A new anthrax antibody engineered by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin protects and defends against inhalation anthrax without the use of antibiotics and other more expensive antibodies.

University of Florida researchers say they are a step closer to a technique to easily detect a wide variety of cancers before symptoms become apparent.

University of Queensland (UQ) researchers are on track to develop new treatments for acute infections, chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have found that a gene pathway linked to a deadly form of leukemia may provide a new way to treat autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis. Their tests in cell cultures and mice suggest that blocking the pathway by interfering with a blood cell growth gene, known as FLT3, targets an immune system cell often ignored in favor of T-cell targets in standard therapies.

UCSF scientists have discovered that the activity of several embryonic stem cell genes is elevated in testicular and breast cancers, providing some of the first molecular evidence of a link between embryonic stem cells and cancer.

By peering into the minds of volunteers preparing to play a brief visual game, neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found they can predict whether the volunteers will succeed or fail at the game.

A trendy holiday gift within a decade may be a hand-held device that instantly identifies any species from a snippet of animal tissue, says a University of Florida researcher.

RNA continues to shed its reputation as DNA's faithful sidekick. Now, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member David Bartel have found that a class of small RNAs called microRNAs influence the evolution of genes far more widely than previous research had indicated.

Genomatix Software GmbH today announced that it has achieved GeneChip-compatibleTM status for several products with the Affymetrix Inc.

Researchers are using a new cell transplantation technique to restore the cells that produce insulin in patients with type 1 diabetes. The method is minimally invasive, with few complications. The study was presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Clinicians and basic scientists from academia, private practice, government and industry are coming together for a week-long multi-disciplinary symposium in interventional oncology, a rapidly growing area of medicine involving minimally invasive interventional radiology treatments for cancer.

A new report says despite a growing body of evidence that continued smoking after a cancer diagnosis has substantial adverse effects on treatment effectiveness, overall survival, risk of other cancers, and quality of life, up to one-half of cancer patients who smoke continue to do so or relapse after trying to quit.

Farmers, veterinarians and meat processors who routinely come into contact with pigs in their jobs have a markedly increased risk of infection with flu viruses that infect pigs, according to a study funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Exploiting biology's own chemical toolbox, researchers have developed a new technique that will allow them to modify specific sequences within a DNA molecule. The approach will not only help reveal the impact of biochemical alterations to DNA, but could have far-reaching implications for DNA-based medical diagnosis and nanobiotechnology.

Funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the IST programme, the CYBERHAND project aims to hard wire this hand into the nervous system, allowing sensory feedback from the hand to reach the brain, and instructions to come from the brain to control the hand, at least in part.

Volunteers at the Jack and Linda Gill Heart Institute at the University of Kentucky were the first ever to receive a new anti-clotting therapy. The drug and its antidote are being developed for their effectiveness in preventing blood clots while at the same time providing physicians the ability to rapidly reverse the effects of the blood thinner to help safeguard patients against uncontrolled bleeding.

Bacterial leaf scorch is severely affecting urban shade trees grown not only to provide shade, but to help clear the air, reduce noise, and improve the aesthetics in many U.S. communities, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).

Using sunlight to power our homes and offices is an unaccomplished dream due to the still inefficient technology for a better use of solar energy. The study of photosynthesis in plants could provide new clues by explaining how they absorb almost 100% of the sun-light reaching them, and how they transform it into other forms of energy.

When most people think of tropical forests, rainforests immediately come to mind. But they are not the only kind under threat--the tropical dry forest is in as much danger as its popular cousin yet its grave situation continues to be ignored. Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa is hoping to change that.

A human DNA-associated protein called LEDGF is the first such molecule found to control the location of HIV integration in human cells, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

A compound found only in hops and the main product they are used in - beer - has rapidly gained interest as a micronutrient that might help prevent many types of cancer.

Zinc-deficient children living in communities where they do not receive adequate amounts of zinc from their diet should be given supplements, even if they are HIV-infected, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions.

Connecting with nature can improve your health and wellbeing, say researchers in this week's BMJ. The theory is known as ecotherapy: restoring health through contact with nature.

Swimming with dolphins is an effective treatment for mild to moderate depression, say researchers in this week's BMJ.

Canadian scientists have developed some clever molecular trickery that is helping to reduce the drug cravings of addicted rats. One of the problems in addiction is that neurons in some parts of the brain lose glutamate receptors from the cell surface, and those receptors are important for communication between neurons. The researchers have sidestepped this problem by crafting a peptide that mimics a portion of the tail of the glutamate receptor and, once inside a neuron, serves as a decoy to prevent the loss of glutamate receptors.

Using a tiny flatworm best known for its extraordinary ability to regenerate lost tissue, researchers have identified a gene that controls the ability of stem cells to differentiate into specialized cells. The gene encodes a protein that is most similar to the protein PIWI, an important regulator of stem cells in organisms ranging from plants to humans.

Species evolve at very different rates, and the evolutionary line that produced humans seems to be among the slowest. The result, according to a new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is that our species has retained characteristics of a very ancient ancestor that have been lost in more quickly-evolving animals. This overturns a commonly-held view of the nature of genes in the first animals. The work appears in the current issue of the journal Science.

A drug has been shown to provide some protection to the heart from injury even if given as much as 24 hours after a heart attack, Jefferson Medical College researchers report.

Using a novel application of an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technique, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have, for the first time, visualized the effects of everyday psychological stress in a healthy human brain.

By using pathogenic fungi as model systems for understanding fungal diseases, two groups of researchers are reporting new work that offers insight into how carbon dioxide (CO2) governs the morphogenic changes that allow pathogenic fungi to survive in different environments and invade the human body, and they provide new evidence for how CO2 sensing and metabolism utilize evolutionarily conserved enzymes to control the growth and sexual reproduction of pathogenic microbes.

The development of effective vaccines for people with compromised immune systems may be feasible after all, according to a team of researchers, who demonstrated their approach could protect against pneumocystis pneumonia in mice lacking the same population of immune cells that HIV destroys in humans. The vaccine platform developed by Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh researchers, working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Louisiana State University, suggests that the immune system can be primed to ward off other infections as well, such as those caused by the flu, smallpox or exposure to anthrax, even in patients who have the highest risk for infection.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to protect the integrity of chromosomes. This finding solves for the first time an important question that has long puzzled scientists.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the German Cancer Research Institute have shown how protein synthesis is targeted to certain regions of a cell--a process crucial for the cellular motility that governs nerve growth, wound healing and cancer metastasis. Their study appears in the November 24 issue of the journal Nature.

Editor : It makes me sad when an article that should have picture doesn't ... at least I found the webpage of the student's group in the iGEM competition, check it out! Some pictures of the concept they'll use for their bacterial 'camera'.

Using Petri dishes full of genetically engineered E. coli instead of photo paper, students at The University of Texas at Austin and UCSF successfully created the first-ever bacterial photographs.

Families gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table might consider giving thanks for the bacteria-busting ability of cranberry juice, say dental researchers who have discovered that the beverage holds important clues for preventing cavities.

Looks can be deceiving. New gene study redraws family tree of lizards and puts primitive-looking iguanas (shown here) and relatives at the top instead of bottom of the tree." Credit line: Copyright Eladio Fernandez 2005.The most comprehensive analysis ever performed of the genetic relationships among all the major groups of snakes, lizards, and other scaly reptiles has resulted in a radical reorganization of the family tree of these animals, requiring new names for many of the tree's new branches. The research, reported in the current issue of the journal C. R. Biologies, was performed by two biologists working at Penn State University: S. Blair Hedges, professor of biology, and Nicolas Vidal, a postdoctoral fellow in Hedges' research group at the time of the research who now is a curator at the National Museum in Paris.

In an important new study from the forthcoming Quarterly Review of Biology, biologists from Binghamton University explore the evolution of two distinct types of laughter – laughter which is stimulus-driven and laughter which is self-generated and strategic.

Transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from pregnant women to their infants sometime during childbirth is a huge international problem, studies have shown. Between 25 percent and 35 percent of babies born to untreated HIV-infected mothers become infected themselves.

A scientific method that has been used to track the source of illegal drugs, explosives, counterfeit bills and biological warfare agents may have some new uses: detecting rapidly growing cancers and studying obesity and eating disorders.

In the neural train wreck that is stroke, the cutoff of oxygen kills brain cells through a buildup of acid, as well as by overexciting receptors on the surface of brain cells. Now, researchers exploring the detailed mechanism of this excitotoxicity and acidotoxicity have discovered how an insidious chain of molecular events contributes to its damage. In an article in the November 23, 2005, issue of Neuron, Jun Gao and colleagues say that their findings could contribute to the development of drugs to protect against the molecular "cabal" that produces such lethality.