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Scientists reconstruct bat variant of SARS coronavirus

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have synthetically reconstructed the bat variant of the SARS coronavirus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003.

25 Nov 2008

$2.7 million boosts effort to create the big view of cancer

Many scientists like to discuss how each form of cancer is a distinct disease with its own causes and its own treatments. But researcher Hartmut "Hucky" Land, Ph.D., takes the opposite approach: He is hunting for the most basic rules that all cancers share to make good cells go bad.

25 Nov 2008

Discovery of new species of bacterium that causes leprosy

A new species of bacterium that causes leprosy has been identified through intensive genetic analysis of a pair of lethal infections, a research team reports in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology.

24 Nov 2008

Prion switching in response to environmental stress

If you have had a hard day at work, you may change your eating habits, perhaps favoring comfort food, but you don't suddenly develop the ability to eat the plate and cutlery.

24 Nov 2008

New model predicts risk of recurrence in early stage colon cancer patients

Researchers in the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy have developed a model for predicting risk of recurrence in early stage colon cancer patients, and have used the model to also predict sensitivity to chemotherapy and targeted therapy regimens.

24 Nov 2008

Sexual reproduction and evolution

The utility of sex, according to an intriguing new theory of evolutionary biology, may be its ability to promote genes that play well with many other partners rather than those that shine with just one specific set of genes.

24 Nov 2008

Bioinformatics lecturers enlist undergrads to tackle DNA annotation challenge

In this week's issue of PLoS Biology, a team of Marseilles University lecturers led by Pascal Hingamp, describe the Annotathon - an innovative bioinformatics teaching approach that appeals to undergraduate biology students.

24 Nov 2008

Bipolar disorder genes, pathways identified

Neuroscientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine have created the first comprehensive map of genes likely to be involved in bipolar disorder, according to research published online Nov. 21 in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

21 Nov 2008

DNA variations of serotonin transporter gene can influence drinking intensity

The brain's serotonergic system plays an important role in alcohol preference and consumption.

20 Nov 2008

Discovery of new species of Ebola virus

Scientists report the discovery of a new species of Ebola virus, provisionally named Bundibugyo ebolavirus, November 21 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens.

20 Nov 2008

Roche NimbleGen launches microarrays for analysis of DNA copy number variation

Roche NimbleGen, Inc. has launched NimbleGen Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH) microarrays in a 12x135K format for analysis of DNA copy number variation.

19 Nov 2008

Researchers identify best time for stem cell collection for Parkinson's therapy

Researchers have identified a stage during dopamine neuron differentiation that may be an ideal time to collect human embryonic stem cells for transplantation to treat Parkinson's disease, according to data presented at Neuroscience 2008, the 38th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

19 Nov 2008

Researchers define ideal time for stem cell collection for Parkinson's disease therapy

19 Nov 2008

Scientists identify biomarkers for chronological and physiological age prediction

Scientists at the Buck Institute for Age Research have identified for the first time biomarkers of aging which are highly predictive of both chronological and physiological age.

19 Nov 2008

Systems biology brings hope of speeding up drug development

Almost every day brings news of an apparent breakthrough against cancer, infectious diseases, or metabolic conditions like diabetes, but these rarely translate into effective therapies or drugs, and even if they do clinical development usually takes well over a decade.

19 Nov 2008

Discovery of 13 new tumor-suppressor genes in liver cancer

Over the years, hunting for cancer-related genes and understanding how they work has been an important, although time-consuming, exercise.

18 Nov 2008

Impending crisis in provision of histopathology expertise for mouse functional genomics

The generation of new mouse models of human disease is accelerating rapidly due to the completion of whole-genome sequencing efforts and technological advances in the manipulation of the mouse genome.

18 Nov 2008

Why only some former smokers develop lung cancer

Canadian researchers are trying to answer why some smokers develop lung cancer while others remain disease free, despite similar lifestyle changes.

17 Nov 2008

New gene-silencing pathway found in plants

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes.

17 Nov 2008

Microarray analysis improves prenatal diagnosis

A "chip" or array that can quickly detect disorders such as Down syndrome or other diseases associated with chromosomal abnormalities proved an effective tool in prenatal diagnosis in a series of 300 cases at Baylor College of Medicine, said researchers in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Prenatal Diagnosis.

17 Nov 2008