The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be shared by Oliver Smithies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA,, Mario R. Capecchi from the University of Utah and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Salt Lake ...
Are Two Strains of HIV Needed to Cause AIDS?
Using a computer model, American scientists hypothesize that two strains of HIV are needed in order to cause AIDS. One strain is the fit strain, which is able to spread many copies of itself, and the other is the unfit ...
Insulin Nanodrug Under Development
Insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, controls the level of sugar in the blood. Diabetic people suffer from low levels of insulin production and/or from abnormal resistance to the insulin hormone with inadequate levels of insulin secretion to compensate ...
The Genome’s Switches
Scientists in California have discovered a DNA sequence that turns on and off gene expression in the cell. The human genome is a very long molecule composed of repetitions of the four nucleic acids (coded by the letters A, T, ...
Stem Cells to Rebuild Heart Tissue
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent cells, cells that can transform and become any other cell in the body, and for this reason they can be used to heal or strengthen any human tissue. However, so far scientists have had difficulties ...
MS Patients Can Walk Faster Using Virtual Reality
Among other symptoms, Multiple Sclerosis, affects the gait of the patient. This is the result of weak muscles, sensory disorders and general fatigue, and is also caused by incoordination induced by neuronal abnormality. A new device developed by a group ...
Viruses may Defeat Bacteria
Bacterium is known to be a single cell creature. However, a mass of bacteria can create ‘biofilm’, a layer of bacteria acting together. Some bacteria must be present in biofilm in order to execute some of its features, especially pathogenesis ...
Rewarding Relief
Scientists have drawn a connection between the responsiveness to placebo treatment and reward anticipation. In an article published in Nature magazine, scientists from the University of Michigan showed that volunteers who were strongly affected by a placebo treatment showed high ...
Shedding Light on Blindness
Stem cells are at the forefront of medical research and incite some of the most controversial ethical and religious debates worldwide. While regarded by many top scientists as the Holy Grail of medicine, others consider embryonic stem-cell research sacrilegious. Recent ...
Keeping Our Memories Fresh
What keeps our long term memories viable? Little is known about the way the long term memories are kept in the brain. Does memorizing something new can be compared to writing text on a paper, making it stay forever or ...