Protein That Destroys HIV Discovered

Somebody please tell me, is this some sort of witchcraft? No like…, really now! LOL.

Loyola University researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys. The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System.

Campbell and colleagues report their findings in an article featured on the cover of the Sept. 15, 2010 issue of the journal Virology, now available online. In 2004, other researchers reported that TRIM5a protects rhesus monkeys from HIV. The TRIM5a protein first latches on to a HIV virus, then other TRIM5a proteins gang up and destroy the virus. Humans also have TRIM5a, but while the human version of TRIM5a protects against some viruses, it does not protect against HIV.

Researchers hope to turn TRIM5a into an effective therapeutic agent. But first they need to identify the components in TRIM5a that enable the protein to destroy viruses. “Scientists have been trying to develop antiviral therapies for only about 75 years,” Campbell said. “Evolution has been playing this game for millions of years, and it has identified a point of intervention that we still know very little about.”

TRIM5a consists of nearly 500 amino acid subunits. Loyola researchers have identified six 6 individual amino acids, located in a previously little-studied region of the TRIM5a protein, that are critical in the ability of the protein to inhibit viral infection. When these amino acids were altered in human cells, TRIM5a lost its ability to block HIV-1 infection. (The research was done on cell cultures; no rhesus monkeys were used in the study.)

By continuing to narrow their search, researchers hope to identify an amino acid, or combination of amino acids, that enable TRIM5a to destroy HIV. Once these critical amino acids are identified, it might be possible to genetically engineer TRIM5a to make it more effective in humans. Moreover, a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of action might enable the development of drugs that mimic TRIM5a action, Campbell said.

In their research, scientists used Loyola’s wide-field “deconvolution” microscope to observe how the amino acids they identified altered the behavior of TRIM5a. They attached fluorescent proteins to TRIM5a to, in effect, make it glow. In current studies, researchers are fluorescently labeling individual HIV viruses and measuring the microscopic interactions between HIV and TRIM5a. (Kurzweilai)

Scientists Find New ‘super bug’ Spreading From India

A new super bug from India could spread around the world – and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it

 

 

Researchers say they have found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain. U.S. health officials said there had been three cases so far in the United States – all from patients who received recent medical care in India, a country where people often travel in search of affordable healthcare.

NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems. Experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it. “It’s a specific mechanism. A gene that confers a type of resistance (to antibiotics),” Dr. Alexander Kallen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in a telephone interview.

With more people traveling to find less costly medical treatments, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the study, said he feared the new super bug could soon spread across the globe.

“At a global level, this is a real concern,” Walsh, from Britain’s Cardiff University, said in telephone interview. “Because of medical tourism and international travel in general, resistance to these types of bacteria has the potential to spread around the world very, very quickly. And there is nothing in the (drug development) pipeline to tackle it.”

Almost as soon as the first antibiotic penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects, prompting researchers to develop many new generations of antibiotics. But their overuse and misuse have helped fuel the rise of drug-resistant “superbug” infections like methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA.

COSMETIC SURGERY
In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, Walsh’s team found NDM-1 was becoming more common in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan and was also imported back to Britain in patients returning after treatment. “India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and it is likely NDM-1 will spread worldwide,” the scientists wrote in the study.

Walsh and his international team collected bacteria samples from hospital patients in two places in India, Chennai and Haryana, and from patients referred to Britain’s national reference laboratory from 2007 to 2009. They found 44 NDM-1-positive bacteria in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in Britain, and 73 in other sites in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Several of the British NDM-1 positive patients had traveled recently to India or Pakistan for hospital treatment, including cosmetic surgery, they said.

NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to many antibiotics including carbapenems, the scientists said, a class of the drugs reserved for emergency use and to treat infections caused by other multi-resistant bugs like MRSA and C-Difficile. Kallen of the CDC said the United States considered the infection a “very high priority,” but said carbapenem resistance was not new in the United States. “The thing that is new is this particular mechanism,” he said.

Experts cited two drugs that can stand up to carbapenem-resistant infections – colistin, an older antibiotic that has some toxic side effects, and Pfizer’s Tygacil. For many years, antibiotic research has been a “Cinderella” sector of the pharmaceuticals industry, reflecting a mismatch between the scientific difficulty of finding treatments and the modest sales such products are likely to generate, since new drugs are typically saved only for the sickest patients.

But the increasing threat from super bugs is encouraging a rethink at the few large drugmakers still hunting for new antibiotics, including Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Anders Ekblom, global head of medicines development at AstraZeneca, whose Merrem antibiotic was the leading carbapenem, said he saw “great value” in investing in new antibiotics.

“We’ve long recognized the growing need for new antibiotics, he said. “Bacteria are continually developing resistance to our arsenal of antibiotics and NDM-1 is just the latest example.”

Source: Reuters

International Team Discovers Element 117

A new chemical element has been added to the Periodic Table: A paper on the discovery of element 117 has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is part of a team that includes the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia), the Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Dimitrovgrad), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas. ORNL’s role included production of the berkelium-249 isotope necessary for the target, which was subjected to an extended, months-long run at the heavy ion accelerator facility at Dubna, Russia.

“Without the berkelium target, there could have been no experiment,” says ORNL Director of Strategic Capabilities Jim Roberto, who is a principal author on the PRL paper and who helped initiate the experiment. The berkelium was produced at the High Flux Isotope Reactor and processed at the adjoining Radiochemical Engineering & Development Laboratory as part of the most recent campaign to produce californium-252, a radioisotope widely used in industry and medicine.

“Russia had proposed this experiment in 2004, but since we had no californium production at the time, we couldn’t supply the berkelium. With the initiation of californium production in 2008, we were able to implement a collaboration,” Roberto says.
Professor Joe Hamilton of Vanderbilt University (who helped establish the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research at ORNL) introduced Roberto to Yuri Oganessian of Russia’s JINR. Five months of the Dubna JINR U400 accelerator’s calcium-48 beam–one of the world’s most powerful–was dedicated to the project.

The massive effort identified a total of six atoms of element 117 and the critical reams of data that substantiate their existence.
The two-year experimental campaign began with a 250-day irradiation in HFIR, producing 22 milligrams of berkelium-249, which has a 320-day half-life. The irradiation was followed by 90 days of processing at REDC to separate and purify the berkelium. The Bk-249 target was prepared at Dimitrovgrad and then bombarded for 150 days at the Dubna facility. Lawrence Livermore, which now has been involved in the discovery of six elements with Dubna (113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118), contributed data analysis, and the entire team was involved in the assessment of the results.

This is the second element that ORNL has had a role in discovering, joining element 61, promethium, which was discovered at the Graphite Reactor during the Manhattan project and reported in 1946. ORNL, by way of its production of radioisotopes for research, has contributed to the discovery of a total of seven new elements.

Members of the ORNL team include the Physics Division’s Krzysztof Rykaczewsi, Porter Bailey of the Nonreactor Nuclear Facilities Division, and Dennis Benker, Julie Ezold, Curtis Porter and Frank Riley of the Nuclear S&T Division. Roberto says the success of the element-117 campaign underscores the value of international collaborations in science. “This use of ORNL isotopes and Russian accelerators is a tremendous example of the value of working together,” he says. “The 117 experiment paired one of the world’s leading research reactors–capable of producing the berkelium target material–with the exceptional heavy ion accelerator and detection capabilities at Dubna.”

Islands of Stability
Roberto also says the experiment, in addition to discovering a new chemical element, has pushed the Periodic Table further into the neutron-rich regime for heaviest elements. “New isotopes observed in these experiments continue a trend toward higher lifetimes for increased neutron numbers, providing evidence for the proposed “island of stability” for super-heavy nuclei,” he says. “Because the half-lives are getting longer, there is potential to study the chemistry of these nuclei,” Roberto says. “These experiments and discoveries essentially open new frontiers of chemistry.”

Source: Webelements

Sikorsky Will Fly Electric Helicopter This Year

Sikorsky Aircraft says it will build a full-size, piloted electric helicopter this year to explore the benefits of an electrically powered helicopter. The company announced Project Firefly at the Farnborough Airshow outside London and says the electric helicopter will be unveiled at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh next week.

The Firefly is built around the existing S-300C helicopter, a popular two-seat trainer design that was originally built by Hughes Aircraft in the 1950s. The existing 190-horsepower, four-cylinder gasoline engine has been replaced with a 200-horsepower electric motor. Powered by lithium ion batteries, the Firefly will feature new cockpit displays, as well.

Sikorsky says the project is a technology demonstrator designed to enable manned flight of an electric helicopter and to drive the development of improved electric technology for the future. Mark Miller, Sikorsky’s head of research and engineering said in a statement the rising costs of fuel threatens the vital role helicopters play in the world.

“It is exciting to be at the forefront of the exploration of electric propulsion technology for rotorcraft.”

Miller said recent advancements in the efficiency of electrical propulsion and the inherently simple nature of electric motors make an electric helicopter potentially an attractive option, but admits there are still shortcomings.

“With current energy storage technology, payload and endurance will fall short of typical helicopter performance,” Miller said. “These values will grow as rapidly maturing technology is integrated on the demonstrator.”

Autopia will report on the continuously growing electric-aircraft trend at Airventure. In addition to Sikorsky’s Firefly, several other electric aircraft should be on hand in Oshkosh with flights expected daily.

Source: Sikorsky

NASA New Horizons

If you have studied sciences or are currently studying it, or perhaps you have a vast interest in the subject, then I’d strongly recommend you to read towards the end of this article. Maybe you’re not so much into science, but I still say read through it – you’ll be amazed beyond the usual.

I could not begin to imagine it when I first heard this without finding more information concerning it. Do you know just how far away the moon is from the surface of earth? Well, the truth for the matter is that the moon is actually about 380 000 kilometers away from us. Now how long do you think it took the South African astronomer, Mark Shuttleworth, to get to the moon? Can you imagine? Now this baby right here broke the moon’s orbit in 8 hours. Yes! It is not witchcraft – 8 hours! Having said that, now put your thinking caps on and tell me at what speed you think it departed from earth and how fast it was traveling when it passed the moon’s orbit? You do the math!

The Chicken May Have Come Before The Egg

The age old question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, has been tentatively answered. The verdict? The chicken, or rather a key protein needed to form the shell of the egg. The protein, called ovocledidin-17, was known to be involved in binding calcite molecules that formed the shells, but the mechanism behind this was unclear until now (abstract). The protein acts as a molecular machine, binding two nanoparticles of calcite and guiding them to begin self-assembly of the shell. This gives tremendous insight for developing methods of nano-scale self-assembly based on natural processes, as well as settling heated cocktail party arguments everywhere.

British researchers may have uncovered a partial answer to the age-old question, “what came first the chicken or the egg?”. According to a team, comprising researchers from the University of Warwick and the University of Sheffield, the answer is “chicken” or at least a particular chicken protein.

There is, however, a further twist – this particular chicken protein turns out to come both first and last. That neat trick it performs provides new insights into control of crystal growth which is key to egg shell production.

Scientists have long believed that a chicken eggshell protein called ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) must play some role in egg shell formation. The protein is found only in the mineral region of the egg (the hard part of the shell) and lab bench results showed that it appeared to influence the transformation of (CaCo3) into calcite crystals. The mechanism of this control remained unclear. How this process could be used to form an actual eggshell remained unclear.