Body

(June 11, 2014 Seattle, Wash.)Researchers at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) used cutting-edge tetramer technology developed at BRI to find the T cells that drive rheumatoid arthritis (RA). "By using tetramer technology, we were able to examine whether T cells in people with rheumatoid arthritis were increased in number or were unique in other ways," says BRI Associate Director Jane Buckner, MD, who led the study with BRI Tetramer Core Laboratory Manager Eddie James, PhD. The findings were recently reported online in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

CHICAGO (June 11, 2014) – New guidelines aim to reduce the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), improve patient safety and prioritize current prevention efforts underway in hospitals. This drug resistant bacterium is a common source of patient morbidity and mortality in U.S. hospitals, causing nearly twice the number of deaths, significantly longer hospital stays and higher hospital costs than other forms of the bacteria.

DETROIT – A recently published clinical study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has answered an urgent question that long puzzled ER pediatricians: Is the drug lorazepam really safer and more effective than diazepam – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved medication as first line therapy most often used by emergency room doctors to control major epileptic seizures in children?

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified the genes encoding a molecule that famously defines Group A Streptococcus (strep), a pathogenic bacterial species responsible for more than 700 million infections worldwide each year.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In a collaborative effort spanning five continents, scientists have announced the complete sequencing of one of the world's most widely planted trees, Eucalyptus grandis.

Used for fuel and timber, the species commonly known as flooded gum or rose gum is valued for fast growth and straight grain. Often grown as a hybrid, it is one of more than 500 species of eucalyptus trees and shrubs that provide a renewable source of fiber, pulp, biofuel material, and medicinal and industrial oils.

From antiseptic oils to the construction of didgeridoos, the traditional Australian Aboriginal wind instrument, the eucalyptus tree serves myriad purposes, accounting for its status as one of the world's most widely planted hardwood trees. Its prodigious growth habit has caught the eyes of researchers seeking to harness and improve upon Eucalyptus' potential for enhancing sustainable biofuels and biomaterials production, and provide a stable year-round source of biomass that doesn't compete with food crops.

When proteins are produced in cells based on the "genetic code" of codons, there is a precise process under which molecules called transfer RNA (tRNA) bind to specific amino acids and then transport them to cellular factories called ribosomes where the amino acids are placed together, step by step, to form a protein. Mistakes in this process, which is mediated by enzymes called synthetases, can be disastrous, as they can lead to improperly formed proteins.

A key piece in the puzzle of the evolution of vertebrates has been identified, after the discovery of fossilised fish specimens, dating from the Cambrian period (around 505 million years old), in the Canadian Rockies. The fish, known as Metaspriggina, shows pairs of exceptionally well-preserved arches near the front of its body. The first of these pairs, closest to the head, eventually led to the evolution of jaws in vertebrates, the first time this feature has been seen so early in the fossil record.

A class of drug currently being used to treat leukaemia has the unexpected side-effect of boosting immune responses against many different cancers, reports a new study led by scientists at UCL (University College London) and the Babraham Institute, Cambridge.

The drugs, called p110δ inhibitors, have shown such remarkable efficacy against certain leukaemias in recent clinical trials that patients on the placebo were switched to the real drug. Until now, however, they have not been tested in other types of cancer.

We all know that the Internet has killed the traditional newspaper trade, right? After all, until the general population started interacting with the web in the mid-90s, the newspaper business was thriving—offering readers top notch journalism and pages of ads.

But a recently-published study finds that we may be all wrong about the role of the Internet in the decline of newspapers.

According to research by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Matthew Gentzkow, assumptions about journalism are based on three false premises.

Emerging bird flu viruses continually threaten to cause pandemics, underscoring the need for better ways to predict potential outbreaks. A study published by Cell Press on June 11 in Cell Host & Microbe shows that circulating bird flu viruses are very similar to the flu virus that caused the 1918 pandemic—the most devastating disease outbreak ever recorded. Only a few amino acids separate viral proteins currently found in bird populations from proteins in the 1918 virus, suggesting that a similar deadly virus may emerge in the near future.

MADISON — An international team of researchers has shown that circulating avian influenza viruses contain all the genetic ingredients necessary to underpin the emergence of a virus similar to the deadly 1918 influenza virus.

Experimenting with mice, infectious disease experts at NYU Langone Medical Center have found that immune system cells uninfected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis trigger immune system T cells to fight the disease. The findings upend the long-held scientific belief that only cells, known specifically as dendritic cells, infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis could stimulate a broader, defensive immune system attack of the invading microorganism.

Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard have learned more about one way the immune systems of elite controllers – those rare individuals able to control HIV infection without drug treatment – block a key step in the virus's life cycle. In a paper appearing in Cell Host & Microbe, the research team reports finding the mechanism behind the ability of p21, a protein best known as a tumor suppressor, to inhibit reverse transcription, the process of converting viral RNA into DNA.

The human body is comprised of roughly 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. In healthy people, these bacteria are typically harmless and often helpful, keeping disease-causing microbes at bay. But, when disturbances knock these bacterial populations out of balance, illnesses can arise. Periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease, is one example.