington.

Sequenced genomes often contain some fraction of genes with unknown functions, even among the most well-studied genetic model species for biomedical research, such as the fruit fly Drosophila. By using microarrays (containing millions of DNA strands affixed to microscope slides) that are made to measure the conditions under which these new genes are transcribed into precursors for proteins, experiments that subjected Daphnia to environmental stressors point to these unknown genes having ecologically significant functions.

"If such large fractions of genomes evolved to cope with environmental challenges, information from traditional model species used only in laboratory studies may be insufficient to discover the roles for a considerable number of animal genes," Colbourne said. Daphnia is emerging as a model organism for a new field of science -- Environmental Genomics -- that aims to better understand how the environment and genes interact. This includes a practical need to apply scientific developments from this field toward managing our water resources and protecting human health from chemical pollutants in the environment.

James E. Klaunig, professor and chair of the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation's Department of Environmental Health at IU Bloomington, predicts the present work will yield a more realistic and scientifically-based risk evaluation. "Genome research on the responses of animals to stress has important implications for assessing environmental risks to humans," Klaunig said. "The Daphnia system is an exquisite aquatic sensor, a potential high-tech and modern version of the mineshaft canary. With knowledge of its genome, and using both field sampling and laboratory studies, the possible effects of environmental agents on cellular and molecular processes can be resolved and linked to similar processes in humans."

The idea behind environmental genomics for risk assessment is fairly simple. Daphnia's gene expression patterns change depending on its environment, and the patterns indicate what state its cells are in. A water flea bobbing in water containing a chemical pollutant will express by tuning-up or tuning-down a suite of genes differently than its clonal sisters accustomed to water without the pollutant. Importantly, the health effects of most industrially produced compounds at relevant concentrations and mixtures in the environment are unknown, because current testing procedures are too slow, too costly, and unable to indicate the causes for their effects on animals, including human. The new findings suggest that Daphnia's research tools (like microarrays) and genome information can provide a higher-throughput and information-rich method of measuring the condition of our water supply.

A requisite for reaching model system status is a large research community that contributes to its growing body of knowledge and resources. Over the course of the project, the Daphnia Genomics Consortium has grown from a handful of founding members to more than 450 investigators distributed around the globe. Nearly 200 scientists have contributed published work resulting from the genome study, many in open-source journals published as a thematic series by BioMedCentral.M I B S I T B T

Out of Africa -- how the fruit fly made its way in the world

Fruit flies that moved from sub-Saharan Africa found themselves confronted by conditions very different from those to which they were accustomed. Most obviously, the average temperatures were considerably lower and so it is no surprise that the flies had to adapt to cope with life in the north. As a result of thousands of years of evolution, populations in sub-Saharan African and in Europe now differ dramatically in a number of characteristics known to relate to temperature (such as pigmentation, size and resistance to cold). Schlötterer's previous work had suggested that a single gene, interestingly known as cramped (crm), might be involved in helping the flies survive in a colder environment but conclusive proof was lacking.

The crm protein is a transcription factor, so Jean-Michel Gibert in Schlötterer's laboratory decided to investigate what genes it could regulate, continuing to work on the project following his move to the University of Geneva. Gibert and Schlötterer focused in particular on genes known to be involved in wing development, such as the so-called cubitus interruptus (ci) gene, the regulation of which is known to depend on temperature. Satisfyingly, they were able to show that crm is absolutely required for the inactivation of the ci gene.

M I B S I T B T

Where did flowers come from? New Research reveals

The University at Buffalo is a key partner in a $7.3 million, multi-institution collaboration to explore the origins of all flowers by sequencing the genome of Amborella, a unique species that one researcher has nicknamed the "platypus of flowering plants."

Amborella is an understory shrub or small tree found in only one place on the planet: the Pacific islands of New Caledonia. The plant, a direct descendant of the common ancestor of all flowering plants, is the single known living species on the earliest branch of the genetic tree of life of flowering plants. As such, Amborella is a molecular living fossil, said Victor Albert, UB Empire Innovation Professor in biological sciences and a co-principal investigator on the Amborella genome project.

In the same way that the DNA of the platypus, a mammal of ancient lineage, can help us study the evolution of all mammals, the DNA of Amborella can help us learn about the evolution of all flowers, Albert said. Specifically, by comparing the genetic make-up of Amborella to that of newer species, biologists will be able to study a diverse range of plant characteristics, from how flowers resist drought and how fruits mature to how critical crops might respond to global warming.

"This is work that's related to the human condition in various ways. We're talking about food, fiber, fuel and the future," said Albert, a faculty member in UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. "Most of our food comes from flowers. All the fruit crops and grains are flowering plants. Cotton fiber is from fruit, and fruits come from flowers. Soybeans are fruits. Rice comes from the seed of a flowering plant."

Albert's co-investigators include Claude W. dePamphilis at Pennsylvania State University, who is leading the research; Hong Ma and Stephan Schuster at Penn State; Douglas E. Soltis, Pamela S. Soltis and W. Brad Barbazuk at the University of Florida; Steven D. Rounsley at the University of Arizona; James Leebens-Mack at the University of Georgia; Jeffrey Palmer at Indiana University; and Susan Wessler at the University of California, Riverside. The National Science Foundation is funding the project.

The team plans to complete and publish a draft sequence of the Amborella genome this year, Albert said. To share results with scientists around the world, the group will make the genome available online. "The Amborella genome and the strategies we are using to obtain and analyze the genome will provide not only a unique scientific resource with broad impacts on plant biology, but it also will provide excellent opportunities to demonstrate the utility of an evolutionary perspective across the biological sciences," said Albert, who is also a member of teams sequencing the genomes of coffee and avocado.

The Amborella project builds on another floral genetics project that dePamphilis of Penn State led. In that earlier study, he and partners including Albert sought information on the origins of flowers by comparing active genes of flowering plants including Amborella and non-flowering plants called gymnosperms. The team published major findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December, reporting that genetic programming found in gymnosperm cones gave rise to flowering plants.

The Amborella genome project is the natural next step: Now that we know more about how the first flowers evolved, what can we learn about how they diversified? With a fossil record dating to just over 130 million years ago, flowering plants now include as many as 400,000 species on land and in water. Sequencing a genome involves determining the order in which nucleotide bases -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine -- appear in strands of DNA. To complete this task, the Amborella team is employing "shotgun" technology that breaks DNA into tiny bits, sequences those bits simultaneously and reassembles them into a long chain. The approach is cheaper and quicker than older methods that require scientists to sequence entire strands of DNA in order, beginning at one end and moving to the other.

At UB, Albert and fellow researchers will use visual mapping to check their colleagues' work, examining large pieces of sequenced DNA under a microscope to make sure those pieces fit correctly on Amborella chromosomes. (Though scientists do not know the exact sequence of the Amborella genome, they do already know how large chunks of DNA map to one another.) UB researchers will also compare Amborella's genetic material to that of other plants, including rice, the cucumber, the tomato and the potato.

The goal of these comparative studies is to learn more about whole-genome duplication, a commonplace process in flowers in which a new plant inherits an extra, duplicate copy of its parents' DNA. Because redundant copies of genes can evolve to develop new functions, scientists think that whole-genome duplication may be behind "Darwin's abominable mystery" -- the abrupt proliferation of new varieties of flowering plants in fossil records dating to the Cretaceous period. Amborella has relatively few chromosomes, leading biologists including Albert to conclude that the species may never have undergone such a doubling.

Besides research, the Amborella genome project also includes plans for creating education, training and mentoring opportunities for high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

Source : University at BuffaloM I B S I T B T

Nerve cells can distinguish odors.............But How????? New Research Reveals

Whether different odors can be quickly distinguished depends on certain synapses in the brain that inhibit nerve stimulation. The researchers in Professor Dr. Thomas Kuner's team at the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Heidelberg University Medical School and Dr. Andreas Schäfer at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research have shown that mice in which a certain receptor in the olfactory center is missing can distinguish similar smells more quickly than mice without genetic manipulation. This behavior was directly attributed to inhibitor loops between adjacent nerve cells.

The discovery of the activation principle of "lateral inhibition" in the eye 43 years ago by Haldan K. Hartline, George Wald, and Ragnar Granit was honored with a Nobel Prize. The Heidelberg researchers have for the first time succeeded in confirming the same mechanism for the olfactory system, from the molecular level to behavior. The results of the studies were published in the prestigious journal "Neuron".

Odors attach to receptors of olfactory cells in nasal mucosa, where they trigger nerve signals. These signals are processed in what is known as the olfactory bulb, a part of the brain. In the neuronal network, the incoming signal is converted to a specific electrical pattern that is transmitted to the cerebral cortex and other areas of the brain and is recognized there. Local inhibitor loops make recognizing smells more preciseM I B S I T B T

Fluorescent compounds make tumors glow....New research reveals.

A series of novel imaging agents could light up tumors as they begin to form – before they turn deadly – and signal their transition to aggressive cancers. The compounds – fluorescent inhibitors of the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) – could have broad applications for detecting tumors earlier, monitoring a tumor's transition from pre-malignancy to more aggressive growth, and defining tumor margins during surgical removal.

"We're very excited about these new agents and are moving forward to develop them for human clinical trials," said Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., the leader of the Vanderbilt University team that developed the compounds, which are described in the May 1 issue of Cancer Research. COX-2 is an attractive target for molecular imaging. It's not found in most normal tissues, and then it is "turned on" in inflammatory lesions and tumors, Marnett explained.

"COX-2 is expressed at the earliest stages of pre-malignancy – in pre-malignant lesions, but not in surrounding normal tissue – and as a tumor grows and becomes increasingly malignant, COX-2 levels go up," Marnett said. Compounds that bind selectively to COX-2 – and carry a fluorescent marker – should act as "beacons" for tumor cells and for inflammation.

Marnett and his colleagues previously demonstrated that fluorescent COX-2 inhibitors – which they have now dubbed "fluorocoxibs" – were useful probes for protein binding, but their early molecules were not appropriate for cellular or in vivo imaging. "It was a real challenge to make a compound that is COX-2 selective (doesn't bind to the related COX-1 enzyme), has desirable fluorescence properties, and gets to the tissue in vivo," Marnett said.

To develop such compounds, Jashim Uddin, Ph.D., research assistant professor of Biochemistry, started with the "core" chemical structure of the anti-inflammatory medicines indomethacin and celecoxib. He then tethered various fluorescent parts to the core structure, ultimately synthesizing more than 200 compounds. The group tested each compound for its interaction with purified COX-2 and COX-1 proteins and then assessed promising compounds for COX-2 selectivity and fluorescence in cultured cells and in animals. Two compounds made the cut.M I B S I T B T

Did You know ? 1 in 25 people have gene that causes heart failure in India

One in 25 people from India and other south Asian countries carries a mutated gene that causes heart failure.

Studying this gene, and the protein it encodes, could lead to new treatments for heart failure, Loyola University Health System researcher Sakthivel Sadayappan, PhD, wrote in a recent review article in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. Sadayappan has studied the gene and protein for 15 years. Investigating the protein could provide "a better understanding of the mechanics of heart function during health and disease," Sadayappan and first author David Barefield wrote. Barefield is a graduate student and Sadayappan is an assistant professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Previous studies by Sadayappan and other researchers found that about 4 percent of people who live in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia carry the mutation. Carriers have about a 90 percent chance of developing heart failure after age 45. About 60 million people worldwide, including about 40 million Indians, carry the mutation. (Sadayappan, who is from India, is not a carrier.) Sadayappan said the mutation likely arose in a single person roughly 33,000 years ago, and spread throughout south Asia.

The gene encodes for a protein, called cardiac myosin binding protein-C (cMyBP-C), that is critical for the normal functioning of the heart. In the mutated gene, 25 base pairs (DNA letters) are missing. As a result, the tail end of the protein is altered. Due to this modification, the protein is not properly incorporated into the functioning unit of cardiac muscle called sarcomere. Consequently, the heart does not contract properly. In younger carriers, the heart can compensate for this defect. But as the person ages, his or her heart is no longer able to compensate. Heart muscle becomes inflamed and does not work well, a condition called cardiomyopathy. The most common manifestation of cardiomyopathy is heart failure -- the heart can't pump enough blood to the rest of the body.M I B S I T B T

Fond of Dark Chocolates...!!! Then good news it lowers blood pressure

For people with hypertension, eating dark chocolate can significantly reduce blood pressure. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medicine combined the results of 15 studies into the effects of flavanols, the compounds in chocolate which cause dilation of blood vessels, on blood pressure.

Dr Karin Ried worked with a team of researchers from the University of Adelaide, Australia, to conduct the analysis. She said, "Flavanols have been shown to increase the formation of endothelial nitric oxide, which promotes vasodilation and consequently may lower blood pressure. There have, however, been conflicting results as to the real-life effects of eating chocolate. We've found that consumption can significantly, albeit modestly, reduce blood pressure for people with high blood pressure but not for people with normal blood pressure".

The pressure reduction seen in the combined results for people with hypertension, 5mm Hg systolic, may be clinically relevant – it is comparable to the known effects of 30 daily minutes of physical activity (4-9mm Hg) and could theoretically reduce the risk of a cardiovascular event by about 20% over five years. The researchers are cautious, however, "The practicability of chocolate or cocoa drinks as long-term treatment is questionable", said Dr Ried.

Source : BioMed CentralM I B S I T B T

Brief Illustration Of Transgenic Method For Creating Transgenic Mice

Genetically engineered animals have been used from decades. These genetically engineered or modified animals play a vital role in the unearthing, development and improvement of new methods and techniques of the treatment of many diseases that had been a threat to the survival and healthy way of life of the mankind. Their different techniques (such as the use of transgenic mice, knockout mice and others) help the genetic engineers and researchers to differentiate new strings of human genome. Due to their graceful work, pharmaceutical industry has grown extensively and helped mankind in the treatment of various deadly diseases and still on the road of development. Because of the development of biomedical research, the use of transgenic animals has been considerably increased. According to the government rules and regulations and other renowned pharmaceutical companies’ inflexible reviews, authorize the use of transgenic animals when there is no alternative left. In the twentieth century, all biomedical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs are the upshot of research on animals.

There are two major techniques for commencing transgenic method in mice, which are pronuclear injection and embryonic stem cells. Pronuclear injection means that peculiar DNA is injected in the pronucleus of a fertilized egg of a mouse which is then integrated in the genome at unsystematic location mostly after two cell divisions. It means that the mouse will be partial transgenic in nature because that peculiar DNA is not a part in each and every cell of the body. The sperms or eggs of these partial transgenic mice are then manipulated to produce entirely Transgenic mice in the next generation. Another method of creating transgenic mice, embryonic stem cells, is inducing DNA in the stem cells of embryo which is randomly integrated in the genome. However, if it has a structure alike to the existing fraction of genome then it goes through the homologous recombination and a sole copy is incorporated at a particular location in the genome. These peculiar cells are then injected into the host embryo, allowing them to grow and be a part of it. Chimera is a terminology that is used for a mouse that is grown from the host embryo, which is created from embryonic cells of two separate mice. Several sperms generated by chimera would be transgenic in nature and as soon as they fertilize a regular egg, the result would be fully transgenic mice comprising that peculiar DNA in every cell.

Guest Post by Sophie Alexander from http://www.transposagenbio.com/
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M I B S I T B T

Why fish don't freeze in the Arctic Ocean

Temperatures of minus 1.8 ° C should really be enough to freeze any fish: the freezing point of fish blood is about minus 0.9 ° C. How Antarctic fish are able to keep moving at these temperatures has interested researchers for a long time. As long as 50 years ago, special frost protection proteins were found in the blood of these fish. These so-called anti-freeze proteins work better than any household antifreeze. How they work, however, was still unclear. The Bochum researchers used a special technique, terahertz spectroscopy, to unravel the underlying mechanism. With the aid of terahertz radiation, the collective motion of water molecules and proteins can be recorded. Thus, the working group has already been able to show that water molecules, which usually perform a permanent dance in liquid water, and constantly enter new bonds, dance a more ordered dance in the presence of proteins – "the disco dance becomes a minuet" says Prof. Havenith.

Souvenir from an Antarctic expedition

The subject of the current investigations was the anti-freeze glycoproteins of the Antarctic toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni, which one of the American partners, Arthur L. Devries, had fished himself on an Antarctic expedition. "We could see that the protein has an especially long-range effect on the water molecules around it. We speak of an extended dynamical hydration shell", says co-author Konrad Meister. "This effect, which prevents ice crystallization, is even more pronounced at low temperatures than at room temperature", adds Prof. Havenith. Nevertheless, to freeze the water, lower temperatures would be necessary. Complexation of the AFP by borate strongly reduces the antifreeze activity. In this case, the researchers also found no change in the terahertz dance. The researchers' results provide evidence for a new model of how AFGPs prevent water from freezing: Antifreeze activity is not achieved by a single molecular binding between the protein and the water, but instead AFP perturbs the aqueous solvent over long distances. The investigation demonstrated for the first time a direct link between the function of a protein and its signature in the terahertz range. The studies were funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Source : Ruhr-University BochumM I B S I T B T

Mosquitoes use several different kinds of odor sensors to track human prey...Quite intelligent..!!!

It now appears that the malaria mosquito needs more than one family of odor sensors to sniff out its human prey. The experiments described in the paper provide striking new evidence that Anopheles gambiae – the species of mosquito that spreads malaria that infects some 250 million and kills 900,000 people annually – has a second set of olfactory sensors that are fundamentally different from the set of sensors that scientists have known about and have been studying for the last 10 years.

The discovery may help explain a puzzling question that has been plaguing scientists trying to develop new and more effective forms of mosquito lures and repellents: "The ORs [odorant receptors] that were identified in the lab before don't respond to a lot of human odors," says Vanderbilt graduate student Chao Liu, who is the lead author on the paper. "Now that we have a new set of receptors, we may be able to fill in the picture."

There is a good chance that this new set of receptors may be specifically tuned to detect a number of the odorants given off by humans, adds co-author R. Jason Pitts, a senior research specialist and graduate student at Vanderbilt. "If this is the case then it is quite likely that it will play a critical role in attempts to develop improved lures and repellents to control the spread of malaria." According to Pitts, they also have preliminary evidence that the mosquito's olfactory system may include additional families of sensors as well.

Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences and Pharmacology Laurence Zwiebel, who was the principal investigator on the study, heads a major interdisciplinary research project to develop new ways to control by spread of malaria based on mosquito olfaction supported by the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative funded by the Foundation for NIH through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"It's not at all surprising that the mosquito's olfactory system is more sophisticated than we thought," says Zwiebel. "Olfaction is absolutely essential to the mosquito. If the female cannot find a host for a blood meal she cannot reproduce. As a result, mosquitoes have developed an uncanny ability to detect odors. This is true of all species of mosquitoes, not just Anopheles. So it is highly likely that the mosquitoes that spread West Nile, dengue fever, yellow fever and encephalitis also have similar sets of odor sensors."

About ten years ago, when the mosquito genome was first sequenced, scientists at Vanderbilt and Yale identified the genes and the structure of one set of Anopheles sensors, called odorant receptors (AgORs). At first, they thought that these receptors had the same basic design as the sensors found in the nose of humans and other mammals. But recent studies have found that the mosquito receptors, along with those of several other insects, have a distinctly different structure.

Researchers have identified about 75 different AgORs that respond to a variety of volatile compounds. These receptors are expressed on the surface of nerves located in tiny hollow spikes, called sensilla, located on the mosquito's antennae. When a target molecule wafts into the interior of one of these sensilla and comes into contact with the AgOR designed to detect it, the receptor causes the nerve to fire, signaling the compound's presence. Earlier this year the Vanderbilt researchers and their colleagues at Yale succeeded in pairing more than 40 of the AgORs with the specific odorants that trigger them. In the process, the researchers discovered that these receptors are broadly tuned. That is, each receptor responds to a number of different compounds. They also overlap. More than one AgOR responds to individual odorants.

As a result, last year when scientists at Rockefeller University announced they had discovered a second set of olfactory receptors in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an animal model for basic genetics, "it was like a light switched on," says Pitts. Because of the many parallels between the olfactory systems of the fruit fly and mosquito, the Vanderbilt researchers knew it was extremely likely that the mosquito had a second set of receptors as well. So they began searching for them.The search was successful and the researchers identified genes that code for about 50 versions of the new type receptor. The new receptors appear to have a slightly different structure from that of AgORs: They are called "ionotropic receptors" (AgIRs) and they closely resemble the type of receptor found in the brain that responds to the common neurotransmitter, glutamate.

At this point, the researchers can only speculate about what effect this structural difference has on the way that the AgIRs function as odor detectors. However, they have managed to associate an AgIR with butylamine, a human odorant that AgORs do not appear to identify. Butylamine sensitivity is located in grooved peg sensilla, a type of sensory hair on the mosquito antennae. The correlation of AgIR to butylamine could indicate that AgIRs are responsible for grooved peg sensilla sensitivities to other human odors such as ammonia and lactic acid, an idea that the Zwiebel Lab has begun exploring.

The basic problem facing the mosquito searching for human prey – and the humans who are trying to figure out how it does it – is that none of the hundreds of odors given off by humans are necessarily unique. They are actually produced by the bacteria that live on human skin. But these bacteria live on other animals as well. So the current theory is that mosquitoes must identify a blend of different odorants that provide a unique signature for humans. Determining the way that the AgIRs work may be the key to identifying such a signature and that, in turn, could be the key to developing non-toxic, ecologically benign methods for combating malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses.

Source : Vanderbilt University

Immunogenicity Summit 2011

Immunogenicity Summit 2011

M I B S I T B T

Are sharks color blind?

Sharks are unable to distinguish colors, even though their close relatives rays and chimaeras have some color vision, according to new research by Dr. Nathan Scott Hart and colleagues from the University of Western Australia and the University of Queensland in Australia. Their study shows that although the eyes of sharks function over a wide range of light levels, they only have a single long-wavelength-sensitive cone* type in the retina and therefore are potentially totally color blind. Hart and team's findings are published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature.

"This new research on how sharks see may help to prevent attacks on humans and assist in the development of fishing gear that may reduce shark bycatch in long-line fisheries. Our study shows that contrast against the background, rather than colour per se, may be more important for object detection by sharks. This may help us to design long-line fishing lures that are less attractive to sharks as well as to design swimming attire and surf craft that have a lower visual contrast to sharks and, therefore, are less 'attractive' to them," said Prof. Hart.

Sharks are efficient predators and their evolutionary success is thought to be due in part to an impressive range of sensory systems, including vision. To date, it is unclear whether sharks have color vision, despite well-developed eyes and a large sensory brain area dedicated to the processing of visual information. In an attempt to demonstrate whether or not sharks have color vision, Hart and colleagues used a different technique - microspectrophotometry - to identify cone visual pigments in shark retinas and measure their spectral absorbance.

They looked at the retinas of 17 shark species caught in a variety of waters in both Queensland and Western Australia. Rod cells were the most common type of photoreceptor in all species. In ten of the 17 species, no cone cells were observed. However, cones were found in the retinae of 7 species of shark from three different families and in each case only a single type of long-wavelength-sensitive cone photoreceptor was present. Hart and team's results provide strong evidence that sharks possess only a single cone type, suggesting that sharks may be cone monochromats, and therefore potentially totally color blind.

The authors conclude : "While cone monochromacy on land is rare, it may be a common strategy in the marine environment. Many aquatic mammals − whales, dolphins and seals − also possess only a single, green-sensitive cone type. It appears that both sharks and marine mammals may have arrived at the same visual design by convergent evolution, in other words, they acquired the same biological trait in unrelated lineages."

Source : Springer

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New TB vaccine enters proof-of-concept trial in people living with HIV

Aeras and the Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium (OETC) announce today the start of a Phase IIb proof-of-concept efficacy trial of a new investigational tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that involves people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The trial will be conducted at research sites in Senegal and South Africa with primary funding support from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP). TB is a leading cause of death for people infected with HIV and the second leading infectious disease killer in the world. This is the first proof-of-concept efficacy trial in people infected with HIV using MVA85A, which is being developed by OETC (a joint venture between the University of Oxford and Emergent BioSolutions) and Aeras. It is expected that the trial will generate important safety, immunogenicity and efficacy data about this vaccine.

The trial will test the vaccine candidate in approximately 1,400 adults ages 18-50 who are infected with HIV. The study will be led by the UK Medical Research Council in The Gambia, Aeras, and the University of Oxford, and conducted at two sites by the University of Cape Town (UCT) Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine in Khayelitsha, South Africa and Laboratoire de Bacteriologie-Virologie du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Aristide Le Dantec in Dakar, Senegal. This follows the first proof-of-concept clinical trial of the same candidate TB vaccine, which recently reached full enrollment with almost 3,000 infant participants in South Africa. "Clinical trials of new vaccines against tuberculosis must be an urgent priority on our agenda, as too many lives are lost to TB, especially among people living with HIV," said Member of the European Parliament Michael Cashman. "I recently visited a clinical trial site of this vaccine candidate in infants in South Africa, and I was impressed with the progress. I am anxious to see a new TB vaccine licensed, and I am proud that European Union Member States are investing in this critically-important work."

Professor Charles Mgone, Executive Director of EDCTP, said, "The TB and HIV co-epidemic is devastating, requiring a concerted global response. EDCTP in partnership with Aeras, Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium and others is committed to accelerate research and development of this promising vaccine against tuberculosis by co-financing the clinical trial as an essential part in its evaluation."

Tuberculosis kills 1.7 million people per year, and more than two billion people worldwide are infected with TB – approximately one out of every three people on the planet. People infected with HIV living in countries with high TB prevalence are 20 times more likely to develop TB than those who are HIV-negative. In 2008, there were an estimated 1.4 million new cases of TB among persons with HIV infection, and TB accounted for 23 percent of AIDS-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, the only currently-licensed vaccine against TB, is not effective in preventing adult pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease. "A new, more effective TB vaccine would be game-changing in international efforts to eliminate TB globally by 2050," said Jim Connolly, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aeras. "Studies have already shown that this promising vaccine has an acceptable safety profile and stimulates strong immune responses in HIV-infected individuals."

Aeras is the trial sponsor, and significant funding is provided by EDCTP, a pan-European body that supports multicenter projects which combine clinical trials, capacity building and networking. This study has been approved by the Medicines Control Council of South Africa, the South African Department of Health, and the Comité National d'Ethique pour la Recherche en Santé (CNERS) in Senegal. The Scientific Institute of Public Health (WIV-ISP) in Belgium, which first identified the antigen 85A for possible use in a vaccine candidate, is providing in-kind laboratory services for the study. "Together with our partners, Emergent BioSolutions is proud to be leading the development of a new vaccine to defeat TB, one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases. This trial is particularly critical because of its focus on adults living with HIV. If we are successful, MVA85A will help make the dream of a world free from TB a reality," said Fuad El-Hibri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Emergent BioSolutions. 

"It is great to see the vaccine candidate we initially developed at Oxford University reach this stage of clinical trials," said Dr. Helen McShane, a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. "In the next few years we should begin to get results on how effective the vaccine is in protecting those who are most at risk of TB. It's our hope that this vaccine will turn out to be a powerful new weapon to combat TB in the parts of the world that need it most."

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Like humans, amoebae pack a lunch before they travel

Some amoebae do what many people do. Before they travel, they pack a lunch.

In results of a study reported today in the journal Nature, evolutionary biologists Joan Strassmann and David Queller of Rice University show that long-studied social amoebae Dictyostellum discoideum (commonly known as slime molds) increase their odds of survival through a rudimentary form of agriculture. Research by lead author Debra Brock, a graduate student at Rice, found that some amoebae sequester their food--particular strains of bacteria--for later use.

"We now know that primitively social slime molds have genetic variation in their ability to farm beneficial bacteria as a food source," says George Gilchrist, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research. "But the catch is that with the benefits of a portable food source, comes the cost of harboring harmful bacteria." After these "farmer" amoebae aggregate into a slug, they migrate in search of nourishment--and form a fruiting body, or a stalk of dead amoebae topped by a sorus, a structure containing fertile spores. Then they release the bacteria-containing spores to the environment as feedstock for continued growth.

The findings run counter to the presumption that all "Dicty" eat everything in sight before they enter the social spore-forming stage. Non-farmer amoebae do eat everything, but farmers were found to leave food uneaten, and their slugs don't travel as far. Perhaps because they don't have to. The advantages of going hungry now to ensure a good food supply later are clear, as farmers are able to thrive in environments in which non-farmers find little food. The researchers found that about a third of wild-collected Dicty are farmers. Instead of consuming all the bacteria they encounter, these amoebae eat less and incorporate bacteria into their migratory systems.

Brock showed that carrying bacteria is a genetic trait by eliminating all living bacteria from four farmers and four non-farmers--the control group--by treating them with antibiotics. All amoebae were grown on dead bacteria; tests confirmed that they were free of live bacteria. When the eight clones were then fed live bacteria, the farmers all regained their abilities to seed bacteria colonies, while the non-farmers did not. Dicty farmers are always farmers; non-farmers never learn.

Rice graduate student Tracy Douglas co-authored the paper with Brock, Queller and Strassmann. She confirmed that farmers and non-farmers belong to the same species and do not form a distinct evolved group. Still, mysteries remain.

The researchers want to know what genetic differences separate farmers from non-farmers. They also wonder why farmer clones don't migrate as far as their counterparts.

It might be a consequence of bacterial interference, they say, or an evolved response, since farmers carry the seeds of their own food supply and don't need to go as far. Also, some seemingly useless or even harmful bacteria are not consumed as food, but may serve an as-yet-undetermined function, Brock says.

That has implications for treating disease as it may, for instance, provide clues to the way tuberculosis bacteria invade cells, says Strassmann, infecting the host while resisting attempts to break them down. The results demonstrate the importance of working in natural environments with wild organisms whose complex ties to their living environment have not been broken.

Source : National Science Foundation

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Your genome in minutes: New technology could slash sequencing time

Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person's genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques.

The researchers have patented an early prototype technology that they believe could lead to an ultrafast commercial DNA sequencing tool within ten years. Their work is described in a study published this month in the journal 'Nano Letters' and it is supported by the Wellcome Trust Translational Award and the Corrigan Foundation.

The research suggests that scientists could eventually sequence an entire genome in a single lab procedure, whereas at present it can only be sequenced after being broken into pieces in a highly complex and time-consuming process. Fast and inexpensive genome sequencing could allow ordinary people to unlock the secrets of their own DNA, revealing their personal susceptibility to diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer. Medical professionals are already using genome sequencing to understand population-wide health issues and research ways to tailor individualised treatments or preventions.

Dr Joshua Edel, one of the authors on the study from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, said: "Compared with current technology, this device could lead to much cheaper sequencing: just a few dollars, compared with $1m to sequence an entire genome in 2007. We haven't tried it on a whole genome yet but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes, providing huge benefits for medical tests, or DNA profiles for police and security work. It should be significantly faster and more reliable, and would be easy to scale up to create a device with the capacity to read up to 10 million bases per second, versus the typical 10 bases per second you get with the present day single molecule real-time techniques."

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Learning the language of bacteria

Bacteria are among the simplest organisms in nature, but many of them can still talk to each other, using a chemical "language" that is critical to the process of infection. Sending and receiving chemical signals allows bacteria to mind their own business when they are scarce and vulnerable, and then mount an attack after they become numerous enough to overwhelm the host's immune system.

This system, called "quorum sensing," is an interesting example of sophistication among microbes, says Helen Blackwell, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In practical terms, she adds, quorum sensing may provide an alternative therapeutic target as bacteria continue to evolve resistance to antibiotics.

Theoretically, blocking quorum sensing would prevent the bacteria from turning pathogenic and producing the toxins that are an immediate cause of disease in bacterial infections.

Bacteria use simple chemical signals to control quorum sensing, and Blackwell is interested in how these compounds work and in developing new ways to intercept them. In a study just published online in the journal ChemBioChem, Blackwell and colleagues Andrew Palmer, Evan Streng and Kelsea Jewell showed that several species of bacteria can respond to identical signals, suggesting that one drug could battle quorum sensing in several types of bacteria. Many bacteria use a class of molecules called lactones for quorum sensing, and Blackwell's lab has synthesized many non-native lactones, and then tested them in two species of bacteria that use identical native lactone signals. Overall, the organisms responded similarly to the same synthetic molecules, despite the dramatic differences between the species. These results suggest that the same basic chemical sensing mechanism could be common among microbes, Blackwell says. "That tells us that we can use these classes of chemicals to study — and perhaps eventually fight — a much broader range of bacteria."

Finding a broad-spectrum activity for the synthetic lactones is good news, Blackwell adds. "Bacteria come in countless varieties, and the ability to target multiple organisms with one compound could streamline the search for drugs. At the same time, we also have found differences in signal selectivity that may allow us to target some bacteria while ignoring others." That could provide the best of both worlds, Blackwell says. One drug might halt multiple infections, but related drugs might affect only one microbe in a mixture. "The data indicate that it should be possible to design and use compounds that are either selective or broad-spectrum."

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How we come to know our bodies as our own

[PRESS RELEASE, 17 June 2011] By taking advantage of a 'body swap' illusion, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have captured the brain regions involved in one of the most fundamental aspects of self-awareness: how we recognize our bodies as our own, distinct from others and from the outside world. That self-perception is traced to specialized multisensory neurons in various parts of the brain that integrate different sensory inputs across all body parts into a unified view of the body. The findings, reported in the journal Current Biology, may have important medical and industrial applications.

Activity in the brain associated with the illusion of owning a manniquin's body. Credit: Current Biology and the study authors

"When we look down at our body, we immediately experience that it belongs to us," says Valeria Petkova, one of the researchers behind the study. "We do not experience our body as a set of fragmented parts, but rather as a single entity. Our study is the first to tackle the important question of how we come to have the unitary experience of owning an entire body."

Earlier studies showed that the integration of visual, tactile and proprioceptive information (the sense of the relative position of body parts) in multisensory areas constitutes a mechanism for the self-attribution of single limbs, the researchers explained. But how ownership of individual body parts translates into the unitary experience of owning a whole body remained a mystery.

In the current study, the researchers used a 'body-swap' illusion, in which people experienced a mannequin to be their own, in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants observed touching of the mannequi's body from the point of view of the mannequin's head while feeling identical synchronous touches on his or her own body, which they could not see. Those studies revealed a tight coupling between the experience of full-body ownership and neural responses in brain regions known to represent multisensory processing nodes in the primate brain, specifically the bilateral ventral premotor and left intraparietal cortices and the left putamen.

Activation in those multisensory areas was stronger when the stimulated body part was attached to a body, as compared with when it was detached, they report, evidence that the integrity between body segments facilitates ownership of the parts. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that the integration of visual, tactile and proprioceptive information in body-part-centered reference frames represents a basic neural mechanism underlying the feeling of ownership of entire bodies.

"Understanding the mechanisms underlying the self-attribution of a body in the healthy brain can help developing better diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to address pathological disturbances of bodily self- perception," says Associate Professor Henrik Ehrsson, who led the study. "In addition, understanding the mechanisms of perceiving an entire body or a body part as belonging to oneself can have important implications for the design and production of mechanical prosthesis or robotic substitutes for paralyzed or amputated body parts."

Publication:

Valeria I. Petkova, Malin Björnsdotter, Giovanni Gentile, Tomas Jonsson, Tie-Qiang Li, H. Henrik Ehrsson

From part to whole body ownership in the multisensory brain

Current Biology, Volume 21; Issue 13, online 16 June 2011

• Journal website

For questions, please contact:

PhD Valeria Petkova

Work:

+46 (0)85248 7989

E-mail:

• valeria.petkova@ki.se

• Department of neuroscience

Associate Professor Henrik Ehrsson

Work:

+46 (0)8 524 87 231

E-mail:

• Henrik.Ehrsson@ki.se

• Contact the press office and download photos

Last modified by: Katarina Sternudd 2011-06-17

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Bacterium engineered with DNA in which thymine is replaced by synthetic building block

The genetic information of all living cells is stored in the DNA composed of the four canonical bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). An international team of researchers has now succeeded in generating a bacterium possessing a DNA in which thymine is replaced by the synthetic building block 5-chlorouracil (c), a substance toxic for other organisms.The project, coordinated by Rupert Mutzel (Institut für Biologie, Freie Universität Berlin) and Philippe Marlière (Heurisko USA Inc.), involved researchers of the French CEA (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) and of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). As described in the latest issue of Angewandte Chemie International Edition, the experimental work was based on a unique technology developed by Marlière and Mutzel enabling the directed evolution of organisms under strictly controlled conditions. Large populations of microbial cells are cultured for prolonged periods in the presence of a toxic chemical -- in this case, 5-chlorouracil -- at sublethal levels, thereby selecting for genetic variants capable of tolerating higher concentrations of the toxic substance.
In response to the appearance of such variants in the cell population the concentration of the toxic chemical in the growth medium is increased, thus keeping the selection pressure constant. This automated procedure of long term evolution was applied to adapt genetically engineered Escherichia coli bacteria unable to synthesize the natural nucleobase thymine to grow on increasing concentrations of 5-chlorouracil. After a culture period of about 1000 generations descendants of the original strain were obtained which used 5-chlorouracil as complete substitute for thymine. Subsequent genome analysis revealed numerous mutations in the DNA of the adapted bacteria. The contribution of these mutations to the adaptation of the cells towards the halogenated base will be the subject of follow-up studies.
Besides the obvious interest of this radical change in the chemistry of living systems for basic research the scientists consider the outcome of their work also to be of importance for "xenobiology," a branch of synthetic biology. This young area of the life sciences aims at the generation of new organisms not found in nature harboring metabolic traits optimized for alternative modes of energy production or for the synthesis of high value chemicals. Like GMOs, such organisms are seen as a potential threat for natural ecosystems when released from their laboratory confinements, either through direct competition with wild type organisms or through diffusion of their "synthetic" DNA.
Scientists have recognized that physical containment cannot in every single case prevent engineered live forms from reaching natural habitats, in the same way as radioactive isotopes can leak into the surroundings of a nuclear power plant. However, synthetic organisms like those evolved by Marlière and Mutzel and their collaborators which depend on the availability of substances for their proliferation not found in nature or which incorporate non-natural building blocks in their genetic material could neither compete nor exchange genetic messages with wild type organisms, but would die in the absence of the xenobioticM I B S I T B T

A man from Alabama first to receive Stem Cell Therapy

A man from Alabama has become the first person in the United States to receive a highly-debated embryonic stem cell transplant. Researchers are hoping the technology will be a game changer for those with debilitating spinal cord injuries.

TJ Atchinson hopes he's living the dream of Superman Christopher Reeve -- to become the first human to receive embryonic stem cell therapy. Atchinson was paralyzed following a devastating car accident."I realized I couldn't feel from (the top) down," Atchinson said. "When I got to the hospital, they said I would never walk again."

Atchinson was still accepting the news when doctors told him he'd be a great candidate for the stem cell therapy. Though he was injured just a few days before getting the offer, his body was strong and his will was even stronger. Atchinson agreed to be a laboratory of hope -- the first human with a spinal cord injury to test human embryonic stem cells. 

Doctors began the procedure by opening his wound, then guiding a needle into his body. Doctors injected Atchinson with two million all-purpose stem cells that they hope will transform into new nerve cells and attach to muscles, refiring his central nervous system.
In the laboratory, they've used embryonic stem cells to repair the broken spinal cords of small animals that walked again. The stem cells have the potential to produce unlimited quantities of any type of cell. Atchinson's mother says she knows that people oppose the therapy on religious grounds, but thinks they're unreasonable."There are some people who are against it, but until they've been put in the position I don't think they should judge anybody," Atchinson's mother told ABC News. Atchinson says his role in the procedure was to prove it was safe, but he says he can already start to feel it working. "Right now, I can feel that," Atchinson said while pulling at hair on his leg.

Six months after the procedure, Atchinson says he can feel a sense of weight when he places heavy items onto his lap. As he rubs his leg, Atchinson says, "I can tell that...I can feel that there's something there." Atchinson is holding out hope that he can one day run again like he once did before his accident.

Source: ABC7News, San Francisco, CA

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India's Top 50 Engineering Colleges 2011

Heavily dominated by public institutions, the top-50 listing is a roll call of excellence India's top 50 engineering institutions 2011

Ranking the top colleges is a very difficult task. While it is relatively easy to create clusters of colleges, it is differentiating within clusters that became the most difficult exercise. So for the first time in the country we have used balanced scorecard methodology to arrive at the ranking of the top 50 colleges. Ranking methodology: We scanned the last five year rankings of about 241 colleges and normalised their ranks, by assigning differential weights to subjective and objective ranking. Such a process is used to develop clusters of institutions. The research standing of individual institutions were further used to refine the clusters and remove the odd men out. Individual clusters were ranked serially. In each of these clusters the differences in cut-off marks, wherever possible (like in case of IITs and AIEEE institutes and some States) were used to arrive at individual ranks. Heavily dominated by public institutions, the top-50 listing is a roll call of excellence India's top 50 engineering institutions 2011

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Gut Bacteria can affect Mental Health: Did you know that?

A gut feeling may help you make a quick decision, but one study credits the digestive system for possibly influencing our mental states and behavior as well. The results help scientists understand how inflammatory bowel diseases, irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive problems relate to the psychological issues that often accompany them. Anxiety and depression commonly occur alongside these bowel conditions.

Scientists want to know whether certain gut bacteria influence humans' behavior. If so, doctors may be able to battle the physical and psychological effects of disease-causing bacteria by developing treatments such as probiotics.In the experiment, researchers introduced antimicrobials to mice via drinking water in order to change the ratios of their gut bacteria. The control group received sterile water. Afterward, both groups of mice were placed between two boxes -- one in the dark, one with light, as scientists recorded their behaviors. Mice with altered digestive bacteria showed less apprehension and were less afraid to go into the well-lit box, a common sign the animals are under the influence of drugs or illness.

Scientists then euthanized the mice to study their intestines and brains. They also found out that the hippocampus of the rodents with altered gut bacteria produced more brain-derived neurotrophic factor, also called BDNF, which often increases with stress and mood disorders, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Although more research is needed to extend the findings to humans, the team found that the effects of bacterial imbalance were reversible in mice, meaning there might be a way to do the same thing for humans in the future.

Source: U.S. National Library of Medicine

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Astrocytes now can be grown in lab

The most common brain cell, called the astrocyte, is often overlooked in the face of its cousin, the neuron. Researchers are finally realizing their importance and have, for the first time, been able to grow them in the lab.

"Not a lot of attention has been paid to these cells because human astrocytes have been hard to get," study researcher Su-Chun Zhang, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "But we can make billions or trillions of them from a single stem cell." Astrocytes are small, star-shaped cells in the brain that act like the neuron's bodyguards, and because of that they play an important role in diseases of the central nervous system, including dementia. They are more common than neurons but have been hard to grow in the lab. Being able to study them could help researchers understand their role in normal brain functioning, and help find new treatments for disease.

"Without the astrocyte, neurons can't function," Zhang said in a statement. "Astrocytes wrap around nerve cells to protect them and keep them healthy. They participate in virtually every function or disorder of the brain." They protect neurons by performing basic housekeeping functions, like regulating blood flow, cleaning up excess neurotransmitters (the communication molecules used by neurons), and playing a key role in controlling the blood-brain barrier, which keeps toxic substances out of the brain.

Zhang created the cells from both embryonic and adult stem cells by treating them with special proteins to get them to grow into astrocytes. These cells could also be useful as a transplant, to treat diseases like Lou Gehrig's disease (also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), in which the neurons are overworked. Transplanting healthy astrocytes could rescue the injured neurons.

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Anxiety may be in your gut rather than in your head

For the first time, researchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour.The findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. In addition there has been speculation that some psychiatric disorders, such as late onset autism, may be associated with an abnormal bacterial content in the gut.
"The exciting results provide stimulus for further investigating a microbial component to the causation of behavioural illnesses," said Stephen Collins, professor of medicine and associate dean research, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Collins and Premysl Bercik, assistant professor of medicine, undertook the research in the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute.The research appears in the online edition of the journal Gastroenterology.
For each person, the gut is home to about 1,000 trillium bacteria with which we live in harmony. These bacteria perform a number of functions vital to health: They harvest energy from the diet, protect against infections and provide nutrition to cells in the gut. Any disruption can result in life-threatening conditions, such as antibiotic-induced colitis from infection with the "superbug" Clostridium difficile.Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behaviour; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been linked, to depression and anxiety.
When oral antibiotics were discontinued, bacteria in the gut returned to normal. "This was accompanied by restoration of normal behaviour and brain chemistry," Collins said.To confirm that bacteria can influence behaviour, the researchers colonized germ-free mice with bacteria taken from mice with a different behavioural pattern. They found that when germ-free mice with a genetic background associated with passive behaviour were colonized with bacteria from mice with higher exploratory behaviour, they became more active and daring. Similarly, normally active mice became more passive after receiving bacteria from mice whose genetic background is associated with passive behaviour.
While previous research has focused on the role bacteria play in brain development early in life, Collins said this latest research indicates that while many factors determine behaviour, the nature and stability of bacteria in the gut appear to influence behaviour and any disruption , from antibiotics or infection, might produce changes in behaviour. Bercik said that these results lay the foundation for investigating the therapeutic potential of probiotic bacteria and their products in the treatment of behavioural disorders, particularly those associated with gastrointestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

Source: Mcmaster University
 

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