Amino Acid News and Research

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Amino Acid is one of several molecules that join together to form proteins. There are 20 common amino acids found in proteins.

Trick illustrates life’s determination to survive hostile environments

Dipping your hands into 160-degree water is guaranteed to give you an immediate and severe scalding - unless you’re one of the few species of bacteria that manage to thrive in temperatures that would maim or kill the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants.

13 Aug 2004

Second case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease infection that was probably caused by blood transfusion

Research reported in The Lancet this week details the second case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) infection that was probably caused by blood transfusion. The rogue prion responsible for vCJD was identified at postmortem five years after an elderly person received a blood transfusion from a donor who later developed vCJD.

5 Aug 2004

Molecular pathway in the brain may explain why some patients suffering from inflammatory diseases develop depression

Feeling sick can be "all in the head" for people with inflammatory disorders or for those receiving immunotherapy, say Robert Dantzer and Keith Kelley, professors in the department of animal sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

29 Jul 2004

New precautionary measures against the possible risk of transmission of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease

The UK Department of Health (DOH) has said today that recipients of blood transfusions are to be excluded from donating blood in the future as a further precautionary measure against the possible risk of transmission of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), Health Secretary John Reid announced today.

23 Jul 2004

Researchers discover a mechanism that blocks replication of a retrovirus

A team of scientists led by University of Georgia researchers has discovered a naturally occurring mechanism that blocks a critical step late in retrovirus replication.

21 Jul 2004

Scientists determine structure of staph, anthrax enzyme

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago have determined the crystal structure of sortase B, an enzyme found in the bacteria that cause staph and anthrax. While an antibiotic is probably five to seven years away, the structure could provide the first clue in developing a treatment for the infections.

15 Jul 2004

Targeted therapeutics capable of preventing or limiting the metastasis of skin cancer

An international team of scientists has identified an important molecular link involved in the spread – or metastasis – of melanoma to other organs such as the lungs.

15 Jul 2004

Geographic variations in colour perception

It's long been known that color blindness is caused, usually in men, by changes in the red and green opsin genes, the genes that enable humans to perceive color.

9 Jul 2004

Identification of a naturally occurring genetic difference that controls the production of serotonin in the brain

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have provided the first direct evidence in mice for the role of an enzyme that specifically controls the production of serotonin in the brain.

8 Jul 2004

Protein research may help develop new antibiotics

New findings about a protein that keeps cells alive by opening and closing pores within a cell's membrane may open the door to the development of new antibiotics.

30 Jun 2004

Abnormalities observed in cloned mice help reinforce the need to continue to avoid the reproductive cloning of humans

Dr. Takumi Takeuchi, from Cornell University, New York, USA told a media briefing that he and Dr. Gianpiero Palermo's team had compared imprinting abnormalities (the process where specific genes inherited from both parents are silent) in mice embryos derived from assisted reproduction techniques and from cloning.

30 Jun 2004

$1.6 million ecological stoichiometry grant to study how certain nutrients affect the development of disease in humans and animals

Two University of Kansas and four Arizona State University researchers have received an almost $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study how certain nutrients affect the development of disease in humans and animals.

29 Jun 2004

Elevated homocysteine levels have been associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease

Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) who also have high levels of homocysteine (an amino acid produced by the body) are more likely to be depressed compared with other patients with PD who have normal levels of homocysteine

21 Jun 2004

New gene found in genetic wasteland

In a region of DNA long considered a genetic wasteland, Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered a new class of gene.

20 Jun 2004

New target to stop breast cancer growth

Two proteins that normally help cells move from place to place and are made in large quantities in breast cancer cells work together to promote the survival and spread of breast cancer, according to a new study by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

15 Jun 2004

African Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases at a rate about five times higher than the rest of the U.S. population

African Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases at a rate about five times higher than the rest of the U.S. population. In a new study, scientists may have found a culprit: a serious deficiency of nitric oxide, a small molecule vital in the regulation of blood flow and blood pressure.

11 Jun 2004

High school student makes significant contribution to breast cancer research

A high school student from Albany, New York, has made a significant contribution toward understanding how mutations to a gene called BRCA-1 contributes to hereditary breast cancer.

5 Jun 2004

Students win awards for research into liver disease, cancer and insomnia

Targeting a range of diseases and disorders, three University of Houston students won awards at a recent symposium for research in liver disease, cancer and insomnia.

2 Jun 2004

Four critical components of cells' protein-building machine don't do what scientists had long assumed

In the hunt for these details, scientists have focused on four RNA building blocks, or nucleotides, deep within the machine that are identical in every species, from bacteria to humans. Because they sit where the protein chain is actually built, these "universally conserved" nucleotides in the ribosome were thought to help that process.

28 May 2004

Finding overturns long held ideas about how cells build proteins

Writing in the May 28 issue of Cell, Johns Hopkins researchers report that four critical components of cells' protein-building machine don't do what scientists had long assumed.

27 May 2004