Scientists at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) and other institutions have demonstrated for the first time that a single drug can rebuild damaged muscle in two strains of mice that develop diseases comparable to two human forms of muscular dystrophy. This advance, which is reported online in Nature Medicine, is the latest from a research collaboration that began several years ago by the teams of Vittorio Sartorelli, M.D., at NIAMS and Pier Lorenzo Puri, M.D., Ph.D., now at Dulbecco Telethon Institute (DTI) in Rome, Italy and The Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

Professor of Microbiology at the Public University of Navarre, Antonio Gerardo Pisabarro de Lucas, is leading an international project to sequence the genome of the oyster mushroom. The project research team is composed of scientists from nineteen universities and research centres from Europe, Canada, Japan, Israel and the United States.

Armed at first with nothing more than boots, a screen and a bucket, scientists studying a tiny primitive fish that makes up 70 percent of the biomass in Tampa Bay now say they have found the "missing link" marking the point in evolution that led to the development of the modern-day human immune system.

Right Direction Chocolate Chip CookiesTM lower cholesterol and improve lipid subfraction profile, lowering the risk of heart disease, according to a published study in The Journal of Nutrition (October). The chocolate chip cookies, made with a combination of psyllium and plant sterols, are a tasty all-natural approach to reducing cardiovascular risk associated with cholesterol.

Research led by Professor Nigel Dimmock at the University of Warwick is developing an entirely new method of protecting against flu. This has been shown to protect animals against various strains of flu, and could offer protection against the full range of influenza A infections, including H5N1 and any new pandemic or epidemic strains infecting humans. The 'protecting virus' provides instant protection, and completely prevents flu symptoms developing by slowing influenza infection rates to such an extent that the harmful infection becomes a vaccine against that very form of influenza. It can also counter an actual infection and offer protection if given up to 24 hours after first infection (and possibly longer).

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the latest round of grant awards totaling more than $13 million to speed the development of innovative sequencing technologies that reduce the cost of DNA sequencing and expand the use of genomics in medical research and health care.

Led by Dr J Oriol Sunyer, of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and formed by researchers from Philadelphia, St Louis and Idaho (USA) and by Dr Lluís Tort of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the group has been able to show that B cells in fish as well as in amphibians are capable of strong phagocytosis both in in vivo and in vitro experiments. The work has been published in Nature Immunology, the most prestigious journal worldwide in the field of immunology.

Sexual reproduction is not necessarily sexy (especially when scientists start analyzing it), but it is fascinating. As we all know, the basics entail bringing together an egg and a sperm, a whole lot of cell division and growth, and sooner or later a young organism that carries a mix of genes from both parents. There are many startling events along the way, but one of the most fundamental and important is the transition from unfertilized egg to fertilized embryo.

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the presence of a key protein in the compound eyes of the fruit fly (which glow at center due to a fluorescent protein) allows the formation of distinct light gathering units in each of its 800 unit eyes, an evolutionary change to an "open system" that enabled insects to make significant improvements in visual acuity and angular sensitivity. In contrast, beetles (shown surrounding the fruit fly), bees and many mosquito species have the light-gathering units fused together into a "closed system."

Experimental drugs are showing promise against neuroAIDS, the nerve damage caused by HIV infection that lessens many patients' ability to think and move. As evidence of the progress, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center today received a $7 million grant to confirm that two new drug classes can protect the brain from HIV-related nerve damage. Driving their approach is the realization that antiviral drugs that work against AIDS do not cure neuroAIDS.