Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered a tiny biological structure that is highly electrically conductive. This breakthrough helps describe how microorganisms can clean up groundwater and produce electricity from renewable resources. It may also have applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology, which develops advanced materials and devices in extremely small dimensions.

The immune system is a complex and powerful weapon that provides protection against bacteria and viruses that, if left unchecked, would wreak havoc throughout the human body. The ability of the immune system to recognize the body's own tissues is essential, but sometimes the immune system loses the ability to distinguish "self" from potentially harmful invaders. This can lead to autoimmune disease characterized by destruction of healthy tissues. Although it is not clear exactly what causes the immune system to go awry, there is increasing evidence that in some cases infections with viruses or bacteria may play a role. Now, a new study published in the June issue of Immunity provides evidence that bacterial infections induce a kind of self-recognition that may contribute to some autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS).

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chemists have developed what they believe is a breakthrough method of creating the world's tiniest manufactured particles for delivering drugs and other organic materials into the human body.Adapting technology pioneered by the electronics industry in fabricating transistors, the team has figured out for the first time how to create particles for carrying genetic material, pharmaceuticals and other compounds of unprecedented small size and uniformity. The tiny bits are so small they can be designed and constructed to measure only a hundred nanometers or so in diameter. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Purdue University researchers may have isolated the substance most responsible for the tissue damage that follows initial spinal cord injury, a discovery that could also improve treatments for a host of other neurodegenerative conditions.

A new computational tool developed at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is speeding up our understanding of the machinery of life -- bringing us one step closer to curing diseases, finding safer ways to clean the environment and protecting the country against biological threats.

ScalaBLAST is a sophisticated "sequence alignment tool" that can divide the work of analyzing biological data into manageable fragments so large data sets can run on many processors simultaneously. The technology means large-scale problems -- such as the analysis of an organism -- can be solved in minutes, rather than weeks.

Scientists at The Schepens Eye Research Institute have discovered that a protein known as F4/80 found on immune cells in the eye and other parts of the body may have a function in the regulation of the body's immune response and protect delicate tissues that cannot survive the "inflammation" inherent in full-blown immunity.

New research has shown that combinations of chemicals found in everyday products and food have subtle but potentially damaging effects on sperm fertility.

Professor Lynn Fraser told the 21st annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday), that her previous research had shown that certain chemicals known to mimic the female sex hormone, oestrogen, could individually affect the correct functioning of mouse sperm, but now her new research showed that when the chemicals were combined they had an even stronger effect. In addition, when she tested one chemical, genistein (found in soya and legumes), on human sperm, she found that the human sperm were much more sensitive to it than mouse sperm. Even tiny doses could cause human sperm to "burn out" and lose fertility.

Six days is all it takes for a common, non-disease-causing virus to kill cervical, breast, prostate and squamous cell cancer cells in laboratory cultures, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2), which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and immunology, Penn State College of Medicine, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "We believe that AAV2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV2 has great potential to be developed as an anti-cancer agent."