36.2055 years in science communication
Sciencebase has finally joined the podcast generation, but only by proxy. We’re now hosting the feed for Science News from Cambridge’s Naked Scientists. You can stream each “program” in RAM (RealAudio) format, download the mp3 to your mp3 player*, or simply read a transcript of the show.
You can also now add the Sciencebase Odiogo Science News Podcast to iTunes or your favourite podcast listener.
The first entirely new approach to DNA recognition since the year of my birth has been developed by Mike Hannon and colleagues at the University of Birmingham and Miquel Coll at the Spanish Research Council in Barcelona. The team has discovered a new route through which drug molecules can attach themselves to DNA. The researchers say this is a crucial step forward in drug discovery, the first in four decades.
The scientists have developed a synthetic agent that targets and binds to the centre of a three-way junction in DNA. Such junctions are formed where three double-helical regions join together and are particularly exciting as they have been found to be present in diseases, such as some Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy, in viruses and are present during cancerous cell replication.
The Birmingham team created a nanosize synthetic drug shaped like a twisted cylinder. Together with colleagues in the UK, Spain and Norway they previously demonstrated its unprecedented effect on DNA. Now, structures revealed by the Barcelona team show that it binds to DNA in an entirely novel way – fixing itself to the centre of a 3-way junction. The resulting complex is held electrostatically. The researchers explain that the drug fits like a round peg in a round hole.
According to Hannon, “This is a significant step in drug design for DNA recognition and it is an absolutely crucial step forward for medical science researchers worldwide who are working on new drug targets for cancer and other diseases. This discovery will revolutionise the way that we think about how to design molecules to interact with DNA. It will send chemical drug research off on a new tangent. By targeting specific structures in the DNA scientists may finally start to achieve control over the way our genetic information is processed and apply that to fight disease.”
Let’s just hope that quote from Birmingham University’s press release on this research bears fruit, I’d hate to think that a discovery that’s waited my whole life to be made will be anything less than a breakthrough of unprecedented scale.
The work appears in the February 8 issue of Angewandte Chemie.
Nathaniel Szewczyk and colleagues are experts in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, this popular little organism has been the subject of countless biological studies including Nobel-prize winning efforts. As such, it is being developed as a model system for space biology.
According to Szewczyk, the chemically defined liquid medium, C. elegans Maintenance Medium (CeMM), allows it to be cultivated automatically and experiments to be carried out on it during spaceflight research. His team grew CeMM for experiments to be carried out on board STS-107, space shuttle Columbia.
When tragedy struck Columbia, a massive recovery effort was started and hardware containing the CeMM experiment was actually retrieved from the debris.
Szewczyk explains that live animals were observed in four of the five recovered canisters, which had survived on both types of media. “These data demonstrate that CeMM is capable of supporting C. elegans during spaceflight. They also demonstrate that animals can survive a relatively unprotected reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, which has implications with regard to the packaging of living material during space flight, planetary protection, and the interplanetary transfer of life,” Szewczyk explains.
You can read more about this rather unusual rescue mission in the journal Astrobiology 5, 690—705
Astrobiology.
The UK’s ITN science news reporter Lawrence McGinty asked fellow science writers via the ABSW discussion group who it was that coined the phrase “global warming”. Jon Turney suggested that the first strong claim was made by a Brit called Callendar in the 1930s, but more intriguing is Martin Ince’s note that in 1886, Arrhenius wrote that all the coal that folk were burning might cause the Earth to get hotter. So, the concept of anthropogenic climate change certainly isn’t new.
I’ve mentioned the Fierce Biotech freebie email biotech industry newsletter before, but it’s well worth reminding Sciencebase readers of what a great resource it is. It’s now available for free in the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. All you have to do to qualify for a free year’s subscription is fill in your details on the form and provide a little feedback on your job function (so they can decide whether you qualify). Once you’ve done that, you’ll starting receiving the free email newsletter within a day or two. The Fierce Biotech ezine covers the latest industry news on a daily basis and your acceptance for a free subscription helps support Sciencebase.
Newsletter description – “FierceBiotech is an easy to read daily email service that brings must read biotechnology news to senior executives in the biotech industry…one quick email per day keeps you up to speed on biotech companies and the biotech industry.” This newsletter will save you time and effort in keeping ahead of the competition.
Rather a coincidence that Hubble images of the so-called tenth planet “2003 UB313” claiming that it’s probably not Pluto’s big brother at all but more like a slightly bigger twin, should be released the day before new results from German astronomers appear that show UB313 to be some 700 km wider!
Of course, the reporter covering the HST results will have known in advance (embargoed press release and all that) about the German results, but obviously wanted to scoop the story with another related item.
My sources tell me, however, that there are no authorized results from the HST measurement, as these will take another month to complete.
Watch out for my full report on the published, peer-reviewed work on UB313 in PSIgate Spotlight coming soon…
A new approach to the debilitating bone loss disease, osteoporosis, could be on the horizon thanks to research by Andreas Zimmer and Meliha Karsak from the Bonn-based Life & Brain Center in Germany and collaborators in Israel, the UK, and the USA.
The researchers have discovered a regulatory mechanism involved in bone loss linked to a chemical receptor in our bodies with a previously unknown function, which could lead to a new treatment.
Read the complete story in the latest issue of Reactive Reports, chemistry webzine.
If you’ve recently been a bit naughty and opened a file with any of the following subject lines:
*Hot Movie*
Arab s*x DSC-00465.jpg
F*ckin Kama Sutra pics
Fw: S*X.mpg
Fwd: Crazy illegal S*x!
give me a kiss
Miss Lebanon 2006
Part 1 of 6 Video clipe
School girl fantasies gone bad
The Best Videoclip Ever
You may have infected your PC with a virus that will wipe data on the 3rd of the month. Today is a good time to ensure your AV software is up to speed and to get any confessions out of colleagues on your network. According to Sophos, the virus will destroy files with the following extensions
DOC, XLS, MDB, MDE, PPT, PPS, ZIP, RAR, PDF, PSD and DMP
and replace their contents with:
DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 K5]
Not worth it for a little online titillation was it?
You may not have been fooled by claims of love from anonymous email correspondents nor messages purportedly from Paypal urging you to check your security settings and sending you via their servers in Russia to verify your password, but would you be sucked in by this missive, which could appeal to anyone’s vanity, especially if they post a lot of photos on the web:
“Hello,
Your photograph has reached editing stage as part of an article we are
publishing for our February edition of the Guardians business section.
Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or
any changes?
If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one.
We’ve attached the photo with the article here.
Kind regards,
William Morrison
Editor
www.Guardian.com”
This message (there are variations on the theme) came with a zip file attachment containing a rather malicious piece of software that goes by the name of Troj/Stinx-N. According to Sophos this worm “Turns off anti-virus applications, Allows others to access the computer, Downloads code from the internet, Reduces system security, Installs itself in the Registry”
The smoking gun, of cours, is that line “If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one.” Anyone in the trade would know immediately that this was not a message from any real editor. Editors very, very, very, very, very, very, rarely give photographers (or writers, come to that) the option of submitting a “preferred” piece after editorial attention has already been given to the original submission. It just doesn’t happen.
You have been warned!
The bottom line is: DON’T OPEN EMAIL ATTACHMENTS
(unless you’re absolutely certain they’re genuine and can verify their veracity)
Check out the sciencebase site for more on spyware, trojans and worms
The bane of protein crystallographers is the common problem of proteins that simply will not crystallize. This is especially poignant when it comes to some of the more biomedically interesting of their number, such as the numerous membrane proteins, many of which do not succumb to even the most sophisticated crystallization techniques. Now, researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Surrey, both in the UK, have developed a new technique for crystallizing proteins, which could open up a whole range of materials to this powerful analytical technique.
Read my complete report in the Reactive Reports chemistry webzine