Microbiology

Researchers have discovered that neurons can use two different neurotransmitters that target the same receptor on a receiving neuron to shape the transmission of a nerve impulse. Although the researchers’ experiments identified the “co-release” of the two neurotransmitters only in specific types of neurons in the brain’s auditory center, their finding may apply more broadly in the brain, they said. Thus, the finding may represent a new way in which the brain precisely modulates the nerve impulses that travel from neuron to neuron in its circuitry. To propagate a nerve impulse within neural…

A team of scientists from the University Paris Descartes has solved the structure of two proteins that allow bacteria to gain resistance to multiple types of antibiotics, according to a report in EMBO reports this month. This work provides new clues as to how bacteria adapt to resist antibiotics and how to design new drugs that counteract this defense mechanism. Frédéric Dardel and colleagues crystallized both the narrow and broad-spectrum resistance forms of the antibiotic-modifying acetyltransferase enzyme. Their report reveals that the enzyme has a flexible active site that can evolve to…

The human nervous system consists of the brain and spinal marrow, which constitute the central nervous system (CNS), and sensory nerve cells that comprise the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Information from our surroundings-sight, smell, hearing, etc.-are transmitted from specific sensory nerve cells in the PNS to the central nervous system, where it is processed and governs our response. These processes require the two nervous systems to be functionally connected. It is known that this connectivity is established during the fetal stage, but only now have researchers at Umeå University in…

Scientists at the University of Michigan have shown that their new metabolic imaging instrument can accurately detect eye disease at a very early stage. Such a device would be vision-saving because many severe eye diseases do not exhibit early warning signals before they begin to diminish vision. The testing is noninvasive and takes less than 6 minutes to administer to a patient. Victor M. Elner, M.D., Ph.D., and Howard R. Petty, Ph.D., report their findings in the February issue of Archives of Ophthalmology. The women had been recently diagnosed with pseudotumor cerebri (PTC), a condition…

While most people understand the dangers of flushing toxic chemicals into the ecosystem through municipal sewer systems, one potentially devastating threat to wild fish populations comes from an unlikely source: estrogen. After an exhaustive seven-year research effort, Canadian biologists found that miniscule amounts of estrogen present in municipal wastewater discharges can decimate wild fish populations living downstream. The research, led by Dr. Karen Kidd, an NSERC-funded biology professor at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John) and the Canadian Rivers Institute, confirms that…

New research from the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute shows that an interaction between fetal brain cells and maternal antibodies could be linked with the repetitive behavior – also called stereotypies – that is characteristic of autism. While additional studies are needed to confirm the outcome, this result leads investigators to suspect that brain-directed antibodies during the prenatal period could be a causal factor for the disorder. The study appears online now and will be published in a future issue of Brain, Behavior and Immunity. The study builds on recent research led by UC Davis…

Unlike the rest of the cells in your body, your red blood cells lack nuclei. That quirk dates back to the time when mammals began to evolve. Other vertebrates such as fish, reptiles, and birds, have red cells that contain nuclei that are inactive. Losing the nucleus enables the red blood cell to contain more oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, thus enabling more oxygen to be transported in the blood and boosting our metabolism. Scientists have struggled to understand the mechanism by which maturing red blood cells eject their nuclei. Now, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Member Harvey Lodish have…

A cellular protein that helps guide immune cells to the gut has been newly identified as a target of HIV when the virus begins its assault on the body's immune system, according to researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “The identification of this new receptor opens up new avenues of investigation that may help further elucidate the complex mechanisms of the pathogenesis of HIV infection,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., chief of the Institute’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation (LIR) and…

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center have developed new “fluorogen activating proteins” (FAPs) that will become a key component of novel molecular biosensor technology being created at Carnegie Mellon. The FAPs, which can be used to monitor biological activities of individual proteins and other biomolecules within living cells in real time, are described in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology. Carnegie Mellon scientists designed the FAPs to emit fluorescent light only when bound to a fluorogen, an otherwise non-fluorescent dye added by the…

A burger and fries may be the quintessential North American meal but it can also be viewed as the perfect example of humanity’s increasingly varied diet, according to researchers who have conducted a unique study of the plants used around the world for food. “Generally speaking, we eat very broadly from the tree of life,” University of Calgary plant evolutionary ecologist Jana Vamosi said. “Others have looked at the sheer number of plant species we consume but nobody has ever examined whether the plants we eat are clustered in certain branches. It turns out that they are not.” In the first-…