Body

It has been thought that young fish, lacking well-developed hearing organs, could not perceive the sounds made by their larger, older relatives. Now, researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology have used a combined fish tank and sound-proof chamber to show for the first time that catfish of all ages can communicate with one another.

Researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have found one reason that pancreatic cancer tumors are so difficult to treat with drugs. They have shown how a molecular switch steps up pancreatic cancer cell survival as well as resistance to a standard chemotherapy drug, and have identified alternate routes cancer cells take to avoid the effects of the therapy.

Blacksburg, Va. –– New advances for the detection of cancer led by Rafael V. Davalos of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Science (SBES) are featured as the cover story in the January 19, 2010 Royal Society of Chemistry's magazine, "Lab on a Chip," the premier journal for researchers in microfluidics. http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/lc/index.asp

In an acute viral infection, most of the white blood cells known as T cells differentiate into cells that fight the virus and die off in the process. But a few of these "effector" T cells survive and become memory T cells, ensuring that the immune system can respond faster and stronger the next time around.

Scientists have identified a molecule that defines which cells are destined to become memory T cells just a few days after a viral infection begins. The finding could guide the development of more effective vaccines for challenging infections such as HIV/AIDS and also cancer.

An experimental vaccine developed using non-infectious virus-like particles (VLP) has protected macaques and mice against chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that has infected millions of people in Africa and Asia and causes debilitating pain, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found.

Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) developed the vaccine because there is no vaccine or treatment for chikungunya virus infection. Details about the vaccine were published today in the online version of Nature Medicine.

Malaria causes more than two million deaths each year, but an expert multinational team battling the global spread of drug-resistant parasites has made a breakthrough in the search for better treatment. Better understanding of the make-up of these parasites and the way they reproduce has enabled an international team, led by John Dalton, a biochemist in McGill's Institute of Parasitology, to identify a plan of attack for the development of urgently needed new treatments.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Researchers at Ohio State University have found a new way to study how enzymes move as they repair DNA sun damage -- and that discovery could one day lead to new therapies for healing sunburned skin.

Ultraviolet (UV) light damages skin by causing chemical bonds to form in the wrong places along the DNA molecules in our cells. Normally, other, even smaller molecules called photolyases heal the damage. Sunburn happens when the DNA is too damaged to repair, and cells die.

CHICAGO --- A researcher from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has invented a novel way to halt and even reverse rheumatoid arthritis. He developed an imitation of a suicide molecule that floats undetected into overactive immune cells responsible for the disease.

Whimsically referred to as Casper the Ghost, the stealthy molecule causes the immune cells to self-destruct.

The approach, tested on mice, doesn't carry the health risks of current treatments.

Re-vegetation seems like a beneficial strategy for conserving and restoring damaged ecosystems, and using a variety of species can help increase biodiversity in these systems. But what are the risks involved with introducing seeds from other locations to plants located near the damaged site? Introduced populations often hybridize with the local populations from the same species, which can result in "polluting" neighboring populations with genes that are poorly adapted to local conditions.

It is second nature for most of us that exercise protects against heart attack and stroke, but researchers have spent 30 years unraveling the biochemistry behind the idea. One answer first offered by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center is that athletic hearts push blood through arteries with greater force, which alone triggers reactions that protect against dangerous clogs in blood vessels.

ITHACA, N.Y. – They haven't had sex in some 30 million years, but some very small invertebrates named bdelloid rotifers are still shocking biologists – they should have gone extinct long ago. Cornell researchers have discovered the secret to their evolutionary longevity: these rotifers are microscopic escape artists. When facing pathogens, they dry up and are promptly gone with the wind.

BETHESDA, Md. (Jan. 28, 2010) — Many of the health benefits of aerobic exercise are due to the most recent exercise session (rather than weeks, months and even years of exercise training), and the nature of these benefits can be greatly affected by the food we eat afterwards, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology (http://jap.physiology.org).

One of many reasons that attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings helps people with alcohol use disorders stay sober appears to be alleviation of depression. A team of researchers has found that study participants who attended AA meetings more frequently had fewer symptoms of depression – along with less drinking – than did those with less AA participation. The report will appear in the journal Addiction and has been release online.

Humans and human activities have clearly altered the Earth's landscape and oceans in countless ways, often to the detriment of other plants and animals. But a new report published online on January 28th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows just what a tangled food web we've woven. Two species of Mediterranean seabirds change their every move based on the activities of local fisheries and, in particular, the fish that people toss away. The seabirds' shifting movement patterns can be seen at the regional scale.

A mandatory influenza vaccination policy improves immunization rates among health care workers, according to a recent study of a large health care organization. The finding comes from a study, now available online (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/650752), published in the February 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.