News tips from the journal mBio®, volume 4, issue 1
2013-03-14
(Press-News.org) Disarming One of the Deadliest Pathogens
Francisella tularensis, the cause of tularemia and one of the deadliest respiratory pathogens in existence, is considered a potential biological weapon because it is readily aerosolized and exhibits a high degree of infectivity and lethality in humans. While a live attenuated vaccine strain has been developed, it remains unlicensed because scientists have been unable to understand the basis for its attenuated virulence. In an attempt to find an acceptable live attenuated vaccine strain, researchers from Harvard Medical School examined the mechanism behind one reason the pathogen is so lethal. The first line of defense against a bacterial pathogen is innate immunity, which slows the progress of infection to allow time for adaptive immunity to develop. F. tularensis suppresses the early innate immune response, allowing the pathogen to kill its host before adaptive immunity develops, using a specific lipopolysaccharide (LPS.) In this study the researchers show that a strain of the pathogen lacking this specific LPS is attenuated in mice and specifically elicits an innate immune response. When immunized with the strain, mice were protected against challenge by a highly virulent strain of the bacteria. This study has identified not only a novel LPS modification important for microbial virulence, but also offers a new vaccine candidate.
http://bit.ly/mbiotip0313a
Lessons from a Decade of Plague in a Port City
A cluster of human plague cases over a 10-year period in the seaport city of Mahajanga Madagascar after a 62-year plague-free period provided researchers from Arizona and Madagascar with an opportunity to study plague dynamics in an urban environment, especially since historically plague entered new geographic areas through port cities such as this. Most of the isolates found during the outbreak were very closely related, suggesting that a single introduction became established in Mahajanga and then underwent local cycling and differential. The ultimate extinction of plague in Mahajanga suggests that although plague pathogens' ability to invade port cities has been essential for intercontinental spread, these regions are not a suitable long-term niche. However, the temporary large pathogen population expansion provides the means for plague pathogens to disperse and become ecologically established in more suitable nonurban environments.
http://bit.ly/mbiotip0313b
Gene Library for Staph
To enhance the research capabilities of investigators interested in Staphylococcus aureus, the Nebraska Center for Staphylococcal Research (CSR) has generated a sequence-defined transposon mutant library consisting of 1,952 strains, each containing a single mutation within a nonessential gene of the epidemic community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (CA-MRSA) isolate USA300. Infections caused by S. aureus cause significant morbidity and mortality in both community and hospital environments. Specific-allelic-replacement mutants are required to study the biology of this organism; however, this process is costly and time-consuming. In this paper the researchers describe the construction and validation of a sequence-defined transposon mutant library available for use by the scientific community through the Network on Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus (NARSA) strain repository. Overall, this library and associated tools will have a significant impact on studies investigating S. aureus pathogenesis and biology and serve as a useful paradigm for the study of other bacterial systems.
http://bit.ly/mbiotip0313c
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mBio® is an open access online journal published by the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology and related fields. It can be found online at http://mbio.asm.org.
The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.
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2013-03-14
For the first time, a UCLA team has used a technique normally employed in treating brain aneurysms to treat severe, life-threatening irregular heart rhythms in two patients.
This unique use of the method helped stop ventricular arrhythmias — which cause "electrical storms" — that originated in the septum, the thick muscle that separates the heart's two ventricles. This area is virtually impossible to reach with conventional treatment.
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2013-03-14
URBANA – College-age kids who don't consume at least three servings of dairy daily are three times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those who do, said a new University of Illinois study.
"And only one in four young persons in the study was getting the recommended amount of dairy," said Margarita Teran-Garcia, a U of I professor of food science and human nutrition.
That alarming finding means that three-fourths of the 18- to 25-year-old college applicants surveyed are at risk for metabolic syndrome, the researcher said.
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2013-03-14
The six science instruments that comprise the Particles and Fields Package that will characterize the solar wind and ionosphere of Mars have been integrated aboard NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. The spacecraft is on track for launch later this year.
The Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA) was the last of the six instruments to be delivered, and was integrated late last week at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colo. SWEA measures the properties of electrons at Mars, one electron at a time, and can process up to one million events per second.
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2013-03-14
System 96P has been moving through the Coral Sea near northeastern Australia over the last couple of days, and today, March 14, NASA's Aqua satellite captured the storm as it matured into Tropical Storm Tim.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Tim in the Coral Sea on March 13, 2013 at 04:05 UTC (12:05 a.m. EDT). The MODIS image showed a large band of thunderstorms wrapping into the center of circulation from the south and east. Cyclone Tim's northeastern quadrant ...
2013-03-14
On March 13, it was announced the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought - results now published in a set of papers in Nature and the Astrophysical Journal.
As these findings are published, three of the scientists at the forefront of this research - including the lead researcher of the latest findings – offered their insights about what this reveals about the history of our universe, and how the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is providing a "zoom lens" into the early universe. This includes ...
2013-03-14
Ann Arbor, Mich. — Few situations can provoke more anxiety for people with peanut or tree-nut allergies than having an allergic reaction while flying on an airplane and being unable to get help.
But in a new study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology-In Practice, researchers found passengers who engaged in eight mitigating factors were less likely to report an allergic reaction.
This is the first study to show that in-flight peanut and tree nut allergy is an international problem, says lead author and pediatrician Matthew Greenhawt, M.D., M.B.A., ...
2013-03-14
This year's unusually long and rocky flu season would be nothing compared to the pandemic that could occur if bird flu became highly contagious among humans, which is why UCLA researchers and their colleagues are creating new ways to predict where an outbreak could emerge.
"Using surveillance of influenza cases in humans and birds, we've come up with a technique to predict sites where these viruses could mix and generate a future pandemic," said lead author Trevon Fuller, a UCLA postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability's Center ...
2013-03-14
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida researcher has described a new genus and species of extinct saber-toothed cat from Polk County, Fla., based on additional fossil acquisitions of the animal over the last 25 years.
The 5-million-year-old fossils belong to the same lineage as the famous Smilodon fatalis from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, a large, carnivorous apex predator with elongated upper canine teeth. Previous research suggested the group of saber-toothed cats known as Smilodontini originated in the Old World and then migrated to North America, but ...
2013-03-14
New York, N.Y. (March 14, 2013) – Autism Speaks, the world's leading autism science and advocacy organization, today announced a study supported by one of Autism Speaks' first Suzanne and Bob Wright Trailblazer Awards, presents a new theory that autism may result from chronic danger signaling by mitochondria, cell structures that supply our cells with energy. This study by Trailblazer researcher and mitochondrial medicine specialist Robert Naviaux, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego published in the journal PLOS-ONE supports a novel theory about the ...
2013-03-14
Researchers at the University of Toronto have shown that playing shooting or driving videogames, even for a relatively short time, improves the ability to search for a target hidden among irrelevant distractions in complex scenes.
"Recent studies in different labs, including here at the University of Toronto, have shown that playing first-person shooter videogames can enhance other aspects of visual attention," says psychology professor Ian Spence. "But no one has previously demonstrated that visual search is also improved."
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[Press-News.org] News tips from the journal mBio®, volume 4, issue 1
