Biosingularity

Everyone knows that vitamins “from A to zinc” are important for good health. Now, a new research study in the August 2009 print issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) suggests that zinc may be pointing the way to new therapeutic targets for fighting infections. Specifically, scientists from Florida found that zinc not only supports [...]

Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have unraveled a mystery that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation? New research published in the August 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), not only explains resveratrol’s one-two punch on inflammation, but also show how it—or a [...]

Common and clumsy-looking, the blow fly is a true artist of flight. Suddenly changing direction, standing still in the air, spinning lightning-fast around its own axis, and making precise, pinpoint landings – all these maneuvers are simply a matter of course. Extremely quick eyesight helps to keep it from losing orientation as it races to [...]

The body’s nanomachines that read our genes don’t run as smoothly as previously thought, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
When these nanoscale protein machines encounter obstacles as they move along the DNA, they stall, often for minutes, and even backtrack as they transcribe DNA that is tightly wound to fit [...]

Many experimental studies have found that physical exercise can improve cholesterol levels and subsequently decrease the risks of cardiovascular disease; however, few of these studies have included enough participant diversity to provide ethnic breakdowns. Now, a long-term study of over 8,700 middle-aged men and women provides race- and gender- specific data on the cholesterol effects [...]

Scientists are closer to understanding how to grow replacement bones with stem cell technology, thanks to research published today in the journal Nature Materials.
Many scientists are currently trying to create bone-like materials, derived from stem cells, to implant into patients who have damaged or fractured bones, or who have had parts of diseased bones removed. The [...]

Whilst most studies of bacterial infection are done after the death of the infected organism, this system developed by scientists at the University of Bath and University of Exeter is the first to follow the progress of infection in real-time with living organisms.

It is widely known that the brain perceives information before it reaches a person’s awareness. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness.
That has changed with the findings of scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, [...]

Experiencing chronic stress day after day can produce wear and tear on the body physically and mentally, and can have a detrimental effect on learning and emotion. However, acute stress — a short stressful incident — may enhance learning and memory.
Researchers at the University at Buffalo have shown, in trials using rodents as an animal [...]

Pictures paint concepts of a thousand words- now, for the first time, scientists studying the brain have worked out how words paint concepts in our minds.
Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester, led the study which concluded that, although processing of visual and auditory information occur along completely separate pathways, [...]

In a study released online on July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, researchers at Arizona State University and Princeton University show that ants can accomplish a task more rationally than our – multimodal, egg-headed, tool-using, bipedal, opposing-thumbed – selves.

The same mechanism that helps you detect bad-tasting and potentially poisonous foods may also play a role in protecting your airway from harmful substances, according to a study by scientists at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. The findings could help explain why injured lungs are susceptible to [...]

US researchers have created ‘bacterial computers’ with the potential to solve complicated mathematics problems. The findings of the research demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications. The second-generation bacterial computers illustrate the feasibility of extending the approach to other computationally challenging math problems.

Two new studies reveal a way to increase the body’s appetite for gobbling up the cancer stem cells responsible for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a form of cancer with a particularly poor survival rate. The key is targeting a protein on the surface of those cells that sends a “don’t eat me” signal to the [...]

Placebos are a sham — usually mere sugar pills designed to represent “no treatment” in a clinical treatment study. The effectiveness of the actual medication is compared with the placebo to determine if the medication works.
And yet, for some people, the placebo works nearly as well as the medication. How well placebos work varies widely [...]

Human cells are able to secrete a cancer-killing protein, scientists at the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center have found.
Researchers led by Vivek Rangnekar, UK professor of radiation medicine, have determined that the tumor-suppressor protein Par-4, initially thought to be active only within cells expressing the Par-4 gene, is in fact secreted by most human [...]

Two groups of scientists in China separately reported that they had created a new kind of mouse — grown entirely from a type of stem cell that originated from already mature cells, instead of from embryos. Researchers took skin cells from donor mice, reprogrammed them to revert back to an embryonic state, then programmed them [...]

Although the AIDS virus (HIV-1) entered the human population through chimpanzees, scientists have long believed that chimpanzees don’t develop AIDS. But a new study from an international team, including University of Minnesota professors Anne Pusey and Michael Wilson, shows that chimpanzees infected with SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), the precursor to HIV-1, do contract and die [...]

Using devices millionths of a meter in size, physicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a technique to determine the mass of a single molecule, in real time.

Mice with a defective mitochondrial protein called MCLK1 produce elevated amounts of reactive oxygen when young; that should spell disaster, yet according to a study in this week’s JBC these mice actually age at a slower rate and live longer than normal mice.

A group of chemicals found in many fruits and vegetables, as well as tea, cocoa and red wine, could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease, a  dementia expert will tell scientists at a conference July 11.
Speaking at the British Pharmacological Society’s Summer Meeting in Edinburgh, Dr Robert Williams will argue that, while much more research [...]

Scientists in Atlantic Canada have found a gene that may play a role in skin aging. Researchers were investigating the genetic cause of a rare disorder known as cutis laxa type 2 (CL2), which causes skin on the hands, feet and face to be loose and older looking, as well as growth and developmental delays [...]

Engineers investigate using nanoparticles both as a preventative and a treatment for disease

Scientists at Duke University and the University of North Carolina have devised a chemical technique that promises to allow neuroscientists to discover the function of any population of neurons in an animal brain, and provide clues to treating and preventing brain disease.
With the technique they describe in the journal Neuron online on July 15, scientists [...]

Earlier this year, a scientific team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute identified a class of RNA genes known as large intervening non-coding RNAs or “lincRNAs,” a discovery that has pushed the field forward in understanding the roles of these molecules in many biological processes, including stem cell pluripotency, cell [...]

People’s early-life experience sticks with them into adulthood and may render them more susceptible to many of the chronic diseases of aging, according to a new UBC study.

Previously, only a few genes had been associated with the formation of metastases in colorectal cancer. Now, researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Charité – University Medicine Berlin, Germany, have identified 115 genes that are disregulated both in the primary tumor and in its metastases. In the future, their [...]

The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain.
But it turns out that remarkable ability isn’t so mysterious after all — suggesting that researchers could learn how to replicate it in people.
Scientists had long credited the diminutive amphibious creature’s outsized capabilities [...]

A human growth factor that stimulates blood stem cells to proliferate in the bone marrow reverses memory impairment in mice genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley Hospital found. The granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (GCSF) significantly reduced levels of the brain-clogging protein beta amyloid deposited in [...]