Menlo Park, Calif. – December 9, 2010 – Scientists from Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (NASDAQ: PACB) and Harvard Medical School have successfully employed single molecule, real-time (SMRT™) DNA sequencing technology to rapidly characterize the pathogen responsible for the recent deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti. Published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the results provide the first whole genome sequence analysis and most detailed genetic profile to date of the Haitian Vibrio cholerae outbreak strain. The multi-strain sequencing and bioinformatic ...

Fungi are a major cause of plant diseases and are responsible for large-scale harvest failure in crops like maize and other cereals all over the world. Together with scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, Regine Kahmann, from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, and Jan Schirawski, who is now based at the University of Göttingen, analysed the genetic make-up of Sporisorium reilianum, an important maize parasite. Based on a comparison with the genome of a related fungal species, they succeeded in identifying new genes that play an important ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A preliminary look at an ice field atop the highest mountain in the eastern European Alps suggests that the glacier may hold records of ancient climate extending back as much as a thousand years. Researchers warn, however, that the record may soon be lost as global warming takes its toll on these high-altitude sites, according to a new study in the Journal of Glaciology. The glacier, Alto dell'Ortles, is the highest large ice body in the eastern Alps, reaching an altitude of 12,812 feet (3,905 meters) above sea level. It is small, though, measuring ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The risk of esophageal cancer among patients who suffer from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is not as high as many may think, according to new research from University of Michigan gastroenterologists. GERD is considered a relative risk for developing esophageal adenocarcinoma, but the absolute risk is not known, says Joel Rubenstein, M.D., M.Sc., an investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Clinical Management Research in Ann Arbor and Assistant Professor in the University of Michigan's Department of Internal Medicine. "Since ...

New clinical strains of cholera appear to have evolved a distinctly different mechanism to cause the same disease according to research published in the current issue of the online journal mBio®. Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent for the diarrheal disease cholera. While there are more than 200 different serogroups only the O1 and the O139 strains have been known to cause epidemic and pandemic outbreaks of disease, using a toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP) and cholera toxin (CT), which other strains lack. "While non-O1, non-O139 strains have caused sporadic disease ...

A light-weight bike that costs around £1000 may not get you to work any quicker than a similar, yet heavier and cheaper model, finds research in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today. A keen cyclist since childhood, the author Dr Jeremy Groves, owns two bikes. One a second hand 13.5 kg steel framed bike bought for £50 and the other a brand new 9.5 kg carbon framed bike that cost £1000. When Dr Groves, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care at Chesterfield Royal Hospital, realised his new bike took 43 minutes to get him to work rather than the 44 minutes ...

A study in the BMJ's Christmas issue published on bmj.com today confirms that there is no need for doctors to fear red heads. The research concludes that, contrary to popular belief, people with red hair do not bleed any more than other patients. The authors, led by surgeon Jonathan Barry from Morriston Hospital in Swansea, say that "red haired patients are traditionally regarded with a degree of trepidation by surgeons and anaesthetists alike due to a reputation for excessive bleeding, reduced pain threshold and a propensity to develop hernias". Globally around 1-2% ...

The size of a genome tells us nothing about the comprehensiveness of the genetic information it contains. The genome of powdery mildew, which can destroy entire harvests with its fine fungal threads, is a good example of this. Although the pathogen has almost 120 million base pairs, and therefore one of the largest genomes of the sac fungi, at barely 6,000, its gene count is far lower than that of comparable species. It has lost many of the genes required for separate metabolism found in other fungi. Thus, from a genetic perspective, powdery mildew is stuck in an evolutionary ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An intensive, five-week working memory training program shows promise in relieving some of the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, a new study suggests. Researchers found significant changes for students who completed the program in areas such as attention, ADHD symptoms, planning and organization, initiating tasks, and working memory. "This program really seemed to make a difference for many of the children with ADHD," said Steven Beck, co-author of the study an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University. "It ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Older people who live in racially segregated neighborhoods with high crime rates have a much higher chance of developing cancer than do older people with similar health histories and income levels who live in safer, less segregated neighborhoods. That is one of the key findings of a new study forthcoming in the January 2011 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The study was conducted by Vicki Freedman, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Dec. 9, 2010) -- When their razor-sharp mandibles wear out, leaf-cutter ants change jobs, remaining productive while letting their more efficient sisters take over cutting, say researchers from two Oregon universities. Their study -- appearing online ahead of regular publication in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology -- provides a glimpse of nature's way of providing for its displaced workers. "This study demonstrates an advantage of social living that we are familiar with -- humans that can no longer do certain tasks can still make very ...

Babies born into the world addicted to drugs because of their mother's dependence on pain medication, or opioids, may be weaned off the substance more comfortably, with a shorter hospital stay and at a reduced cost, if the mother receives a new treatment option during pregnancy. A New England Journal of Medicine study published Dec. 9, co-authored by Vanderbilt's Peter Martin, M.D., director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry, found that the newer buprenorphine is at least as good for both mother and child as the standard care methadone, when both were combined with ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---New molecular tools developed at the University of Michigan show promise for "cleansing" the brain of amyloid plaques, implicated in Alzheimer's disease. A hallmark of Alzheimer's disease---a neurodegenerative disease with no cure---is the aggregation of protein-like bits known as amyloid-beta peptides into clumps in the brain called plaques. These plaques and their intermediate messes can cause cell death, leading to the disease's devastating symptoms of memory loss and other mental difficulties. The mechanisms responsible for the formation of these ...

Since 1987, when a surgeon at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters developed a minimally-invasive surgery to correct sunken chest, the procedure has been adopted world-wide as a standard of care and continually refined to increase its effectiveness and safety, according to a paper published in the December issue of the Annals of Surgery. Coming more than two decades after the procedure was developed by surgeon Donald Nuss, the article summarizes the cases of 1,215 patients who had the Nuss Procedure at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and focuses on ...

Despite the common clinical practice among surgeons to discontinue their patients' anti-platelet therapy prior to surgery, a recent study of patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy (CEA) indicated that this practice may be unnecessary. The study will be published in the December issue of the Annals of Vascular Surgery. The use of clopidogrel (Plavix, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi-Aventis), an antiplatelet agent prescribed for patients with acute myocardial infarction (severe heart attack), recent stroke or peripheral arterial disease, continues to rise with U.S. sales ...

Whatever its final incarnation, the recently enacted landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid eligibility and is expected by 2013 to provide coverage, including mental health care, to an estimated 4.1 million children currently uninsured. That's a good thing. But what will the quality of care be, especially for vulnerable children with special health care needs? Poor, according to a new report in the current online edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. In cooperation with LA Care, one of ...

SAN ANTONIO, TEX. (December 9, 2010)––Nearly one-fifth of all metastatic breast cancer patients develop brain metastases and have significantly shorter overall survival than patients who do not have brain involvement. One way to improve the affected patients' survival might be to prevent the brain metastases from arising in the first place. With that in mind, researchers have been working on a predictive model that accurately identifies these high risk patients. Now, Veeraiah Siripurapu, M.D., and colleagues from Fox Chase Cancer Center have verified several factors––including ...

Despite their initial focus on national economic competitiveness, the nanotechnology research initiatives now funded by more than 60 countries have become increasingly collaborative, with nearly a quarter of all papers co-authored by researchers across borders. Researchers from the two leading producers of nanotechnology papers – China and the United States – have become each nation's most frequent international co-authors. Though Chinese and U.S. researchers now publish roughly the same number of nanotechnology papers, the U.S. retains a lead in the quality of publications ...

A novel strategy of blocking the growth of blood vessels with antibodies should result in improved treatment of cancerous tumors. The growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing vasculature is called angiogenesis. In adults, angiogenesis occurs only during wound healing and menstrual cycling, but is abundant and harmful in cancerous tumors and the old-age eye disease frequently leading to blindness called age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Without the formation of new blood vessels, tumors cannot grow beyond a small size due to lack of oxygen and nutrients. Inhibition ...

(Washington) – The American College of Physicians (ACP) today commended Congress for taking bipartisan action to preserve access for patients enrolled in Medicare and TriCare by stabilizing physician payments through 2011. The College noted, though, that the incoming 112th Congress will need to enact legislation to provide longer-term stability in payments and lead to repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. The legislation, passed unanimously by the Senate yesterday and passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives today, will avert ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A wave of reptile extinctions on the Greek islands over the past 15,000 years may offer a preview of the way plants and animals will respond as the world rapidly warms due to human-caused climate change, according to a University of Michigan ecologist and his colleagues. The Greek island extinctions also highlight the critical importance of preserving habitat corridors that will enable plants and animals to migrate in response to climate change, thereby maximizing their chances of survival. As the climate warmed at the tail end of the last ice age, ...

CINCINNATI—Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Massachusetts General Hospital have found that warfarin, a known anticoagulation (blood-thinning) drug, may not be as beneficial to some patients with atrial fibrillation as previously thought. These findings were published online this week ahead of print in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Warfarin is commonly prescribed to prevent blood clotting, particularly for patients with atrial fibrillation—a type of abnormal heart rhythm. Mark Eckman, MD, professor of medicine at ...

Alzheimer and heart attacks have been found to share common genetic basis. The research leads the way to the first genetic test on developing the risk of the diseases even at a young age. According to Federico Licastro, an immunologist at the University of Bologna who coordinated the study published in the scientific journal, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, a test is now ready. "They are already selling it in America", he says, citing the case of a private firm in New Mexico (USA) that collaborated on the study. "But the tests could easily be also conducted wherever, using ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Remarkable progress in understanding how stem cell biology works has been reported by a team of leading scientists, directed by experts at UC Santa Barbara. Their research has been published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Stem cell biology is making waves around the world with great hope for the eventual repair of parts of the body. While many scientists see these breakthroughs as viable, there are hurdles that must be overcome, including the worrisome potential for introducing cancer when making a repair to an organ. Significant interdisciplinary ...

Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered some of the key molecular events in the immune system that contribute to inflammatory bowel disease. The results, which help researchers move one step further in their efforts to develop new drugs to treat inflammatory and immune-mediated diseases, are reported in the November 2010 edition (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21068720) of the journal Mucosal Immunology from the Nature Publishing Group. Inflammatory bowel disease starts when the gut initiates an abnormal immune response ...