The question of whether amino acids in sandwich-like proteins are there to stabilize the structure or to speed up the protein-folding process is best answered by "all of the above," according to researchers at Rice University in Houston.

This discovery, reported in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could benefit future research on treatments for diseases related to misfolded proteins, such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's.

By applying novel measurement techniques from a high-altitude aircraft, scientists detected two species of invading plants that are changing the ecology of rain forest near the Kilauea Volcano in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Lead author, Dr. Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, explained: "We found chemical fingerprints from the plant leaves and used them to tell which species dominated specific areas. We employed the recently upgraded NASA Airborne Visible and Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to measure leaf nitrogen and water content from the aircraft, and corroborated the data on the ground. The fingerprints showed where the native dominant tree 'ohia' (Metrosideros polymorpha) has been taken over by the invading Canary Islands tree, Myrica faya, and more importantly identified areas where Myrica invasion is in its early stages. The aircraft imagery also showed us how the forest canopy chemistry is changing as a result of the invader." The study is published in the March 7-11, 2005, early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

wFleaBase is a database with the necessary infrastructure to curate, archive and share genetic, molecular and functional genomic data and protocols for an emerging model organism, the microcrustacean Daphnia. Commonly known as the water-flea, Daphnia's ecological merit is unequaled among metazoans, largely because of its sentinel role within freshwater ecosystems and over 200 years of biological investigations. By consequence, the Daphnia Genomics Consortium (DGC) has launched an interdisciplinary research program to create the resources needed to study genes that affect ecological and evolutionary success in natural environments. Description These tools include the genome database wFleaBase, which currently contains functions to search and extract information from expressed sequenced tags, genome survey sequences and full genome sequencing projects.

A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis is giving the VIP treatment to laboratory mice in hopes of unraveling more clues about our biological clock.

VIP is not "very important person," but vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP), a neuropeptide originally found in the gut, that is also made by a specialized group of neurons in the brain.

Erik Herzog, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered that VIP is needed by the brain's biological clock to coordinate daily rhythms in behavior and physiology. Neurons in the biological clock, an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), keep 24-hour time and are normally synchronized as a well-oiled marching band coming onto the field at half time. Herzog and graduate student, Sara Aton, found that mice lacking the gene that makes VIP or lacking the receptor molecule for VIP suffer from internal de-synchrony. When they recorded the electrical activity of SCN neurons from these mice, they found that many had lost their beat while others were cycling but unable to synch to each other.

A team of scientists led by biophysicist Stuart Lindsay from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has created the first reproducible single molecule negative differential resistor – and in the process has developed a groundbreaking experimental technique that provides a “roadmap” for designing single-molecule devices based on biochemistry.

The findings were presented Feb. 18 by Lindsay at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington , D.C. , in a session titled “Frontiers in Bioinspired Materials and Nanosystems.” The findings also will be reported in a forthcoming edition of the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters.

A UCLA AIDS Institute study has discovered that two chemical compounds may help the immune systems of HIV-infected persons fight the disease without invasive gene therapy. Presented March 5 at the 2005 Palm Springs Symposium on HIV/AIDS, the new research demonstrates that the new chemicals activate telomerase -- a protein that boosts immune cells' ability to divide, enabling them to continue destroying HIV-infected cells.

"The immune cells that fight HIV naturally produce telomerase during the infection's early phase, but stop once HIV becomes a chronic condition," explained Rita Effros, Ph.D., Plott Endowed Chair in Gerontology and a professor of pathology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "The two compounds switched telomerase back on in the cells."