Body

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute scientists have determined the structure of a previously unseen part of the insulin receptor, making possible new treatments for diabetes.

The insulin receptor is a large protein on the surface of cells to which the hormone insulin binds. Insulin controls when and how glucose is used in the human body. Understanding how insulin interacts with the insulin receptor is crucial to the development of treatments for diabetes.

The identification of compounds that could be promising candidates for drug development has become easier following research by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's medicinal chemistry group.

Dr Jonathan Baell and Dr Georgina Holloway have developed a series of 'filters' that can be used to weed out those molecules likely to come up as false positives when screening a chemical library for compounds that could be useful in drug development.

A study by the Barcelona Public Health Agency has revealed those sections of the population that are most vulnerable to tuberculosis. The research, published in the journal Respiratory Research, shows that the highest death rates from this disease are among those aged over 50 or infected with HIV.

While millions of Americans make individual contributions weekly at their places of worship, a new study by a Rice University sociologist finds private foundations have a disproportionate influence on the religious sector -- despite the fact that their contributions constitute only a fraction of all philanthropy to religion.

In many cancers, octreotide acetate (Sandostatin) has been reported to control the diarrhea that can accompany chemotherapy. However, for patients receiving combined chemotherapy and radiation for anal or rectal cancers, the drug proved no better than a placebo in a randomized trial that was published online March 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Over the last week, the path that Tropical Storm Imani, formerly tropical cyclone 21S, is making in the Southern Indian Ocean resembles a question mark. However, there is no question in the minds of forecasters that Imani is headed south to finish out the "question mark" shape.

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a fundamental step in the development of the immune system, one that allows B cells to mature and fight disease by producing effective antibodies. Immunologist Roberta Pelanda, PhD, and her colleagues have demonstrated that immature B cells in the bone marrow must receive a positive signal before they can migrate to the spleen where they mature and are activated. In the March 15, 2010 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers also reported that a protein known as Erk helps deliver that positive signal.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2010 — Motorists will be driving on the world's first "green" tires within the next five years, scientists predicted here today, thanks to a revolutionary new technology that produces a key tire ingredient from renewable feedstocks rather than petroleum-derived feedstocks. The technology, described at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), stands to reduce the tire industry's reliance on crude oil — seven gallons of which now go into each of the approximately one billion tires produced each year worldwide.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University scientist was part of a global team that has demonstrated a specialized mapping technique that could speed work in genomic fields by quickly finding genetic associations that shape an organism's observable characteristics.

LA JOLLA, CA – A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions has solved the structure of a key protein from the virus that caused last year's "swine flu" influenza epidemic. The structure reveals that the virus shares many features with influenza viruses common in the early 20th century, helping to explain why, in general, older individuals have been less severely affected by the recent outbreak than younger ones.

Although they emerged more than 90 years apart, the influenza viruses responsible for the pandemics of 1918 and 2009 share a structural detail that makes both susceptible to neutralization by the same antibodies. Scientists led by Gary J. Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, describe the molecular basis for this shared vulnerability and suggest how it might be exploited to design vaccines matched to future pandemic influenza virus strains.

Physicists at New York University have created "handshaking" particles that link together based on their shape rather than randomly. Their work, reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, marks the first time scientists have succeeded in "programming" particles to join in this manner and offers a type of architecture that could enhance the creation of synthetic materials.

STANFORD, Calif. — Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying cardiac development in mouse embryos have identified the source of cells that become the coronary arteries — the vessels that deliver blood to nourish the continuously pumping heart muscle. Surprisingly, the cells originate in an entirely different part of the heart than previously thought.

DURHAM, N.C. – Humans have very limited ability to regenerate heart muscle cells, which is a key reason why heart attacks that kill cells and scar heart tissue are so dangerous.

But damaged heart muscles in the amazing, highly regenerative zebrafish have given Duke University Medical Center scientists a few ideas that may lead to new directions in clinical research and better therapy after heart attacks.

A reliable method for producing plants that carry genetic material from only one of their parents has been discovered by plant biologists at UC Davis. The technique, to be published March 25 in the journal Nature, could dramatically speed up the breeding of crop plants for desirable traits.

The discovery came out of a chance observation in the lab that could easily have been written off as an error.