Body

The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), a team of scientists from institutions worldwide, including Virginia Tech, has published its findings in the Sunday July 10 online issue of the journal Nature.

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – New research from the Trudeau Institute may help to explain why anticoagulant therapies have largely failed to extend the lives of patients with sepsis. The study was led by Deyan Luo, a postdoctoral fellow in Stephen Smiley's laboratory. It shows that fibrin, a key product of the blood clotting process, is critical for host defense against Yersinia enterocolitica, a gram-negative bacterium that causes sepsis in humans and experimental mice.

Applying a vaccine patch to the skin with thousands of tiny micro-needles could help boost the body's immune response and prevent the spread of life-threatening infections like HIV and TB, a major Cardiff University study aims to uncover.

Professor Vincent Piguet from Cardiff University's School of Medicine, has been awarded almost a million dollars by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine how key immune cells in the skin can be targeted to cause the immune system to produce antibodies against infection.

People who have a long term debilitating physical illness demonstrate mental resilience according to Understanding Society, the world's largest longitudinal household study. The first findings reveal that people diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, respiratory or cardiovascular disease report similar mental health scores to those without physical illness.

Researchers at the Emory Vaccine Center have developed a method for predicting whether someone will produce high levels of antibodies against a flu shot a few days after vaccination.

After scanning the extent to which carefully selected genes are turned on in white blood cells, the researchers can predict on day three, with up to 90 percent accuracy, who will make high levels of antibodies against a standard flu shot four weeks later.

The results were published online July 10 in the journal Nature Immunology.

They attack other colonies, plunder and rob, kill other colonies' inhabitants or keep them as slaves: Ants are usually regarded as prototypes of social beings that are prepared to sacrifice their lives for their community, but they can also display extremely aggressive behavior towards other nests. The evolution and behavior of ants, in particular the relationship between socially parasitic ants and their hosts, is the research topic of a work group headed by Professor Dr Susanne Foitzik at the Institute of Zoology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.

July 11, 2011, Shenzhen, China – BGI (previously known as the Beijing Genomics Institute), the largest genomic organization in the world, announced today that it was among the research organizations comprising the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC) that completed the genome sequence and analysis of the tuber crop potato, published as an Advance Online Publication in Nature.

An international research team has discovered a strain of gonorrhea resistant to all currently available antibiotics. This new strain is likely to transform a common and once easily treatable infection into a global threat to public health. The details of the discovery made by Dr. Magnus Unemo, Dr. Makoto Ohnishi, and colleagues will be presented at the 19th conference of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research (ISSTDR) which runs July 10-13 in Quebec City, Canada.

A new study has found that almost all patients with high-grade noninvasive bladder cancer do not receive complete care as recommended by current guidelines. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that efforts are needed to identify and overcome barriers to providing optimal care to patients with bladder cancer.

A study at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that nearly all patients with high-grade, non-invasive bladder cancer are not receiving the guideline-recommended care that would best protect them from recurrence, a finding that researchers characterized as alarming.

In fact, out of the 4,545 bladder cancer patients included in the study, only one received the comprehensive care recommended by the American Urology Association and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Park Ridge, Ill. (July 11, 2011) – A new study demonstrates that higher-protein meals improve perceived appetite and satiety in overweight and obese men during weight loss.(1) According to the research, published in Obesity, higher-protein intake led to greater satiety throughout the day as well as reductions in both late-night and morning appetite compared to a normal protein diet.

Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a one-micrometer-resolution version of the intravascular imaging technology optical coherence tomography (OCT) that can reveal cellular and subcellular features of coronary artery disease.

De novo mutations – genetic errors that are present in patients but not in their parents – are more frequent in schizophrenic patients than in normal individuals, according to an international group of scientists led by Dr. Guy A. Rouleau of the University of Montreal and CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital. The discovery, published today in Nature Genetics, may enable researchers to define how the disease results from these mutations and eventually develop new treatments for it.

MADISON — University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are part of an international consortium that has successfully sequenced and analyzed the potato genome. The consortium's work, which is described in the current issue of Nature, turned up more than 39,000 genes and is expected to speed potato research and breeding projects around the globe.

The Wisconsin team's contribution involved uncovering important information about the structure of potato's 12 chromosomes.

The team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Queensland (Australia), Oxford, Texas and Toronto, used a technique called genome-wide association where millions of genetic markers are measured in thousands of people that have the disease and thousands of healthy individuals.

Markers which are more frequent in individuals with the disease are more likely to be involved in the condition.