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This TED talk makes an attempt at explaining oil from the molecules involved to the industry itself.

A Protein that destroys HIV

LOYOLA RESEARCHERS ZERO IN ON PROTEIN THAT DESTROYS HIV


MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Using a $225,000 microscope, researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys.

The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System.

Campbell and colleagues report their findings in an article featured on the cover of the Sept. 15, 2010 issue of the journal Virology, now available online.

In 2004, other researchers reported that TRIM5a protects rhesus monkeys from HIV. The TRIM5a protein first latches on to a HIV virus, then other TRIM5a proteins gang up and destroy the virus.

Humans also have TRIM5a, but while the human version of TRIM5a protects against some viruses, it does not protect against HIV.

Researchers hope to turn TRIM5a into an effective therapeutic agent. But first they need to identify the components in TRIM5a that enable the protein to destroy viruses. “Scientists have been trying to develop antiviral therapies for only about 75 years," Campbell said. "Evolution has been playing this game for millions of years, and it has identified a point of intervention that we still know very little about."

TRIM5a consists of nearly 500 amino acid subunits. Loyola researchers have identified six 6 individual amino acids, located in a previously little-studied region of the TRIM5a protein, that are critical in the ability of the protein to inhibit viral infection. When these amino acids were altered in human cells, TRIM5a lost its ability to block HIV-1 infection. (The research was done on cell cultures; no rhesus monkeys were used in the study.)

By continuing to narrow their search, researchers hope to identify an amino acid, or combination of amino acids, that enable TRIM5a to destroy HIV. Once these critical amino acids are identified, it might be possible to genetically engineer TRIM5a to make it more effective in humans. Moreover, a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of action might enable the development of drugs that mimic TRIM5a action, Campbell said.

In their research, scientists used Loyola's wide-field "deconvolution" microscope to observe how the amino acids they identified altered the behavior of TRIM5a. They attached fluorescent proteins to TRIM5a to, in effect, make it glow. In current studies, researchers are fluorescently labeling individual HIV viruses and measuring the microscopic interactions between HIV and TRIM5a.

"The motto of our lab is one of Yogi Berra's sayings -- 'You can see a lot just by looking,'" Campbell said.

Campbell is an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. His co-authors are Jaya Sastri, a Stritch graduate student and first author; Christopher O'Connor, a former post-doctorate researcher at Stritch; Cindy Danielson and Michael McRaven of Northwestrn University Feinberg School of Medicine and Patricio Perez and Felipe Diaz-Griffero of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

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Based in the western suburbs of Chicago, Loyola University Health System is a quaternary care system with a 61-acre main medical center campus, the 36-acre Gottlieb Memorial Hospital campus and 28 primary and specialty care facilities in Cook, Will and DuPage counties. The medical center campus is conveniently located in Maywood, 13 miles west of the Chicago Loop and 8 miles east of Oak Brook, Ill. The heart of the medical center campus, Loyola University Hospital, is a 561-licensed-bed facility. It houses a Level 1 Trauma Center, a Burn Center and the Ronald McDonald® Children's Hospital of Loyola University Medical Center. Also on campus are the Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center, Loyola Outpatient Center, Center for Heart & Vascular Medicine and Loyola Oral Health Center as well as the LUC Stritch School of Medicine, the LUC Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing and the Loyola Center for Fitness. Loyola's Gottlieb Memorial Hospital campus in Melrose Park includes the 264-bed community hospital, the Gottlieb Center for Fitness and the Marjorie G. Weinberg Cancer Care Center.

An amazing series featuring the theories of Jarod Diamond

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Lee Holtz: Inside Antarctica- a good place from which to understand the world

A gene for speech?

The Foxp2 gene and the "Broca’s area" region of the brain might be the reason why we developed complex languages.
Now, genetic evidence may show how our language brain circuitry came about over the last half million years of human evolution. In a study published in Nature, Neuroscientists Genevieve Konopka and Daniel Geschwind at the University of California, Los Angeles have demonstrated that the human version of the FOXP2 gene –- one that mutated around the time humans developed the ability to talk –- regulates more than 100 other genes differently than the chimpanzee version of the gene. Other genes may also be involved, but there’s a good chance that this mutation helped us humans develop speech and language.
According to another recent study led by Chet Sherwood, a neuroscientist at George Washington University in Washington DC, a brain region critical to speech and language in humans developed substantially after humans split from chimpanzees. French physician Pierre Paul Broca identified this region of the brain studying brain-damaged patients incapable of uttering more than a few words. “Broca's area” typically occupies a much larger portion of the left half of the human brain than the right. Because right-handed humans also tend to process language in their left halves (this is reversed for lefties), some researchers think that lop-sidedness in Broca's area may help explain why humans –- and not chimpanzees –- developed language. Broca's area ballooned disproportionately during our species' evolution. Human brains are 3.6 times larger than those of chimpanzees, on average. And Broca’s area is more than 6 times larger in humans than chimpanzees according Natalie Schenker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who worked with Sherwood on the research

Marc Hauser, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, cautions that it’s too early to draw too many conclusions regarding the genetic basis of the evolution of language circuitry in humans. "I would be extremely skeptical about drawing inferences," says Hauser.

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Brain-on-a-chip

The Canadian Press


Date: Wednesday Aug. 11, 2010 9:14 AM ET

TORONTO — It seems like the stuff of science fiction, but Canadian researchers have created a microchip embedded with brain cells that allows them to "listen in" as the neurons communicate with each other.

This brain-on-a-chip will make it possible to test drugs for a number of neurological conditions in a much quicker, efficient and accurate way, said principal researcher Naweed Syed, head of cell biology and anatomy at the University of Calgary.

The so-called neurochip -- a millimetre-square marriage of the electronic and organic -- is a big step forward on a previous chip produced by Syed's group that used brain cells from snails, which are four to 10 times larger than human neurons.

"This particular idea originates from our earlier finding a few years ago whereby we were the first team in the world to develop the first bionic hybrid," he said Tuesday from Calgary. "And what it meant was that you could now have brain cells that could talk to an electronic device and then the electronic device could talk back to the brain cells."

While this prototype biochip allowed the researchers to pick up the "talking bit," it wasn't refined enough to let them tune in to the underlying "chatter" that went on among brain cells.

"So now we can detect it," said Syed, explaining that "talk" and "chatter" are metaphors for the electrical signals that pass between neurons.

Brain cells communicate with each other through electrical and chemical messages that cause them to either be excited or to relax. Electrical messages, for instance, take a pathway on the neuron's surface known as an ion channel -- a component of the brain cell that is critical when it comes to drug testing.

In the next few months, the team plans to begin drug testing using their tiny device embedded with a network of brain cells surgically removed from patients with epilepsy.

"Now when we can get this cell, we can put it on our chip and then we can record ion-channel activity, but also find the best drug that will block seizures in that particular individual's cells," he said.

The research, conducted with the National Research Council and published online in the journal Biomedical Devices, could also speed up the search for drugs to treat such neurological diseases as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The brain-on-a-chip could also help drug companies more easily isolate compounds that would provide the next generation of pain killers or medications that could control addictions, Syed suggested.

"So I think it opens up the possibility of exploring brain cell function at a much higher resolution than has ever been done before."

Dr. Amen - Brain function

Declining phytoplankton a sign of catastrophe

Declining phytoplankton a sign of catastrophe


By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

As we wrote recently, nothing would please us more than if climate change deniers were right. It isn’t fun to delve daily into the ever-mounting evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change. And life would be easier if we didn’t have to spend it trying to get stubborn governments to do something about the problem, and trying to get the public to care without driving them to depression. Facing daily attacks from people who deny reality isn’t much fun either.

But evidence that the world is warming, mainly because of our fossil fuel addiction, and that this is having increasingly disastrous effects on our health and on the health of the planet’s ecosystems, keeps growing.
Meanwhile, arguments from deniers keep getting knocked down, to the point where one must conclude that there really are only two types of denier: those who are paid by industry to spread misinformation in attempts to confuse the public, which is criminal, and those who are unable to see the evidence staring them in the face and who still cling to arguments that one minute with Google would dispel, which is pathetic and stupid.

The latest blow to the deniers came when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency examined in detail 10 petitions challenging its 2009 finding that climate change is endangering the planet, that it is largely caused by burning fossil fuels, and that it threatens human health and the environment.

In every case, the EPA found that the petitions misinterpreted data, contained outright false claims, and included exaggerated charges.“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world,” said EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “These petitions – based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy – provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare.”
Another recent report, published by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, looked at data from 10 climate indicators measured by 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries. It concluded that human-caused climate change is undeniable and is increasing.
And so ice in the Arctic and in glaciers continues to melt, ocean temperatures and sea levels continue to rise, ecosystems and wildlife habitats continue to shift or degrade, and extreme weather events continue to become more frequent. On top of that, a recent study by Dalhousie University oceanographer Boris Worm and his team found that phytoplankton populations in the ocean are declining at an alarming rate because of human activity and climate change. Why should we care? Well, these microscopic plants are the base of the food chain and account for half the production of organic matter on Earth. They also remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce more than half the oxygen we breathe.

According to report co-author Marlon Lewis, "Climate-driven phytoplankton declines are another important dimension of global change in the oceans, which are already stressed by the effects of fishing and pollution.” The report, published in the July 29 edition of Nature, states that phytoplankton have declined by about 40 per cent since 1950.

We can’t live without them.
While governments stall and deniers spread confusion, it gets more and more difficult to achieve the kind of emissions reductions that scientists say are necessary to prevent the Earth from reaching a cataclysmic rise in global average temperatures. It was once possible, and may still be, but we are reaching a point where it will become impossible.
We all have a responsibility to do everything we can to reduce our own emissions, to vote for governments that make climate change a priority, and to make sure those governments focus on real solutions. We know that conserving energy and shifting to cleaner energy will not just help solve the climate crisis but will also resolve many pollution-related health issues and may even give economies a boost.

The fossil fuel industry, which continues to reap multi-billion dollar profits, has spent millions to support a handful of deniers, right-wing think tanks, and websites that call climate change “junk science” and deny human activity is influencing global warming. It’s time we all started ignoring the insane blathering of the deniers. We’ve already wasted too much time on them – and we don’t have time to waste.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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The herpes virus causes cold sores and Kills cancer

Herpes virus used to treat cancer


By Emma Wilkinson Health reporter, BBC News


Doctors say they have used a genetically engineered herpes virus to treat successfully patients with head and neck cancer. A London hospital trial of 17 patients found that use of the virus alongside chemotherapy and radiotherapy helped kill the tumours in most patients. It works by getting into cancer cells, killing them from the inside, and also boosting the patient's immune system. Further trials are planned for later in the year.

Head and neck cancer, which includes cancer of the mouth, tongue and throat, affects up to 8,000 people every year in the UK. Study leader Dr Kevin Harrington, who is based at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said current treatments were effective if the cancer was picked up early but that many patients were not diagnosed until it was more advanced. The herpes virus, which is also being tested in patients with skin cancer, is genetically manipulated so that it grows inside tumour cells but cannot infect normal healthy cells.
Once there it has a triple effect - it multiplies, killing tumour cells as it does so, it is engineered to produce a human protein that activates the immune system and it also makes a viral protein that acts as a red flag to immune cells.

'Potential weapon'

In the 17 patients injected with the virus, in addition to their standard treatment, at the Royal Marsden Hospital, 93% showed no trace of cancer after their tumour had been surgically removed. More than two years later, 82% of patients had not succumbed to the disease. Only two of 13 patients given the virus treatment at a high dose relapsed, the journal Clinical Cancer Research reported.

There were no safety concerns with use of the virus, the researchers said, and it is hoped the virus could one day be used to fight other types of cancer. "Around 35 to 55% of patients given the standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment typically relapse within two years, so these results compare very favourably," said Dr Harrington.He is now planning a trial comparing the viral treatment with the standard treatment in people newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Dr Alison Ross, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said it would be some time before the treatment could be used in patients as it still needed to be tested directly against standard treatment. But she added: "This small study highlights the potential of using genetically modified viruses as a weapon to fight cancer."

Al Shekel says our Brains are Miswired