Press monitoring
Tiny DNA pyramids enter bacteria easily, and deliver a deadly payload
10.7.2014 | Press monitoring
Bacterial infections usually announce themselves with pain and fever but often can be defeated with antibiotics -- and then there are those that are sneaky and hard to beat. Now, scientists have built a new weapon against such pathogens in the form of tiny DNA pyramids. Published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, their study...
Gene discovered that activates stem cells for organ regeneration in Planarians
9.7.2014 | Press monitoring
Researchers announced the discovery of a gene zic-1 that enables stem cells to regrow a head after decapitation in flatworm planarians. Professor Christian Petersen and Ph.D. student Constanza Vásquez-Doorman of Northwestern University discovered zic-1 by investigating planarians, an animal that uses pluripotent stem cells to regrow any missing...
Nanojuice could improve how doctors examine the gut
8.7.2014 | Press monitoring
Located deep in the human gut, the small intestine is not easy to examine. X-rays, MRIs and ultrasound images provide snapshots but each suffers limitations. Help is on the way. University at Buffalo researchers are developing a new imaging technique involving nanoparticles suspended in liquid to form "nanojuice" that patients would drink. Upon...
Cheap test slashes time taken to diagnose TB
7.7.2014 | Press monitoring
An inexpensive portable diagnosis system can cut the time it takes to spot tuberculosis (TB) bacteria from weeks or months to less than half an hour, potentially helping doctors to catch infections before patients have time to unknowingly infect others. The bacteria that cause TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, grow extremely slowly in the lab, so...
Engineering light-controlled proteins
4.7.2014 | Press monitoring
A University of Wyoming professor has engineered proteins that can be activated by near-infrared light as a way to control biological activities in deep tissues of small mammals. Currently, such proteins will be used as research tools to better understand the biology of diseases and the biology of organismal development, says Mark Gomelsky, a...
Tibetan altitude gene came from extinct human species
3.7.2014 | Press monitoring
Tibetans are comfortable at high altitudes where the air is thin. Now it seems a gene variant that gives them an edge over other people did not evolve in modern humans. It comes from an extinct species of human called the Denisovans. Living on the roof of the world is hard. The air there carries less oxygen, making it harder to breathe and...
US company in Iowa churns out 100 cloned cows a year
2.7.2014 | Press monitoring
In the meadow, four white-haired Shorthorn heifers peel off from the others, raising their heads at the same time in the same direction. Unsettling, when you know they are clones. From their ears dangle yellow tags marked with the same number: 434P. Only the numbers that follow are different: 2, 3, 4 and 6.The tag also bears the name of the...
Evolution of life’s operating system revealed in detail
1.7.2014 | Press monitoring
The evolution of the ribosome, a large molecular structure found in the cells of all species, has been revealed in unprecedented detail in a new study. Around 4 billion years ago, the first molecules of life came together on the early Earth and formed precursors of modern proteins and RNA. Scientists studying the origin of life have been...
Reconstructing the life history of a single cell
30.6.2014 | Press monitoring
Researchers have developed new methods to trace the life history of individual cells back to their origins in the fertilised egg. By looking at the copy of the human genome present in healthy cells, they were able to build a picture of each cell's development from the early embryo on its journey to become part of an adult organ. During the life...
Nanosubmarine designed that delivers complementary molecules inside cells
27.6.2014 | Press monitoring
With the continuing need for very small devices in therapeutic applications, there is a growing demand for the development of nanoparticles that can transport and deliver drugs to target cells in the human body. Recently, researchers created nanoparticles that under the right conditions, self-assemble -- trapping complementary guest molecules...
