Category: Biology

Lou Gehrig protein found

A protein involved in neurodegenerative diseases including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), often known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease (covered by DB in spectroscopynow.com, 2005-01-01), has been identified by researchers in Germany and the US. Manuela Neumann and colleagues identified TDP-43 as the pathogenicprotein involved in this form of dementia. These illnesses are the second most common cause of dementia in the under 65s, after Alzheimer’s disease, and commonly afflict people in their 40s and 50s. TDP-43 is one of the missing misfolded proteins found in the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. The researchers hope that their work will help in the study of dementia and motor neurone disease.

More information in the AAAS magazine Science today.

[Note, the original press release from AAAS actually said motor neutron disease, DB]

I Can Has Cheezburger

CheeseburgerI received a press release today from a US company addressing me by name and asking me whether I’d like to write about nanocardiology. Apparently, the company has a nanotech product in pre-clinical trials that cleans up arterial plaques. The putative product from St Louis company Kereos is based on endothelial alpha-v-beta-3 integrin-targeted fumagillin nanoparticles and can seek out markers for arterial plaques and help break them down.

Obviously, the implications for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease could be enormous, and the medical profession will be keen to see whether the company is successful with this product once it moves on to the clinical stage.

Remarkably though, the person who sent the press release signed off with a rather flippant remark: “Now bring on the cheeseburgers!”

Okay, it’s a joke. Haah, haah. But, hidden within that seemingly throwaway remark is decades of meat-eating substance abuse and an attitude to diet and health that underlies the very reason we in the west, and in particular in the US, are suffering such tragic levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, surely?

We cannot continue to shovel in vast quantities of fatty red meat smothered with reconstituted dairy products and a guilty sliver of gherkin without long-term repurcussions. Never mind the vast tracts of wilderness, rainforest, and habitat that is being raised so that beef stocks can remain secured. Never mind the huge fences that segregate our cattle from the wildlife and in so doing block migratory routes to seasonal watering holes that have existed for countless millennia.

But, don’t worry about the buffalo and the wildebeest, the rainforest canopy, or the other effects of overindulgence on your health. Let’s all carry on eating those cheeseburgers safe in the knowledge that we’ll soon be able to pop a little pill that will scrape our arteries clean before that first heart attack.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2006

This year US scientists Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of a fundamental mechanism that controls the flow of genetic information.

The human genome provides the DNA instructions for making proteins in the cell. These instructions are carried by messenger RNA (mRNA). Fire and Mello discovered a mechanism that can degrade mRNA from a specific gene, RNA interference. Details of this process, which they published in 1998, explain how it is activated when RNA molecules occur as double-stranded pairs in the cell. Double-stranded RNA activates biochemical machinery which degrades those mRNA molecules that carry a genetic code identical to that of the double-stranded RNA. When such mRNA molecules disappear, the corresponding gene is silenced and no protein of the encoded type is made.

Check out the Nobel site for more on today’s announcement.

Baby poop

It’s not a subject for polite conversatio, but anyone who has ever had to handle a soiled nappy (or diaper as our colleagues Stateside refer to them) will know that baby poop comes in a range of colours (unlike the apocryphal Ford Model T). The BabyPoop lens over on Squidoo offers a kind of litmus test, or more appropriately, a universal indicator paper strip, for the spectrum of options available.

Mustard coloured

 

poop is common for breastfed babies.

Whereas

 

Blue poop can only mean one thing…

Top Ten Hot Biologists

Purely in the interests of science, I headed over to flickr to see if I could find a snap of a particular biologist I was writing about today. Couldn’t find a single one, but all the faces that came up got me thinking that perhaps it would be fun and waste a few minutes when I should be working to pull together a list of the top biological totty. So, here it is a whirlwind tour of the world of biologists, in no particular order and no one vetted particularly closely.

Female biologists in action

  • Ninoka
  • Heather
  • Louise and friends
  • Susan
  • Claire
  • Alicia
  • Cerbu
  • Neguin
  • Elinay
  • Beck

For the sake of completeness, and to avoid accusations of sexism, I also gathered together ten male biologists in the field who also featured on flickr.

  • Glyn
  • John
  • Geoff
  • James
  • Dan
  • Alan
  • Bruce
  • Stan
  • Jeff
  • Chuck

I’ll leave it to Sciencebase readers to decide which if any should be in either top ten list. One thing to note, facial hair is common among biologists (but only in the second list).

Tomorrow, physicists on Pixsy.com and then chemists on myspace

Sex and phthalates

pvc dildos and phthalatesIt seems even the sex industry is not immune to chemophobia, according to a recent Greenpeace Netherlands announcement, users of PVC sex toys destined for orificial use should not. Use them, that is.

According to Greenpeace, these plastic devices can contain “extremely high concentrations of phthalate plasticisers which allegedly pose a risk to human health and the environment”. The organisation wants the European Union to ban the use of phthalates in sex toys as it already has done with phthalates previously used in the manufacturer of PVC childrens’ toys.

The Daily Telegraph reports how, “The environmental group said it was shocked to find that seven of the eight sex toys it had tested contained between 24 and 51 per cent of phthalates.”

Their actual report shows that individual phthalates in a range of products are at at trace amounts. They do report the presence of 490 g per kilo of di-isodecyl phthalate (DIDP) in one device as determined by GC/MS.

There is so much disinformation about phthalates on the web, that it is almost impossible to track down the actual levels of additives used as primary plasticisers in PVC products. I’d assume the percentage needs to be relatively high to make the devices we’re currently discussing “plastic” enough, but 51% seems very high regardless.

Moreover, where are the tests revealing how much of this “shocking” percentage might actually leach out of such a device during normal usage? And, even if there is a degree of leaching, does that correlate with actual risk to health. These questions are yet to be answered for any devices whether sex toys, children’s toys or medical devices.

Any thoughts?

Periodic Post

Periodic table of sex

Mosts chemists get to see some wacky periodic tables during their careers – circular ones, spiral ones, ones that rearrange all the elements etc etc. Then there are the foody ones and then there are the giant periodic tables, the arty farty ones, the online version, the flash table.

And, then there’s the periodic table of sex.

I didn’t think it was real at first, but several sciencebase visitors have been searching for this incredible object during the last few days, so I thought I’d uncover the truth. Apparently, just such a PT exists, its elementary in the most lewd way, but is available from Amazon. Apparently, allposters.com have stopped selling it, so I’d grab one while you can: Periodic table of sex

It’s not every post I get to categorise as chemistry, sex and geek all at the same time, but this one was simply begging for it. I hate to think what good-ole Dmitri Mendeleev would have made of it though, but surely it’d make the perfect gift for the chemistry student in your life. Wouldn’t it?

Plan B contraceptive

On Friday, August 18, Barr Laboratories asked the US Food and Drugs Administration to reconsider its application to make its Plan B contraceptive available over the counter. According to FierceBiotech’s John Carroll, “Given the FDA’s sudden willingness to work out a marketing plan for the contraceptive, Barr has a good shot at finally obtaining an approval that should have come through in 2004.” Carroll reckons that the FDA now has the opportunity to show the US that science and not ideology controls how therapeutics are reviewed. “Given the Bush administration’s clear preference for ideology,” Carroll says, “the FDA may have more difficulties ahead. But for now, there’s reason for hope.”

Plan B is an “emergency” contraceptive, backup birth control, in other words, a form of contraception often referred to as a morning after pill. It comes in the form of two levonorgestrel pills, which are taken orally after unprotected sex. Plan B reduces the risk of pregnancy. Those who oppose it on ideological grounds posit that it is tantamount to an abortion despite the fact that the timescale within which it must be used can be shorter than the time within which conception generally occurs.

More on Plan B from the FDA here. The FDA announced at the end of July that, “It is proceeding to work with [Barr] to resolve the remaining policy issues associated with the marketing of Plan B as an over-the-counter option.”

Will keep you posted on this or you can subscribe for free to FierceBiotech to get the low down.

An elephant task

elephant

The ivory trade was banned by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in 1989. However, illegal trade continues and as such researchers in India suggest that there is a continued need to characterize Asian elephant ivory and to be able to compare it with African ivory so that national and international laws can be implemented more effectively.

Previously, Erich Raubenheimer and colleagues in the Department of Oral Pathology, Medical University of Southern Africa, established an ivory database that would allow law enforcers to trace the source of illegal ivory and so identify poorly managed game parks, particularly in Africa. However, the ivory of Asian elephants, of which half are found in India, is more prized than African ivory. It is only the males of the Asian elephant that has tusks and they are much smaller than those of its African counterpart. Despite the illegal price differential between continents, the ivory of African and Asian elephants is indistinguishable in superficial appearance, particularly once processed, so it is almost impossible to trace the origin of tusks or a piece of work.

Read the elephant’s tale on spectroscopynow.com

Brain protein unlocked

A key protein linked to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, has been characterised using NMR by US researchers.

John Cavanagh, Douglas Kojetin, David Kordys, and Richele Thompson of North Carolina State University teamed with colleagues Ronald Venters of Duke University and Rajiv Kumar of the Mayo Clinic and Foundation have obtained a structure for the protein, calbindin-D28K. This protein modulates calcium levels by sequestering calcium from areas that have too much or serves as an on/off switch for further chemical reactions. It is found in the kidneys, pancreas, ocular nerve and large amounts are present in the brain. It is its role in the brain as a “bodyguard” against the action of the enzyme caspase-3 that links it to neurodegenerative diseases. By binding to and inhibiting caspase-3, calbindin D28K prevents the formation of damaging plaque and tangle formation in the brain, which are hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease. The structure of this key protein has remained elusive, until now.

Read on…