China Institute for the Examination of Foetal Remains

A visitor looks at foetus specimens at the "Mysterious Life" museum of Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique in Dalian, Liaoning province.

Founded by Dr Sui Hongjin in 2004, the company produces, preserves and exhibits plastinated biotic specimens of human and animals.

The specimens, including whole bodies as well as individual organs and transparent body slices, have been meticulously dissected and preserved to allow visitors to view muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems. According to Sui, the bodies are legally collected from medical universities.

Picture: REUTERS/Sheng Li

Zebrafish make good Guinea Pigs

Pic: Morph of Zebra and Tree Frog


Zebrafish need Prozac like they need a bicycle, yet recording how various molecules affect their behaviour may be the perfect way to discover treatments for mental illness and neurological diseases.

Most brain drugs are variations on 50-year-old medicines, says Randall Peterson of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, so new ones can't come soon enough.

Because zebrafish have a similar brain chemistry to humans, how they respond to certain drugs might indicate how the same drugs will affect people.

To investigate, Peterson's team exposed zebrafish embryos to thousands of drugs and recorded how each affected their reaction to a flash of light or a slight poke (Nature Chemical Biology, DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.307). Meanwhile, Alexander Schier at the University of Harvard and colleagues measured how various drugs changed the sleep-wake cycles of zebrafish larvae (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1183090]).

Both teams found that each drug had its own "fingerprint" in terms of what kinds of behaviour it produced. And drugs with similar fingerprints tended to tweak the same molecular pathways, which suggests zebrafish behaviour is a good indicator for how a drug will change chemistry in the human brain . "I can't tell you what a psychotic zebrafish looks like but I can tell you what a zebrafish treated with an antipsychotic looks like," says Peterson.

Using this approach, the teams identified chemicals that might treat depression, Alzheimer's disease and sleeping disorders.

Natural human protein could prevent H1N1: study

Natural human protein could prevent H1N1: study

A strain of natural human proteins have been found to help ward off swine flu and other viruses including West Nile and dengue, in a discovery that could spur more effective treatments, US researchers said Thursday.

In cultured human cells, researchers lead by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) found that these certain proteins have powerful antiviral effects by blocking the replication of viruses.

The findings, reported Thursday in an online article from the journal Cell, "could lead to the development of more effective antiviral drugs, including prophylactic drugs that could be used to slow influenza transmission," the team said.

The influenza virus, along with the other viruses, must take over proteins in cells to sustain itself. In their study, researchers found some 120 genes that are needed by H1N1 -- commonly known as swine flu.

"But in the process of figuring that out, we found this other class of genes that actually have the opposite effect, so that if you get rid of them, influenza replicates much better," according to HHMI team leader Stephen Elledge at the Harvard Medical School.