Author: jplucas

Stem-cell research is entering a new phase: Research breakthroughs in Wisconsin and elsewhere have made it possible to send adult human cells back to their embryonic origins. Much work remains, but the prospect for clinical tests using this new pathway are drawing closer – and Wisconsin has the R&D team to be a leader. Stem cell research in Wisconsin has been privately financed, for the most part, but President-elect Obama may make it easier to obtain federal research dollars. Finally, the economic slowdown has enhanced Wisconsin’s position in an unexpected way. The California stem cell initiative, which is largely publicly financed, has hit on hard times. Wisconsin’s more cautious approach seems all the wiser now.

Engineers at UW-Madison are teaming up with the National Science Foundation and two other universities to support ice-core drilling in Antarctica. The research is used to study climate change.

The Ice Drilling Program Office will oversee polar research at Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire, and UW-Madison. Emeritus professor of Geophysics Charles

Bentley says the new group will establish an annually updated five-year plan, to help them be more responsive to what researchers will need in the future. (11th item.)

A new sweetener developed and patented by the UW-Madison is close to hitting the market, where it would compete with aspartame as well as regular sugar products. But some people are soured by its potential, and are accusing its makers of â??bio-piracyâ?.

For nearly 15 years, UW scientists have worked with the pulp of a berry from West Africa, to create brazzein. Fariba Assadi-Porter, whoâ??s been on the project since 1996, says the substance has great commercial potential. She says it has sweet properties very close to sugar without an aftertaste effect found in other products. Assadi-Porter adds its properties also make it potentially ideal for baking and not just soft drinks. (16th item.)

Three key genes can turn a regular flu virus into a super killer like the strain that devastated the world 90 years ago and one that could come again, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found in a study involving ferrets.

Three key genes can turn a regular flu virus into a super killer like the strain that devastated the world 90 years ago and one that could come again, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found in a study involving ferrets.

The discovery by a team led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka could help scientists better recognize new flu strains capable of causing a global epidemic, or pandemic, and develop drugs to ward off any kind of flu, the researchers said.

Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly — a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

A US-Japanese research team announced it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.

The pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people — more than in all of World War I, which ended in November 1918 — and spread around the world.

“Conventional flu viruses replicate mainly in the upper respiratory tract: the mouth, nose and throat,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who co-authored the study along with Masato Hatta, also of UW-Madison.

Gabriela Cezar, UW-Madison stem-cell researcher: How are the brains of people with autism different? UW-Madison stem-cell scientist Gabriela Cezar, whose goal for 2008 was to study tissue samples from 20 autistic patients, says the results have been “compelling.” She hopes to publish the findings in early 2009 and expand the study.

This year, scientists achieved a long-sought feat of cellular alchemy. They took skin cells from patients suffering from a variety of diseases and reprogrammed them into stem cells. The transformed cells grow and divide in the laboratory, giving researchers new tools to study the cellular processes that underlie the patients’ diseases. The achievement could also be an important step on a long path to treating diseases with a patient’s own cells

This video introduction to Science’s year-end special issue features Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, George Daley of Harvard University, and Science’s Gretchen Vogel reviewing some of the work that led studies in reprogramming cells to be tagged the top scientific story for 2008.

A new sweetener developed and patented by the UW-Madison is close to hitting the market, where it would compete with aspartame as well as regular sugar products. But some people are soured by its potential, and are accusing its makers of â??bio-piracyâ?. Brian Bull explainsâ?¦(Audio, tenth item.)