Body

Anti-sense reagents have been developed for C. Elegans micro RNA. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Silence have created the first class of reagents to potently and selectively inhibit miRNAs in this widely used model organism.

Drought can take a serious toll on plants and animals alike. When cells are deprived of water, they shrink, collapsing in upon themselves and, without water as a medium, chemicals and enzymes inside the cells may malfunction. However, some plants, like the aptly named "resurrection fern" (Polypodium polypodioides), can survive extreme measures of water loss, even as much as 95% of their water content. How do the cells in these desiccation-tolerant plants remain viable?

Scientists at the University of Delaware have developed a new method for producing proteins critical to research on cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases.

Developed by Zhihao Zhuang, UD assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his research group, the chemical method yields hundredsfold more ubiquitylated proteins than current approaches. Such proteins may hold the key to revealing such mysteries as how cancer cells gain resistance to cancer drugs.

New research led by physician-scientists at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine shows that the test most commonly used to screen pediatric patients for chronic liver disease is often incorrectly interpreted in many children's hospitals throughout the United States.

The SAFETY study (Screening ALT For Elevation in Today's Youth) will be published in the April issue of Gastroenterology and is available online now at www.gastrojournal.org.

In a world first study of its kind, 161 postnatal women with no previous depressive symptoms were divided in two separate groups to test the effect of a physiotherapist-led exercise and education program on wellbeing.

The experimental group received an eight-week "Mother and Baby" program, including specialized exercises provided by a women's health physiotherapist combined with parenting education.

In the second group, "Education Only" participants only received the written educational material.

The Foundation for Art & Healing today releases the proceedings from its groundbreaking Arts and the Heart Roundtable (AHR), a gathering of luminaries from the medical, arts and public health sectors regarding the connection between creative engagement and cardiac health. Held during the summer of 2009 in New York, the goal of the meeting was to draw on research and clinical expertise as well as the direct experiences of cardiac patients who have found creative endeavors to aid in their own personal healing processes.

Small sales taxes on soft drinks in the range currently in force in some states are insufficient to reduce consumption of soda or curb obesity among children, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Such small taxes may reduce consumption in some subgroups such as children at greater risk for obesity, but reducing consumption for all children would require larger taxes, according to the study published by the journal Health Affairs.

A novel stem cell therapy that arms the immune system with an intrinsic defence against HIV could be a powerful strategy to tackle the disease.

Professor Ben Berkhout speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh today explains how this new approach could dramatically improve the quality of life and life expectancy for HIV sufferers in whom antiviral drugs are no longer effective.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) possesses extraordinary survival ability by masking itself from the host immune system and persisting for decades inside the host. Speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh today, Dr Kristine Arnvig provides further insight into how the bacterium causes tuberculosis (TB) by fine-tuning its behaviour in response to its surroundings to escape detection.

Viruses can wreak havoc on bacteria as well as humans and, just like us, bacteria have their own defence system in place, explains Professor John van der Oost, at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting. Uncovering the workings of the bacterial "immune system" could be used to keep industrial microbes at peak performance.

Over half of patients who need emergency investigation of sudden bleeding from their gut are still facing potentially "serious" delays, finds an audit of endoscopy services across the UK.

Endoscopy involves passing a camera on the end of a flexible tube down the gullet into the stomach. It is a recommended procedure for this type of bleed, known as acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding or AUGIB.

AUGIB is a common medical emergency, usually caused by bleeding from ulcers in the stomach or from veins (variceal bleeds) in the gullet (oesophagus).

Tumour cells depend upon estrogens to survive and proliferate in about 70% of all breast cancer cases. The most frequently used treatment to fight this variety of tumours relies on anti-estrogens such as tamoxifen. However, resistance to this type of therapy develops in more than 30% of the patients. Understanding the mechanisms involved in the appearance of resistance to tamoxifen is thus essential to develop new therapeutic approaches.

A drug already prescribed to shrink benign, enlarged prostates has been shown to reduce the risk of a prostate cancer diagnosis by 23 percent in men with an increased risk of the disease, a large international trial has found. Results are reported April 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, illustrates that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.

University of Michigan paleontologists John Whitlock and Jeffrey Wilson, along with Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum, describe their find in the March issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

As anyone who has suffered from a cold or flu knows, a high temperature is an unpleasant but important side effect of the body's immune reaction when fighting off pathogens. Laboratory studies, in which the immune responses of animals could be observed in detail, have shown that these responses display significant variations. Why doesn't every organism defend its body at the maximum possible level of intensity?