EurekAlert! InContext Modules

Public Release: 5-Feb-2013
Geneviève Almouzni to receive the 2013 FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award
EMBO and the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) announce Geneviève Almouzni, deputy director of the Institut Curie in Paris, France, as the winner of the 2013 FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award.

EMBO, Federation of European Biochemical Societies

Public Release: 4-Feb-2013

ZooKeys
Biodiversity exploration in the 3-D era
A group of marine biologists from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Crete are testing computed tomography as a tool to accurately document the anatomy of biological specimens. The resulting 3-D models can be instantly accessed and interactively manipulated by other researchers, thus promoting rapid dissemination of morphological data useful to biodiversity research. Data are freely downloadable from the Dryad data Repository. The study was published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Public Release: 31-Jan-2013

Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Personalized medicine eliminates need for drug in 2 children
Using genome-wide analysis, investigators at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and the University of Montreal have potentially eliminated a lifetime drug prescription that two children with a previously unknown type of adrenal insufficiency had been receiving for 14 years.

Consortium sur les maladies pédiatriques rares

Public Release: 31-Jan-2013

Cell Reports
Study finds hormones can change the breast's genetic material
Melbourne scientists have discovered how female steroid hormones can make dramatic changes to the genetic material in breast cells, changes that could potentially lead to breast cancer. Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, have identified how pregnancy hormones send signals to critical molecules on the DNA to make changes in the epigenome. The epigenome is a series of chemical tags that modify DNA, controlling which genes are switched on and off.

National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, National Breast Cancer Foundation, ACRF

Public Release: 30-Jan-2013

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Researchers harness nature to produce the fuel of the future
A Princeton-led team has moved a step closer to designing bio-inspired synthetic catalysts to produce hydrogen from water.

Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences

Public Release: 30-Jan-2013

Aging Cell
Aging cells lose their grip on DNA rogues
Transposable elements are mobile strands of DNA that insert themselves into chromosomes with mostly harmful consequences. Cells try to keep them locked down, but in a new study, Brown University researchers report that aging cells lose their ability to maintain this control. The result may be a further decline in the health of senescent cells and of the aging bodies they compose.

NIH/National Institute on Aging, Glenn Medical Foundation

Public Release: 28-Jan-2013
New online, open access journal focuses on microbial genome announcements
The American Society for Microbiology has published the first issue of its new online-only, open access journal, Genome AnnouncementsTM, focusing exclusively on reports of microbial genome sequences.

Public Release: 24-Jan-2013
New supercomputer coming to EMSL this summer, supplied by Atipa Technologies
A new supercomputer expected to rank among the world's fastest machines will be ready to run computationally intense climate and biological simulations along with other scientific programs this summer. Atipa Technologies in Lawrence, Kan., will provide the machine to EMSL. The new supercomputer's capacity and speed are expected to rank it among the world's top 20 fastest machines when it comes online.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 24-Jan-2013

2012 ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine
Virginia Tech computer scientists develop new way to study molecular networks
Computer scientists at Virginia Tech developed a new approach to address the shortcomings in the computational analysis of the multiple ways interactions can occur within cells. Their award winning work may lead to further understanding of the interactions between molecules.

National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 23-Jan-2013

Nature
EMBL-EBI researchers make DNA storage a reality
Researchers at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute have created a way to store data in the form of DNA – a material that lasts for tens of thousands of years. The new method, published today in the journal Nature, makes it possible to store at least 100 million hours of high-definition video in about a cup of DNA.

Public Release: 20-Jan-2013

Nature Biotechnology
Genes and their regulatory 'tags' conspire to promote rheumatoid arthritis
In one of the first genome-wide studies to hunt for both genes and their regulatory "tags" in patients suffering from a common disease, researchers have found a clear role for the tags in mediating genetic risk for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). By teasing apart the tagging events that result from RA from those that help cause it, the scientists say they were able to spot tagged DNA sequences that may be important for the development of RA.

NIH/Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science, Swedish Research Council, Swedish COMBINE project, and others

Public Release: 17-Jan-2013

Nature Reviews Genetics
The new age of proteomics: An integrative vision of the cellular world
The head of CNIO's Proteomics Core Unit, Javier Muñoz, working alongside Dutch researchers, revises the technology of the post-‐genomic age and its contributions to the advance of biomedicine.

Public Release: 16-Jan-2013

European Journal of Human Genetics
Developed new method to diagnose hereditary breast and ovarian cancer
Researchers of the Catalan Institute of Oncology at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute have developed and validated a new method to diagnose hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome based on mass sequencing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The model is based on a genetic and bioinformatic analysis which has been proved very effective. The new protocol has been described in an article published in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

Public Release: 16-Jan-2013

Nature
Scientists identify new 'social' chromosome in the red fire ant
Researchers have discovered a social chromosome in the highly invasive fire ant that helps to explain why some colonies allow for more than one queen ant, and could offer new solutions for dealing with this pest.

Public Release: 15-Jan-2013
Chronic disease research awarded funding
The Medical Research Council have awarded the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research five years funding. This funding will allow researchers from the partnership to develop a sustainable platform to share resources and skills.

Medical Research Council

Public Release: 13-Jan-2013

Nature Genetics
The genome of diamondback moth provides new clues for sustainable pest management
Chinese scientists decode the first genome of diamondback moth, providing new clues for sustainable pest management.

Public Release: 10-Jan-2013
UMMS experts seek better flu vaccines
The University of Massachusetts Medical School is working to develop new ways of predicting how the influenza virus changes and evolves in response to anti-viral drugs and the human immune system. This approach has promise for becoming a pivotal tool in creating a more effective vaccine against the virus.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Public Release: 10-Jan-2013
AgriLife Research gets grant to crack biofuel production waste issue
A scientist with Texas A&M AgriLife Research has begun work on a way to "engineer" a microbe to break lignin into lipid which can then be used to make more fuel.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 10-Jan-2013

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Solving puzzles without a picture
One of the most difficult problems in the field of genomics is assembling short "reads" of DNA into complete chromosomes. Now an interdisciplinary group of genome and computer scientists has solved this problem, creating an algorithm that can rapidly create "virtual chromosomes" with no prior information about how the genome is organized.

Public Release: 8-Jan-2013

Biophysical Society 57th Annual Meeting
Biophysical Society announces winners of 2013 Minority Affairs Committee travel awards
The Biophysical Society has announced the winner of its Minority Affairs Committee Travel Awards to attend the Biophysical Society's 57th Annual Meeting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Feb. 2-6, 2013. The awards are meant to encourage participation at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting by minority students and postdoctoral fellow currently studying biophysics. Recipients will be honored at a reception on Saturday, Feb. 2.

Public Release: 8-Jan-2013

Biophysical Society 57th Annual Meeting
Biophysical Society announces winners of 2013 international travel awards
The Biophysical Society has announced the winners of its international travel grants to attend the Biophysical Society's 57th Annual Meeting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Feb. 2-6, 2013. The purpose of these awards is to foster and initiate further interaction between American biophysicists and scientists working in countries experiencing financial difficulties. Recipients of this competitive award are chosen based on scientific merit and their proposed presentation at the meeting. They will be honored at a reception on Sunday, Feb. 3.

Public Release: 8-Jan-2013
Iowa State computer, electrical engineers working to help biologists cope with big data
Iowa State computer and electrical engineers are developing computing tools to help biologists analyze all the data produced by today's research instruments. An initiative launched by the College of Engineering is helping the computer specialists build teams capable of solving the big data problems and competing for mult-million dollar research grants. To date, the initiative has attracted $5.5 million for four major research projects.

National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Iowa State University

Public Release: 3-Jan-2013

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Rare form of active 'jumping genes' found in mammals
Much of the DNA that makes up our genomes can be traced back to strange rogue sequences known as transposable elements, or jumping genes, which are largely idle in mammals. But Johns Hopkins researchers report they have identified a new DNA sequence moving around in bats -- the first member of its class found to be active in mammals.

NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Public Release: 3-Jan-2013

Physical Review X
How computers push on the molecules they simulate
Simulations are essential to test theories and explore what's inaccessible to direct experiment. Digital computers can't use exact, continuous equations of motion and have to slice time into chunks, so persistent errors are introduced in the form of "shadow work" that distorts the result. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley have learned to separate the physically realistic aspects of the simulation from the artifacts of the computer method.

DOE Office of Science, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 2-Jan-2013

Medical Care
Common data determinants of recurrent cancer are broken, mislead researchers
In order to study the effectiveness or cost effectiveness of treatments for recurrent cancer, you first have to discover the patients in medical databases who have recurrent cancer. Unfortunately, the widely used algorithms to find these patients don't work.

NIH/National Cancer Institute


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