Category: Research

All life – plants, animals, people – depends on peaceful coexistence with a swarm of microbial life that performs vital services from helping to convert food to energy to protection from disease.

Now, with the help of a squid that uses a luminescent bacterium to create a predator-fooling light organ and a fish that uses a different strain of the same species of bacteria like a flashlight to illuminate the dark nooks of the reefs where it lives, scientists have found that gaining a single gene is enough for the microbe to switch host animals.

The finding, reported this week (Feb. 1) in the journal Nature by a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is important not only because it peels back some of the mystery of how bacteria evolved to colonise different animals, but also because it reveals a genetic pressure point that could be manipulated to thwart the germs that make us sick.

Scientific inspiration can come from anywhere â?? a person, an event, even an experiment gone awry. But perhaps nothing can drive innovation more powerfully than the passion born of tragedy. Or, in Douglas Melton’s case, near tragedy. The co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) is one of the leading figures in the search for cures for presently incurable diseases, and his breakthrough work is challenging many long-held beliefs about the ways biology and human development work.

But it was a very personal experience that brought Melton to stem cells, one that 17 years later he still finds difficult to discuss. When his son Sam was 6 months old, he became ill with what his parents thought was a cold. He woke up with projectile vomiting and before long began taking short, shallow breaths. After several hours, he started to turn gray, and Melton and his wife Gail brought the baby to the emergency room. For the rest of that afternoon, doctors performed test after test, trying to figure out what was wrong. “It was a horrific day,” says Melton.

The state’s 2005 law promoting stem-cell research has begun paying dividends, according to state officials who announced Wednesday that University of Connecticut scientists have developed two kinds of human embryonic stem cells.

The cells — called CT1 and CT2 and created as part of the state’s 10-year, $100 million commitment to stem cell science — will be given away to researchers for nominal fees to study their potential for medical uses.

UConn joins the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco among institutions that have developed lines of human embryonic stem cells.

Stressful experiences can have a long-lasting impact on children’s health, U.S. researchers report.

They evaluated the immune systems of teens who’d experienced either typical or extremely stressful childhoods, such as physical abuse or time in an orphanage. Specifically, the researchers looked at levels of antibodies against the common and usually latent herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1).

Early stressors in children have long-term implications on a child’s immunity, U.S. researchers said.

Senior study author Seth Pollak of the University of Wisconsin in Madison said the study revealed impaired immune function in adolescents who, as youngsters, experienced either physical abuse or time in an orphanage.

It’s the iconic dinosaur battle, seared into every kid’s imagination from picture books and cartoons: Tyrannosaurus rex lunges, mouth agape, and Triceratops parries with its horns and bony neck frill. This scene probably did unfold in North American forests 65 million years ago, but new research suggests Triceratops also used its headgear in fights against its own species.

Paleontologists have proposed this idea before. It makes sense, given that other animals with horns or antlers, such as deer, use them against their own kind in battles for dominance or mating rights. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, documented wounds on Triceratops fossils, backing the idea up with hard data for the first time.

The three-horned dinosaur Triceratops used its spectacular headgear to charge and wrestle with other members of its species in a similar way to modern deer and antelope, according to research.

Battle scars on the skulls of Triceratops fossils have revealed a pattern of injuries that is best explained by Cretaceous-era combat in a study that could settle a long-running debate over whether the creatureâ??s horns were used for fighting or display.

Meanwhile, studies in animals dating back to the 1980s show caloric restriction can extend lifespan and slow aging. The current findings are “another piece of evidence that what we see in laboratory rodents on caloric restriction translates to humans,” said Richard Weindruch, of University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied caloric restriction since 1975 but did not participate in Floel’s study. “I find it somewhat remarkable that such a brief period of [caloric restriction] actually would have these effects.”

WHITEWATER, Wis. (AP) — The scientific journal Nature says a former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater biology professor has put forward some of the decade’s best ideas on evolution.

The journal recognized Jeffrey McKinnon for his work on the mating habits of three-spine sticklebacks, which are silvery fish about 2 inches long.

Ten years after University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James Thomson first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells, a California company has received clearance from regulators to begin the first clinical trials for a therapy based on them.

Geron Corp. will enter uncharted territory when it begins the first federally approved human studies on an embryonic stem cell therapy, marking what some consider a major milestone in a field that’s still a long way from commercialization.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company plans begin testing a treatment using embryonic stem cells that could fix major spinal cord injuries in people.

Researchers Tell Morley Safer Red Wine Substance Resveratrol Could One Day Lengthen Lives

Noted: In one experiment, a group of rhesus monkeys is on a major diet. For nearly two decades they have been taking in a good 30 percent fewer calories than their well-fed brothers and sisters.

They are the centerpiece of a National Institutes of Health study at the University of Wisconsin on whether or not CR- calorie restriction – makes them healthier and extends their lives. To maintain their sterile environment, the 60 Minutes team had to suit up to visit them with Ricki Colman, the “project leader.”

The control animals are nearing the end of a typical monkey lifespan, about 27 years, and major differences in their overall health are becoming clear. The skinny monkeys actually look younger, their coats are shinier, and fewer have arthritis.

And the chunky monkeys? Many have diabetes, and a significantly higher number have cancer and heart disease.

Pound for pound, Colman says the lighter monkeys do better.

Dr. Richard Weindruch, who heads up the study, believes that calorie restriction turns on these monkeys’ genetic survival switch. A hungry life seems to lead to a longer life.

It may be the first chicken coop to become a National Historic Landmark.

Aldo Leopold’s beloved getaway on the Wisconsin River near Baraboo has been officially listed as one of the nation’s historic sites. Known simply as the “Shack,” the converted chicken coop served as a weekend retreat for the famous naturalist and his family.

In a research milestone, the federal government will allow the worldâ??s first test in people of a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells.

Federal drug regulators said that political considerations had no role in the decision. Nevertheless, the move coincided with the inauguration of President Obama, who has pledged to remove some of the financing restrictions placed on the field by President George W. Bush.

In the rogues’ gallery of microscopic infectious agents, the prion is the toughest hombre in town. Warped pathogens that lack both DNA and RNA, prions are believed to cause such fatal brain ailments as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and moose, mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

Patients with spinal cord injury will become the first people to be treated with human embryonic stem cells this summer in a move that marks a new chapter for science.

The first human study of the controversial technology, which is opposed by pro-life groups because it involves destroying embryos, will today be approved by U.S. regulators.

Federal regulators have cleared the way for the first human trials of human embryonic stem-cell research, authorizing researchers to test whether the cells are safe to use in spinal injury patients, the company behind the trials announced Friday.

Embryonic stem cells are blank cells found in embryos, which have the ability to turn into any cell in the body.

Embryonic stem cells are blank cells found in embryos, which have the ability to turn into any cell in the body.

The tests could begin by summer, said Dr. Thomas Okarma, president and CEO of the Geron Corporation. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the trials, which will use human stem cells authorized for research by then-President George W. Bush in 2001.

The patients will be those with the most severe spinal cord injuries, called complete spinal cord injuries.

In a biotech laboratory close to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Bloomsbury, London, Professor Geoffrey Raisman, is researching a treatment for spinal cord injury using adult stem cells. This week, with no brief for Republicans or Democrats, he has been pondering the presidential inauguration celebrations with serious misgivings. He believes that the new presidentâ??s pledge to fund human embryonic stem cell ­research could have a detrimental effect on the future of his work.

Ten years ago in a tiny, underequipped laboratory in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Professor James “Jamie” Thomson, an embryologist, extracted the first human embryonic stem cells from an embryo. Thomson was part of a community of scientists who had been pursuing the “philosopher’s stone” of embryonic stem cells with slender resources and huge determination for a decade. Last year, at a conference in New York City calling itself the World Stem Cell Summit, it was projected that the market for stem cell clinical products could reach $8.5bn within a decade.

The cost of doing business for Wisconsin farmers could be less in 2009, but the price they get for their milk, meat and grain won’t be as high as in 2008.

A UW-Madison and UW-Extension report outlining the status of the state’s farm economy predicts the national recession will loom over the state’s agricultural industry this year but that two years of record net income could help ease the pain for farmers.

In his recent letter, Rick Marolt asks University of Wisconsin System administration, regents, ethicists, researchers, and others: “Who among you has the courage to defend these experiments (on monkeys) on moral grounds?”

I would remind him that the ethics of these experiments is discussed and defended publicly by the research community.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison might have found a chink in one of biology’s most fearsome infectious agents: the prion, believed responsible for the family of brain-wasting diseases that includes Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans and chronic wasting disease in deer.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found a chink in the armor of the tough infectious prion that is believed to cause CWD, the fatal brain-wasting disease that plagues Wisconsin’s white-tailed deer herd.

The finding is particularly important because prions survive in soil for years, meaning that they could potentially infect other animals.

The National Stem Cell Bank, housed at the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, has received two more embryonic stem-cell lines, giving it all 21 lines approved for federal funding by the Bush administration.

The two new lines are from Cellartis, a biotechnology company in Sweden, WiCell announced Monday.

The U.S. National Stem Cell Bank said it now has all 21 lines of embryonic stem cells approved for use in federally funded research.

The Madison-based bank said it recently received deposits of the last two cell lines from Cellartis AB, a biotechnology company based in Sweden.

A former UW-Madison professor has been named vice chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.

Said Abdel-Khalik earned a master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s and remained on campus as a faculty member until 1987.

Dear Editor:

Research proves that monkeys think, feel, and relate to each other much like people do. They deserve ethical consideration similar to the consideration given to people. But UW-Madison and Covance hold thousands of monkeys in neurosis-inducing conditions and conduct brutal and fatal experiments on them.

Kevin Reilly, UW System president, has refused to study the ethical problems raised by the research proving these animals’ similarity to us.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has quietly decided to stop manufacturing its signature aerosol chambers used for researching infectious disease, which were involved in a few dangerous lab accidents nationwide.

The College of Engineering is shutting down the business after an internal audit found it was poorly managed and carried the potential for huge liability costs in the event the chambers failed, exposing researchers to toxic agents.

To see if a mother’s touch might also cause sex-specific changes in rats’ brains, Anthony Auger at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues stroked baby female rats, giving them the attention normally reserved for males. They found that the number of oestrogen receptors in the hypothalamus of stroked females was lower than in unstroked females, and similar to levels found in males.

A column by UW-Madison faculty members Greg Nemet and David Weimer says that a policy window on energy has opened for President-elect Barack Obama that could fund his energy program with minimum fuss: the re-emergence of the oil import fee.

Since the 1970s, energy analysts have advocated an oil import fee to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Advocates have argued that there are external costs associated with oil imports from the unstable Middle East that should be internalized in the price of oil.

In an initial study, UW School of Medicine and Public Health assistant professor of pediatrics Megan Moreno and a team of researchers found more than half of 18-year-old MySpace users they studied mentioned sex, violence or substance use on their Web profiles.