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Phagocytosis depends more on particle shape than size

The research, which has far-reaching implications for immunology, vaccine development and drug delivery, is published today online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Samir Mitragotri, a UCSB professor of chemical engineering, and graduate student Julie A. Champion. The paper will be published in print on March 28.

23 Mar 2006

Details of protein-cleaving complex key to microbe's survival may improve drug design

With the hope of designing more effective treatments for tuberculosis (TB), scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborating institutions have published the first detailed reports on the biochemistry and structure of a protein-cleaving complex that is essential to the TB bacterium's survival.

9 Mar 2006

New FDA approved mobile electron-beam system increases survival rates of women with advanced rectal cancer

Colorectal cancer is widely considered a man's disease, but actually affects an equal number of women and men. Detected early, it is highly curable in both genders, with survival rates approaching 90 percent. But if the cancer is detected at a more advanced stage, the outlook is often dismal.

27 Feb 2006

Engineers identify tiny iron oxide particles associated with Alzheimer's

Engineers have found a way to pinpoint and identify the tiny iron oxide particles associated with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases in the brain.

27 Feb 2006

MIT researchers capture virus in extraordinary detail

Fifty years after MIT researchers pioneered the use of electron microscopy to study viruses, MIT scientists have helped produce the most detailed images yet of the tiny infectious agents.

21 Feb 2006

Purdue biologists visualize protein interaction that may initiate viral infection

Biologists at Purdue University have taken a "snapshot" of a Velcro-like protein on a cell's surface just after it attached to the dengue virus, a linkup thought to initiate the early stages of infection.

16 Feb 2006

Researchers capture the electrical activity of a single sperm cell

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have, for the first time, captured the electrical activity of a single sperm cell. The technically difficult maneuver, reported in Nature, allows the first measurement of the currents that flow across the sperm's outer membrane.

14 Feb 2006

Researchers capture the electrical activity of a single sperm cell

14 Feb 2006

Researchers unmask secrets of a tiny virus that infects bacteria

Using powerful computer tools and cryo-electron microscopes, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine unmasked the secrets of a tiny virus that infects bacteria and, in doing so, opened the door to a better understanding of a variety of viruses that infect people and animals.

13 Feb 2006

HIV revealed in 3D

HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS and which affects 40 million people across the world, has been seen in 3D detail for the first time by Oxford scientists and their colleagues in Heidelberg and Munich.

25 Jan 2006

Giant protein titin helps build muscles

Imagine grabbing two snakes by the tail so that they can't wriggle off in opposite directions. Scientists at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and collaborators from King's College in London have now discovered that something similar happens to a protein that is crucial in the formation of muscle tissue.

11 Jan 2006

Polyphosphate speeds blood clotting and helps clots last longer

A serendipitous comparison prompted by an old scientific image and involving an ancient but understudied molecule may lead to a new treatment strategy for injuries or illnesses in which blood clotting is paramount to survival.

9 Jan 2006

New type of sulfite reductase

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay and Eric Johnson from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered a novel enzyme that represents an ancient detoxification system and provides a clue to the development of early metabolism on earth.

7 Dec 2005

Researchers gain detailed view yet of the heart of the translocon

Researchers have gained the most detailed view yet of the heart of the translocon, a channel through which newly constructed proteins are inserted into the cell membrane. The process of transporting proteins across or into membranes is a critical function that occurs in every cell.

26 Nov 2005

Nanotechnology and biochemistry provide new way to study T cell signaling

Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley, combining nanotechnology with biochemistry, have created unique synthetic membranes that, for the first time ever, enable them to directly control signaling activity in living T cells from the immune system. Already their experiments have yielded surprising results.

21 Nov 2005