Researchers find key to avian flu transmission in humans

Sur le même thème que "Researchers find key to avian flu transmission in humans"

New evidence of battle between humans and ancient virus

For millennia, humans and viruses have been locked in an evolutionary back-and-forth — one changes to outsmart the other, prompting the second to change and outsmart the first. With retroviruses, which work by inserting themselves into their host’s DNA, the evidence remains in our genes. Last year, researchers at Rockefeller University and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center brought an ancient retrovirus back to life and showed it could reproduce and infect human cells. Now, the same scientists have looked at the human side of the story and found evidence that our ancestors fought back against that virus with a defense mechanism our bodies still use today. “This is the first time that we’ve been able to take an ancient retrovirus and analyze how it interacts with host defense mechanisms in the laboratory in the present day. [lien] [EN]

Researchers develop T-cells from human embryonic stem cells

Researchers from the UCLA AIDS Institute and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine have demonstrated for the first time that human embryonic stem cells can be genetically manipulated and coaxed to develop into mature T-cells, raising hopes for a gene therapy to combat AIDS. The study, to be published the week of July 3 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that it is possible to convert human embryonic stem cells into blood-forming stem cells that in turn can differentiate into the helper T-cells that HIV specifically targets. T-cells are one of the body’s main defenses against disease. The results mark the first time that scientists have been able to derive T-cells out of human embryonic stem cells, said Zoran Galic, assistant research biologist. [lien] [EN]

Happy birthday, Humans in Science!

This blog has just turned three years old on November 22nd. It’s great to be at such a stable point in my life that I can look back that far, over 300+ posts (not that I reread them; it’s too embarrassing), and think, it went so fast! I remember exactly how I felt when I started, and why. Why: the bribery that the Science Advisory Board kindly made to keep us bloggers on board for a year. I took the large research group out to lunch on it, and thank the SAB very much. (Even two years ago, the $/euro exchange was not in my favor, so fifteen people to lunch about covered it.) Why keep on writing: it’s true that a little a day keeps the psychiatrist away. I had a more personal journal in notebooks with a pen and pencil and it’s just too permanent a record, even the little smidgens of entries I made when I was 10 years old. [lien] [EN]

What do you want from stem cell research?

I am currently (and have been intermittently for many months now) looking into the murky ethical waters of companies proposing foetal tissues and RNAs for gene expression research. It seems to me that they could be less picky about ensuring that all appropriate ethical standards are met than about selling their products, and they are only partly forthcoming about answering direct questions, because you can only ask questions of the distributors and not directly of those obtaining the tissues. On the other hand, they do not want to be so easily contacted as well for fear of drawing militant kooks. I will keep you posted on this but it looks like it will be very interesting. Personally, I would feel a responsibility to ensure that I know the consent forms have really been obtained under the proper conditions. [lien] [EN]

Green tea shenanigans

My husband brought back a box of the admittedly very tasty Cane’s Pure Finest Natural Green Tea from the airport in Singapore a while back. I’d been giggling over the package insert every time I read it. Here it is for your own delectation. Comments at the bottom. The last two “additional” benefits are: · Improves concentration and mental alertness · Quenches thirst What I like is the way they don’t build up, as my market-conditioned mind would have expected. They start with all the wonderful things green tea - and presumably, Cane’s - could do for your health, and then, by the way, it will make you thin, fit and beautiful, protect you from the enemies who want to poison your food, turn back the clock so you are both physically and mentally a stud (but not subject to all those pimples you had back then). [lien] [EN]

Humanities journals under threat from the European research bureaucracy (ERIH)

general Humanities journals under threat from the European research bureaucracy (ERIH) Under the heading ”Journals under Threat: A Joint Response from HSTM Editors” ten editors of some of the leading international journals for history and philosophy of science and social studies of science have issued a joint declaration against the current attempts, initiated by the European Science Foundation, to establish a European rating system for humanities journals (ERIH): We live in an age of metrics. All around us, things are being standardized, quantified, measured. Scholars concerned with the work of science and technology must regard this as a fascinating and crucial practical, cultural and intellectual phenomenon. Analysis of the roots and meaning of metrics and metrology has been a preoccupation of much of the best work in our field for the past quarter century at least. [lien] [EN]

Stem cells in real life

Two tidbits, as I am staying home to work on the laptop and was able to catch 10 minutes of the 8AM news (which is about all there is to catch): An Australian girl has changed blood type because of her liver transplant six years ago. It’s an AFP release. Hematopoeitic stem cells migrated out of the transplant and recolonized her bone marrow, repopulating her original blood cells with those of the donor type. In and of itself, this is how bone marrow transplants (rather than liver) work. The interesting thing is how the donor liver did that spontaneously. I presume the doctors were unable to find a perfect (read: antigen-matched) donor, but in theory, this situation would lead to graft-versus-host disease IF the repopulating cells had been true stem cells - with all the possibilities of becoming T lymphocytes as well as red blood cells (erythrocytes). [lien] [EN]

Sex toys

Last weekend, I had eight other women over my house. My husband took the kids skiing for the day, which made me a very efficient housewife until 3:30 PM. Then an acquaintance of mine, wedding planner by profession, came over and set up her wares for a company called Secrete Arlette, that doesn’t sell Tupperware. But who tries to use the same techniques, as so many other little startups. I made cranberry nut bread and mulled apple cider. It was not a scene from Sex and the City (oh my G–, that episode is nearly TEN YEARS OLD!), although there were some smiles and attempts at joking. It was lame. Incidentally, last night on TV, there was a show about a successful lingerie company that kicked off exactly the same way. As I am looking for the link to the program (I was only half watching as my husband channel. [lien] [EN]

Too many ideas, too little time

I see that some enthusiastic souls have set up a website for people like me to evacuate their half-baked ideas. SCIEnCE (not Science) purports to offer a wiki structure for people to build on proposed technical solutions to scientific problems. I like the idea of it, the way I like the idea of Open Notebooks, but I have a couple of concerns. First, it's nice to have a (fairly transparent) pseudonym. It's strange to be confronted in the lab - and this has happened to me twice - by people who read this blog or my comments on other blogs, since this blog is as much if not more about being the human who does the science as about the science itself (which an Open Notebook ought to be, IMHO). Second, I have been wondering for a while, after trying to get a couple of said Open Notebooks up and running. [lien] [EN]

Embryonic

Charged word, lately. A colleague of mine came by yesterday and said, “Did you hear that the English Parliament has approved a law for the creation of animal-human chimeras?” I replied, “That’s not what it’s about.” And told him I had heard about a show of support that had been requested from local scientists (I wasn’t about to schlepp up to London). Then it was unrequested by the Medical Research Council, but too late - and too wimpy, and the bill passed. (The link to the bill itself is here. But I know you won’t read it and neither will I.) I had a meeting with the head of the genomics platform in Toulouse. It went very well - he was looking to establish collaborations with potential users of the soon-to-be acquired Roche 454 “next-generation” high throughput DNA sequencer. [lien] [EN]

Soggy protest

Research in France is conducted by career scientists who are affiliated with large research organizations such as the CNRS or the INSERM (my employer), and as best they can, by scientist-professors who are hired directly by the universities. (I say that because they mostly end up marking exam papers if they actually teach.) The current university reform is another kettle of fish. However, I want to touch on the worry that is engendered by major administrative and structural reorganization without input from the people on the ground who will be most affected by these reforms. This worry gave rise to a national protest that got rather rained on today. Literally. People who are more or less well-informed, like me, wanted to express their concern without investing too much time in trying to better the system themselves. [lien] [EN]

Highlights from the ISSCR - 2

Sensory and intellectual overload Conferences are fun that way but I always want to try to suck out all the marrow. Although with what I learned about the crucial role for adipocytes in the maintenance of the hematopoeitic stem cell nice, I’ll leave that marrow where it is (besides, yuk for the texture). Breakfast with the big brains A couple of hundred people were gathered at round, wedding-banquet-style tables, with bagels, coffee, juice and one big name per table. Thomas Graf graciously presided ours. He made the rounds, struck up conversations with everyone. We were a typically diverse cross-section of attendees - 20% of us were working in our country of origin, and we covered eight countries among us. There was the requisite stalker grad student looking to get himself a postdoctoral position. [lien] [EN]

Highlights from the ISSCR - 3

So, my postdoc and I sat at a “yuppie bar” called Time, half-listening to the live trio, half-commiserating over the latest article rejection, trying on and discarding various ideas for making this work more palatable to a given target audience. It’s not like there is a dearth of future directions. Just to remind some of you readers out there that I’m just a scientist. Not a journalist. Even less a saleswoman. The mixer was a bit prom-like, but sweet. Lots of people, so it wasn’t completely silly. We had a nice chat with a French researcher working in Hawaii about the French brain drain, got some perspective by acknowledging that it’s worse yet in Italy, and then took refuge in our respective rooms. Meanwhile, today was a busy day. Unfortunately, I am leaving tomorrow afternoon. [lien] [EN]

To sum up this spring’s contributions

This is from the current front page of Humans in Science, thanks to Wordle and a tip from Eva Amsen. Like Eva, I also seem to be obsessed with cells. And the passage of time. That’s a good sum-up of my research interests, actually. In real life, I’m only obsessed with time and how much more I need. Better that than money, n’est-ce pas? I’ll try to make another cloud when I have some time, of the current article submission. That can’t possibly constitute prior publication but will give you a good general idea of what it is about. Posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 3:19 am Categorized as:development, general science, laboratory, personal You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [lien] [EN]