Category Biology/Biotechnology

Schematic figure of the arterial wall under healthy conditions (left) and in endothelial dysfunction with increased vasoconstriction from increase ET1

Overweight and obese adults are advised to exercise to improve their health, but more than 50 percent do not do so. New research to be presented at the 14th International Conference on Endothelin: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Therapeutics suggests that taking vitamin C supplements daily can have similar cardiovascular benefits as regular exercise in these adults.

RSV, labeled with GFP to glow green, infects a sample of lung tissue from a deceased donor. New research shows that the virus produces defective genomes that prompt the immune system to eliminate the pathogen. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

Almost all human beings are exposed to the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, before their second birthdays. For most, the symptoms mimic those of the common cold: runny nose, coughing, sneezing, fever. But in some very young infants – and some older adults – the disease can be serious, causing respiratory problems that require hospitalization and increase the risk of developing asthma later in life.

Even in the hospital, doctors can’t do much more than offer supportive care...

New research shows the presence of saturated fats resulted in monocytes, a white blood cell, migrating into the tissues of vital organs. Received wisdom on the health risks of eating saturated fat has been called into question recently. This new research supports the view that excessive consumption of saturated fat can be bad for us.

Scientists from Imperial College London studied mice that have an unusually high level of saturated fat circulating in their blood. The newly arrived monocytes could worsen tissue damage because they may exacerbate ongoing or underlying inflammation, but this aspect is still under study.
“The mice we studied were treated with a drug that caused them to accumulate extremely high levels of fat in their blood...

Design strategy of protein-DNA nanowires. The protein-DNA nanowire is self-assembled with a computationally designed protein homodimer and a double-stranded DNA with the protein binding sites properly arranged. Credit: Yun (Kurt) Mou, Jiun-Yann Yu, Timothy M. Wannier, Chin-Lin Guo and Stephen L. Mayo/Caltech

Synthetic structures made of DNA could one day be used to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumor cells, and customized proteins could be designed to specifically attack a certain kind of virus. Although researchers have already made such structures out of DNA or protein alone, a Caltech team recently created- for the first time -a synthetic structure made of both protein and DNA. Combining the two molecule types into one biomaterial opens the door to numerous applications.

“If your mat...