SCIENCE NEWS - Acne drug minocycline inhibits HIV activation

In most people, HIV can be controlled with a drug combination called HAART, short for highly active antiretroviral therapy. But HAART doesn’t wipe out the virus, and stresses on the immune system such as an infection can reactivate the latent virus and trigger its spread.

An inexpensive antibiotic might complement standard drugs in fighting the AIDS virus, a new study shows. The drug, called minocycline, has been used for decades to control acne, but the new findings suggest it inhibits HIV that has infected cells from reactivating and replicating itself.

In the new study, molecular biologist Janice Clements of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and her colleagues infected human T cells with HIV in lab dishes, then added minocycline to some of these batches. After 24 hours, the minocycline-treated cells contained half as much HIV RNA as the other cells, suggesting the drug had inhibited the ability of the virus to replicate. The scientists also tested minocycline on T cells obtained from HIV patients who had been treated with HAART. Minocycline again stalled HIV replication, as demonstrated by a 60 percent decline in activity of a key gene that HIV needs to awaken and replicate.

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SCIENCE NEWS - The first known amphibious insects!!

Terrestrial moths evolved new lifestyle in the islands - They don’t surf, but caterpillars found only in Hawaii are the first insects known to feed and grow as readily in water as on land.

Evolutionary biologist Daniel Rubinoff of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and his colleagues have described amphibious habits of larvae in 12 new species in the moth genus Hyposmocoma (Adult insect is shown in the picture above - note the unique hair on hind wing).
Young of each species can thrive both underwater in rushing streams and exposed to air on rocks poking out of the water. Hyposmocoma moths live only in the Hawaiian islands, and most species in the genus spend their caterpillarhood exclusively on land before flitting away as full-grown moths. Yet genetic analyses show that within the genus, landlubber lineages have independently evolved amphibious caterpillars. A wood boring caterpillar of this genus is shown below.
In lab studies, the researchers found that these caterpillars don’t have gills or a natural scuba mechanism of trapping air bubbles. Instead, they appear to get oxygen directly from water. To survive submerged, the caterpillars need fast-flowing waters where they shelter on the downstream sides of rocks and spin tethers to keep from washing away. Caterpillars in this genus crawl around partly covered by silk-spun cases of a variety of shapes and sizes that they add to as they grow. Species in the newly described amphibious lineages, still awaiting formal scientific names, make cases called cones, bugles and burritos. Researchers have also found cases in the shapes of cigars, candy wrappers, oyster shells, dog bones and bowties. “We’re running out of names to describe them,” Rubinoff says.

Besides introducing some remarkable caterpillars, the work emphasizes the importance of islands in the study of evolution. Isolated mixes of the relatively few kinds of creatures that arrive on islands can come up with novelties unknown elsewhere. “Islands are clearly these crucibles of evolution,” Rubinoff says.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

BIOBASICS QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

What is DANDRUFF & how is it formed?
A fungus is at least partly to blame for the presence of Dandruff on your scalp. Dandruff is related to the presence of certain species of Malassezia—ubiquitous, hard-to-eradicate fungi that live on humans and other mammals.

Malassezia live on your scalp--whether or not you have dandruff—and dine on the oil that your scalp excretes, the researchers say. The fungi break down the oil, called sebum, into free fatty acids, which can irritate the scalp. Irritation prompts the scalp to try to repair itself through extra cell production, which leads to dandruff. The repair also stimulates more sebum secretion, which means more fungi food.
Researchers don't know why only some people get dandruff. Everybody has got Malassezia and everybody has got sebum... but for some reason some people get dandruff and other people don't.

The M. globosa genome has revealed a few interesting facts. First, the fungus lacks the gene that produces lipids. M. globosa can't make fats itself which explains why it is dependent on our sebum.
Another key finding--with implications for the fight against dandruff--is what the fungus uses to break down the sebum. The researchers found that M. globosa secretes several types of proteins—lipases and proteases—that can break up sebum into something the fungus can digest. Inhibition of these lipases would probably be a good thing for starving out the bug. Inhibition of proteases would be a good way to kill the bug.

SCIENCE NEWS - Unique Bacteria on hand provide another form of fingerprint

Unique bacterial profiles give criminals another reason to wear gloves. Bacteria may one day help crime scene investigators catch criminals dirty-handed. Having found previously that everyone’s hands carry a unique bacterial population, researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder have now shown that the mix of microbes left on a computer keyboard can be used to tell if a particular person had used it.


Their tests, reported online the week of March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raise the possibility that hand bacteria could potentially serve as a new type of fingerprint. Noah Fierer and his colleagues wondered if bacteria could be used in forensic tests when fingerprints fail, such as when the prints are smudged or evidence consists of fabric or other soft surfaces that don’t lend themselves to fingerprinting. After all, says Fierer, “you only need to smudge a fingerprint, but you can’t sterilize a surface just by wiping it off.”

Fierer and his colleagues swabbed the hands of three people and took samples of bacteria from keyboards used exclusively by each of the three. The researchers then created DNA profiles of bacterial populations from the hands and keyboards. The bacteria on an individual’s keyboard closely matched bacteria on their hands, the team found. And the bacterial DNA remained useful for at least two weeks after swabbing. Fierer agrees that much more testing is needed to determine whether bacterial fingerprinting will be a useful forensic tool. The researchers are now trying to determine how many times people must touch objects to leave their bacterial signatures behind and whether bacterial fingerprints can be lifted from cloth or other soft surfaces.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

BIOBASICS QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

Which of the following structures is specialized to perform Nitrogen Fixation in Cyanobacteria?

a. Akinetes

b. Zoospores

c. Heterocysts

d. Tetraspores

BIOBASICS Solution: C. Heterosysts are thick walled structures which provide anaerobic environment necessary for the activity of Nitrogenase enzyme which fixes nitrogen.

SCIENCE NEWS - Some body parts like APPENDIX seem pointless but in fact have purpose

Throughout history, scientists, too, have wondered about structures that don’t seem to do anything useful. The appendix is a popular example. This little, worm-like pouch is about four inches long and less than half an inch wide.The organ grows near where the long intestine meets the short intestine. The intestines are essential for digestion, but the appendix appears to just sit there.
“It’s a dead-end sack,” says William Parker, an immunologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”Parker didn’t start out intending to study the appendix. His specialty is the immune system — a collection of organs, cells and molecules that our bodies use to stay healthy. But his research led him to the appendix anyway.
Parker knew that the human body is full of tiny organisms called bacteria, which can overwhelm the immune system, cause infections and make a person sick. He also knew that some bacteria are good for human health. Among other benefits, these “good” bacteria help people digest food and fight off “bad” bacteria that cause disease.The immune system doesn’t just benefit from good bacteria, though. In the 1990s, Parker and colleagues began to figure out that the immune system also helps good bacteria flourish. These bacteria appear in thin layers called biofilms, which grow on the side of the gut near and inside the appendix. These biofilms, the researchers learned, provide a barrier that keep out bad bacteria. “Once we figured that out, it should have been obvious to us what the appendix did,” says Parker, whose team also found that the appendix has a particularly robust biofilm. “It’s in the perfect spot to harbor bacteria — out of the flow and with a thin, narrow opening. And there’s a large amount of immune tissue associated with it.”
After stumbling on a possible link between the immune system and the appendix, though, the scientists still had some clues to compile before being sure of the organ’s purpose.

Hangout for good bacteria

In 2007, Parker’s team put together all the evidence they had gathered and came up with a conclusion: The appendix serves as a “safe house,” Parker says, a storage bin for good bacteria. If bad bacteria attack, good bacteria emerge from the appendix and come to the rescue.
Having a safe space for good bacteria should be especially useful in parts of the world that are poor and undeveloped — places where people are starving, medicine is hard to come by, clean water is scarce and diarrhea can kill. In those places, Parker says, the appendix probably helps keep people alive, especially young children.
In fact, people in the developing world rarely get infected appendixes, like Smith’s. Most cases of appendicitis, in fact, occur in the United States and other developed countries, where water is purified, hospitals are sterilized and medical care is easier to get.

Those trends suggest that the appendix evolved in our ancestors to maintain health in a bacteria-filled world. Today, places such as the United States might be too sterile for the appendix. When the organ has nothing do, the immune system can turn on itself, sending people to the emergency room, Parker says. Other problems, such as allergies and immune diseases, might have similar roots.

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SCIENCE NEWS - The superheavy COPERNICUM takes its place in the Periodic Table

Everything on Earth that scientists can see, measure or study is made of atoms — and atoms are named by what type of element they are. You probably know the name of many elements, such as oxygen, gold or hydrogen. Others, such as cadmium or xenon, may sound strange and exotic. In any case, elements are everywhere: You, your shoes, your desk, cars, water, air — all made of elements.

Now, there’s a new kid on the block: Elements, meet copernicum.

This element was officially named on February 19, but the element itself isn’t new. German scientists made and observed it in 1996. But in the 14 years since then, other scientists have been working to study and validate the original findings. A scientific breakthrough is “validated” when other scientists can perform the same experiment and get the same results. Validation is an important part of the scientific process because it demonstrates that a scientific discovery was not a mistake.

All that hard work finally paid off when the element finally received its name, copernicum, from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (the organization in charge of making sure chemists all over the world use the same words to mean the same things.) Copernicum is named in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus, a 16th century Polish scholar who proposed that Earth orbits the sun (rather than that everything orbits Earth) and that Earth turns on its own axis. These ideas may seem obvious now, but in 16th century Europe, they were revolutionary.

Scientists organize all the elements on a chart called the Periodic Table. Each element gets a symbol and its own number, and copernicum gets the symbol Cn and the number 112. This number means that inside every atom of copernicum are 112 protons. Protons are particles inside the nucleus, or core, of every atom. The lightest element, hydrogen, has only one proton inside each atom.

Its 112 protons make copernicum the heaviest known element with a name. It was first observed by Sigurd Hofmann, a scientist at the Center for Heavy Ion Research, or GSI, in Darmstadt, Germany. Hofmann and his team created copernicum in the laboratory when they blasted atoms of lead (each with 82 protons) with zinc isotopes, kinds of zinc atoms that each had 30 protons.

SCIENCE NEWS - Taste is not just for the tongue

Scientists are discovering that TASTE is a whole-body sensation. There are taste cells in the stomach, intestine and, evidence suggests, the pancreas, colon and esophagus. These sensory cells are part of an ancient battalion tasked with guiding food choices since long before nutrition labels, Rachael Ray or even agriculture existed. While taste cells in the mouth make snap judgments about what should be let inside, new work suggests that gut taste cells serve as specialized ground forces, charged with preparing the digestive system for the aftermath of the tongue’s decisions.

Stimulating these gut cells triggers a complex series of events that can dial down, or amp up, the digestion and absorption of the body’s fuel. When hit by bitter — potentially toxic — substances, gut taste cells sound an alarm that may lead to slower absorption or spur vomiting. And when the gut’s taste sensors encounter something sweet, they send a “prepare for fuel” missive that results in cranked-up insulin levels in the blood.

Though scientists don’t fully understand what follows, studies hint at a tantalizing, if convoluted, connection between gut taste cell activity and metabolism. Figuring out such connections may one day lead to new therapies for treating type 2 diabetes, obesity and other disorders. And the sweet-focused research could help explain recent counter-intuitive findings that link such problems with drinking diet soda.

Diet drinks are often enjoyed without food, which means the gut may be preparing for fuel that never arrives.

So beware those little white lies. Thousands of years of evolution have yielded a finely tuned digestive machine, one that recognizes incoming energy and knows how to make the most of it. These intricate chains of events evolved during a time when that sweet zing reliably indicated food rich in valuable calories. And for thousands of years, the gut reacted appropriately.

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SCIENCE NEWS - New dinosaur species found in China

Paleontologists in China Saturday claimed to have found the skeleton of a new species of carnivorous dinosaur that believed to have lived about 80 million years ago. Experts have found an intact and complete skeleton fossil of a previously undiscovered dinosaur species in north China, the team's leading scientist Xu Xing said.

The fossil was one of the world's most well-preserved specimen of small predator dinosaurs that lived about 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, said Xu, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. About 2.5-metre long and weighing 25 kg, the dinosaur would have been a fast and agile predator and, like other dromaeosaurids, possessed large 'killing claws'.

The new dinosaur was found in the rocks of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region by an international team which consisted of members from China, the US and Britain, Xinhua reported.
The region is known for the huge presence of dinosaur fossils buried in aeolian rocks formed by sandstorm, which the experts believe killed the dinosaurs, resulting in comparatively intact preservation.

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