Friday, October 22, 2010
Malaria: Turning the Genetic Keys to switch it off
More than a third of the 72 molecular switches that control key stages in the life cycle of the malaria parasite can be disrupted in some way.
The finding is a significant breakthrough in the search for inexpensive, effective vaccines and drugs to stop the transmission of a disease that kills up to a million children a year, according to new research.
Until now little has been known about the cellular processes involved in the development of this deadly disease.
The research, published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, involved the first comprehensive functional analysis of protein kinases in any malaria parasite.
It is also the largest gene knock-out study in Plasmodium berghei—a malaria parasite infecting rodents.
“Blocking parasite transmission is recognized as an important element in the global fight to control malaria,” says Rita Tewari, in the school of biology at the University of Nottingham.
“Kinases are a family of proteins which contribute to the control of nearly all cellular processes and have already become major drug targets in the fight against cancer and other diseases.
“Now we have identified some key regulators that control the
transmission of the malaria parasite. Work to develop drugs to eradicate this terrible disease can now focus on the best targets.
This study shows how systematic functional studies not only increase our knowledge in understanding complexity of malaria parasite development but also gives us the rational approach towards drug development.”
More.....
University of Nottingham: http://communications.nottingham.ac.uk/News.html
ESA ENVISAT Image - Lake Malawi or Nyasa
The series of lakes in and around the Great Rift Valley is referred to as the 'Great Lakes of Africa'.
Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa, is the third largest lake in Africa. It occupies one fifth of Malawi (centre, around the lake’s west and south sides) and creates a natural border between Malawi, Tanzania (upper right) and Mozambique (lower right). Most of the land visible on the left belongs to Zambia.
One of the world’s few ancient lakes, Lake Malawi has a unique uninterrupted history.
These deep (750 m), isolated waters have shaped a unique diversity of fish that is popular amongst aquarists.
Lake Malawi National Park (at the southern end of the great expanse of Lake Malawi) was designated a Natural World Heritage Site in 1984, with its importance for the study of evolution being compared to that of Darwin's finches of the Galapagos Islands.
This image was acquired by ESA's Envisat Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on 12 October 2010 at a resolution of 300 m. Vist the ENVISAT Overview on the ESA portal
Credit: ESA
Silver found in lunar rocks
Silver was found in small amounts in lunar rocks collected by the Apollo astronauts, and now its spectral signature may have been spotted by NASA's LCROSS mission (Image: T. A. Rector/I. P. Dell'Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF)
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Lunar Crater contains more water than Sahara
Debris ejected from the Cabeus lunar crater about 20 seconds after the Lcross impact.
In lunar terms, that is an oasis, surprisingly wet for a place that had long been thought by many planetary scientists to be utterly dry.
If astronauts were to visit this crater, they might be able to use eight wheelbarrows of soil to melt 10 to 13 gallons of water. The water, if purified, could be used for drinking, or broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel — to get home or travel to Mars.
“That is a very valuable resource,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — or Lcross, for short — which made the observations as it, by design, slammed into the Moon a year ago. “This is wetter than some places on Earth.”
The Sahara sands are 2 to 5 percent water, and the water is tightly bound to the minerals. In the lunar crater, which lies in perpetual darkness, the water is in the form of almost pure ice grains mixed in with the rest of the soil, and is easy to extract. The ice is about 5.6 percent of the mixture, and possibly as high as 8.5 percent of it, Dr. Colaprete said.
“That is a large number, larger than I think anyone was anticipating,” Dr. Colaprete said.
The $79 million Lcross mission piggybacked on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in June last year and has been mapping out the lunar surface for a future return by astronauts. Lcross steered the empty second stage of the rocket, which otherwise would have just burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, onto a collision course with the Moon.
Super-typhoon Megi hits Southern china
The Category 3 storm was located roughly 245 nautical miles (450 kilometers) east-southeast of Hong Kong, and was expected to make landfall on mainland China, between Hong Kong and Taiwan, within days.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Megi on October 21.
The storm spans almost the entire distance between the northern Philippines and Hong Kong, and storm clouds extend over Taiwan in the northeast.
On October 20, Reuters reported that Megi had destroyed homes and caused at least 15 deaths in the northern Philippines. Chinese authorities were bracing for the storm to come ashore east of densely populated Hong Kong.
JC Polyomavirus: Deadly but with a weakness for sugar
Now the killer may have a target on its back. An international team has uncovered that the virus must bind to a very specific sugar molecule dangling from the side of the brain cells it attacks.
The finding, reported this week in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, could provide a basis for developing drugs to interrupt that process.
Researchers from Brown University, the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Imperial College in London painstakingly characterized the precise structure and biology of how the virus binds to host cells down to the atomic level.
By exposing a specific target, the work sets the table for drug development to begin, says Walter Atwood, professor of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry at Brown and a senior author of the study.
“The overall goal is to get these ‘plans’ and then design small molecules—drugs that will fit in this receptor, binding and preventing infection,” Atwood says.
Atwood notes that this paper also marks the first time anyone has fully determined the structure and binding functionality of a human polyomavirus. While the JC polyomavirus causes the brain-wasting disease known as PML, others in the “family” are implicated in ailments such as skin cancers.
When the virus floats toward a cell, it encounters a metaphorical cityscape of sugary molecules on its surface, says Brown postdoctoral researcher Melissa Maginnis, one of the paper’s two lead authors. The team wanted to know which one the virus chooses.
NASA Jet Propulsion LAb Webcam: Building Mars Rover Curiosity
Curiosity Cam takes you inside the clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., so you can watch the next Mars rover being built.
Technicians assembling and testing the Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, are covered head-to-toe in "bunny suits."
These white smocks, booties and facemasks help protect against Earthly contaminants hitching a ride to Mars.
The camera may be turned off periodically for maintenance. The rover may occasionally be out of view as it is moved around the clean room. When Curiosity Cam is off air, you will see a slideshow of Mars and rover images.
Wheels Spinning
Engineers just installed six new wheels on the Curiosity rover, and rotated all six wheels at once on July 9, 2010.
This milestone marked the first in a series of "tune ups" to get the rover ready for a drive in the clean room where it is being assembled at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Curiosity is the centerpiece of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is expected to launch in late 2011, and touch down wheels-first in summer 2012.
For more information about the mission, see: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
