The potential of genetically engineered foods to cause allergic reactions in humans is a big reason for opposition to such crops. Although protocols are in place to ask questions about the allergy-causing possibilities, there has been no test that offers definitive answers.

A common cold can be just a fingertip away thanks to the high rate of viral contamination of environmental surfaces that a cold sufferer can leave behind, according to a study in hotel rooms by investigators from the University of Virginia (UVa) and Reckitt-Benckiser (LON: RB), the world's number one household cleaning company (excluding laundry). The study was presented today in an oral session at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), in San Francisco, California.

Duke University biomedical engineers have developed a computer tool they say could lead to improvements in topical microbicides being developed for women to use to prevent infection by the virus that causes AIDS.

The most dangerous form of malaria is difficult to treat and claims two million lives a year. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a powerful new weapon against the disease.

The first comprehensive analysis of an animal's immune response to the 1918 influenza virus provides new insights into the killer flu, report federally supported scientists in an article appearing online today in the journal Nature. Key among these insights, they found that the 1918 virus triggers a hyperactive immune response that may contribute to the lethality of the virus. Furthermore, their results suggest that it is the combination of all eight of the 1918 flu virus genes interacting synergistically that accounts for the exceptional virulence of this virus.

A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has discovered a new part of the complicated mechanism that governs the formation of blood vessels, or angiogenesis.

A new McGill University study that used thermal imaging technology for the first time ever to measure sexual arousal rates has turned the conventional wisdom that women become aroused more slowly than men on its head.

Leptin, a hormone critical for normal food intake and metabolism, exerts a strong effect on appetite by acting in the mid-brain region as well as in the hypothalamus, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Neuron.

Amgen today announced Amgen^TM Oncology Assistance (AOA), a comprehensive, multi-faceted financial assistance program that will include a "cap" on out-of-pocket co-payments for cancer patients receiving Vectibix^TM (panitumumab). Through AOA, patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or unable to afford their insurance co-payments will receive help obtaining financial support for Amgen's cancer medicines.

To study the bacteria which survive in extreme cold, scientists no longer have to go to extreme environments, such as Antarctic lakes and glaciers. Bacteria previously isolated from polar climates, and have properties which allow them to survive in extreme cold, have been isolated from soil in temperate environments.

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered that a protein called ABCB6 plays a central role in production of a molecule that is key to the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen, of liver cells to break down toxins, and of cells to extract energy from nutrients.

A team led by Bay Area scientists is one of five nationwide to receive a major grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to refine and standardize the technologies for identifying biomarkers in the blood -- specific proteins, and the patterns they make -- for the early detection of cancer.

In one of the most ambitious spinoffs of the human genome project, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Children's Hospital Boston, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and other collaborating centers have unveiled a new, systematic approach to drug discovery that matches diseases with potential treatments using a universal language based on cells' distinctive gene activity profiles, or "signatures."

Transfer of a gene that produces a mutant form of good cholesterol provides significantly better anti-plaque and anti-inflammation benefits than therapy using the "normal" HDL gene, according to a mouse study conducted by cardiology researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and reported in the Oct. 3 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

A research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced today the development of a new kind of genetic "roadmap" that can connect human diseases with potential drugs to treat them, as well as predict how new drugs work in human cells. Called the "Connectivity Map," the new tool and its uses are described in the September 29 issue of Science and in separate publications in the September 28 immediate early edition of Cancer Cell. The three papers show the map's ability to accurately predict the molecular actions of novel therapeutic compounds and to suggest ways that existing drugs can be newly applied to treat diseases such as cancer. Based on the results, the papers propose a public project to expand this initial human Connectivity Map -- in the spirit of the Human Genome Project -- to accelerate the search for new drugs to treat disease.

What's the difference between a lifeless sack of chemicals and a living cell? It's all in the way they're organized, according to Stanford biophysical chemist Steven Boxer. With colleagues at Stanford, the University of California-Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he has developed a way to image cell membranes with unprecedented resolution-on the order of 100 nanometers, a scale larger than individual molecules but much smaller than entire cells. Understanding the chemical composition and organization of cell membranes-what components reside next to each other, how many of each there are and how they respond to their environment-may reveal the secret lives of cells in both health and disease. The researchers report their findings in the Sept. 29 issue of the journal Science.

Parasitic plants do not haphazardly flail about looking for a host but sense volatile chemicals produced by other plants and identify potential hosts by their emissions, according to a team of Penn State chemical ecologists.

Might some infectious diseases run in families because one inherits susceptibility to them? Although researchers generally agree that an individual's genetic makeup contributes in subtle ways to susceptibility to infectious disease, new findings from researchers in France support the controversial idea that an error in a single gene is enough to dramatically alter an individual's susceptibility to certain infections.

The life of a cell is all about growing and dividing at the right time. That is why the cell cycle is one of the most tightly regulated cellular processes. A control system with several layers adjusts when key components of the cell cycle machinery are produced, activated and degraded to make sure that the schedule is kept. These layers of control work differently and are usually studied separately, but researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have now discovered that they change in a highly coordinated fashion during evolution. The study, which will be published in this week's online issue of Nature, also reveals that although most components of the cell cycle have been conserved over one billion years, the temporal regulation of this process has evolved remarkably fast.

MORE than 40 per cent of fertility clinics in the US are allowing couples to choose the sex of their child, a survey conducted by the Genetics and Public Policy Center (GPPC) in Washington DC suggests. The testing method, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), was originally designed to test for severe or deadly diseases such as Tay-Sachs. It is typically performed by removing a cell from a three-day-old embryo, which is then screened for a range of chromosomal abnormalities or specific gene mutations. Seemingly healthy embryos are implanted in the womb; others are discarded or frozen. The survey, which covered 186 out of 415 fertility clinics in the US, found that around two-thirds of PGD procedures were performed to identify embryos at risk of birth defects or being miscarried.

University of Georgia professor Richard Hussey has spent 20 years studying a worm-shaped parasite too small to see without a microscope. His discovery is vastly bigger. Hussey and his research team have found a way to halt the damage caused by one of the world's most destructive groups of plant pathogens.

Thanks to the many blood-safety interventions introduced since 1984, the overall risk for most transfusion-transmitted infections has become exceedingly small.

Parasitic flies introduced to control red imported fire ants have spread over four million acres in central and southeast Texas since the flies' introduction in 1999, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered using new flytraps they developed.

A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar in Israel has discovered one reason why so-called "flesh-eating" bacteria are so hard to stop.

Researchers have found for the first time that tarantulas can produce silk from their feet as well as their spinnerets, a discovery with profound implications for why spiders began to spin silk in the first place.

The phrase "easy on the eyes" may hit closer to the mark than we suspected.

A newly published study by investigators at the Center for AIDS Research at Case Medical Center, led by Benigno Rodríguez, MD, along with a nationwide team of AIDS/HIV experts, strongly challenges conventional thinking about the role of measurements of the amount of HIV particles in the blood as a method of predicting a patient's ability to fight off the disease. The study, published in the current issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), indicates that the amount of HIV in a patient's blood (commonly known as the viral load) is much less reliable as a tool for determining the rate at which he or she will lose infection-fighting CD4 cells than previously thought.

Men who paint for a living may be placing their unborn children at increased risk of birth defects and low birth weight.

A jumping gene first identified in a cabbage-eating moth may one day provide a safer, target-specific alternative to viruses for gene therapy, researchers say.

Challenge and change are central to our forest sector, according to The State of Canada's Forests 2005–2006 report. The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, presented the report today at the National Forest Congress.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego and Yale University have discovered that a natural protein produced by Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium sprayed on crops by organic farmers to reduce insect damage, is highly effective at treating hookworm infections in laboratory animals.

The stereotype of a scientist as a man in a white lab coat hunched over a microscope in a laboratory is far from real life. Consider the scientists who will meet at The American Physiological Society's conference, Comparative Physiology 2006: Integrating Diversity, taking place October 8-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Mother birds deposit variable amounts of antioxidants into egg yolks, and it has long been theorized that females invest more in offspring sired by better quality males. However, a study from the November/December 2006 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology shows that even ugly birds get their day. Providing new insight into the strategic basis behind resource allocation in eggs, the researchers found that female house finches deposit significantly more antioxidants, which protect the embryo during the developmental process, into eggs sired by less attractive fathers.

New research by the University of Warwick should have gardeners and commercial growers competing for both recycled paper and organic waste composts. The University's plant research department, Warwick HRI, is finding that recycled paper based composts are proving to be a major weapon in the fight against a range of plant diseases.

Using an animal model, brain researchers in Göttingen have examined the effects of mutations that cause autism in humans. These are mutations in the genes which carry the building instructions for proteins in the neuroligin family. The study published in the scientific journal Neuron (September 21, 2006) shows that neuroligins ensure that signal transmission between nerve cells functions. In the brain of genetically altered mice without neuroligins, the contact points at which the nerve cells communicate, the synapses, do not mature. The researchers assume that similar malfunctions are experienced by autistic patients.

An antibiotic-resistant bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is increasingly a cause of muscle infections in children, said Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) researchers in a report in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Few stop to consider the consequences of their daily ablutions, the washing of clothes, the watering of lawns, and the flush of a toilet. However, wastewater treatment--one of the cornerstones of modern civilization--is the largest microbially-mediated biotechnology process on the planet. When it works, it is a microbial symphony in tune with humanity. When it fails, the consequences can be dire. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Advanced Wastewater Management Centre, University of Queensland, Australia, have published the first metagenomic study of an activated sludge wastewater treatment process. The research appeared online in the September 24 edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology (http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nbt1247.html).

An MIT team has discovered the most complicated knot ever seen in a protein, and they believe it may be linked to the protein's function as a rescue agent for proteins marked for destruction.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) are hoping a new gene therapy that takes a gene called RTVP-1 directly into the prostate tumor will prove effective in preventing recurrence of the disease.

When combined with an immune-boosting substance called an adjuvant, low doses of an experimental vaccine against a strain of avian influenza (H9N2) provoked a strong antibody response in human volunteers, report scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.