The bright spot comes from one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers that is also the second-largest supplier of flu vaccines in the United States.

Novartis reports latest clinical trials of its H1N1 vaccine (to be called Celtura) boasts an 80-percent immune response in just one dose.

This is especially important since health officials have been saying for weeks that two doses of vaccine might be needed to properly fight swine flu.

Novartis’ first pilot trial involved 100 subjects aged between 18 and 50. The study also found a potentially protective response in more than 90-percent after two doses.

The vaccine maker is still conducting larger pivotal trials with larger numbers of subjects around the world. They will include more than 6,000 adults and children.

"The pilot trial results are encouraging," said Dr. Andrin Oswald, CEO of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. "The study suggests that while two doses seem to provide better protection, one dose of our adjuvanted Celtura vaccine may be sufficient to protect adults against the swine flu. This is important information for public health authorities who prepare for vaccination in the coming months with limited vaccine supply."

The Centers for Disease Control continues to monitor the spread of swine flu in the U.S. The government agency reports 556 deaths across the country and nearly 9,000 hospitalizations.

The CDC reports that visits to doctors for influenza-like illness were most recently highest in February during the 2008-09 flu season, but rose again in April 2009 after the new H1N1 virus emerged. Current visits to doctors for influenza-like illness are down from April, but are higher than what is expected in the summer and has increased over the last two weeks.

The CDC offers the following guidelines for protecting yourself from swine flu:
* Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
* Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

Click here for more information from the CDC.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—It is a misinterpretation of the application of the bedrock of scientific naming with regard to the number of moose species that Kris Hundertmark, a University of Alaska Fairbanks wildlife geneticist at the Institute of Arctic Biology, seeks to correct.

The adoption of Carl Linnaeus’ two-part, genus-species system of naming, called taxonomy, has been used for centuries on all described organisms on Earth and is considered one of the greatest triumphs in science.

Hundertmark will be presenting his research during the American Society of Mammalogists 89th Annual Meeting June 24-28 at UAF.

“When we give something its own name we’re saying this is a unit of biodiversity that deserves to be conserved,” Hundertmark said. “If you name something that doesn’t deserve a name, you’re wasting resources that could be spent on worthwhile groups.”

The reference book Mammal Species of the World, which Hundertmark calls the “unofficial bible of what is a mammal species and what isn’t,” lists two species of moose. The two-species concept is based primarily on a difference in chromosome numbers and the physical structure, or morphology, of moose

Chromosomes are ranked and numbered by size, largest to smallest, and can be depicted in a standard format knows as a karyogram. A typical chromosome pair is shaped like an “X” connected at the middle, though some are V-shaped and connected at the apex. The karyogram for North American moose show 70 chromosome pairs. A Eurasian moose karyogram shows two V-shaped chromosomes that appear to have united to form one X-shaped chromosome resulting in 68 pairs.

“We’ve always known that North American moose have one more pair of chromosomes than Eurasian moose,” Hundertmark said. “But it is a minor rearrangement rather than a functional difference.”

The morphology argument is a nonstarter because similar physical differences exist among other animals considered one species and “… moose are distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and would be expected to exhibit regional variation in morphology,” said Hundertmark.

One way of defining a species is whether two individuals can mate and produce viable offspring. If they can, they’re the same species; if they can’t, they’re not. But transporting moose for breeding experiments is prohibitively expensive and according to Hundertmark it is not unreasonable to assume that the two types can interbreed until it is proven otherwise.

To test the two-species hypothesis, Hundertmark examined the DNA from moose tissue samples collected by colleagues around the world. He arranged the samples into two groups based on the two-species hypothesis and into three groups based on continent of origin – Europe, Asia and North America – and examined the distribution of genetic variation within and between groups.

“It turns out that there are actually three genetic groups of moose, not two, and the genetic differences among those groups do not rise to the level of separate species. It is just regional variation,” Hundertmark said.

Source: University of Alaska Fairbanks

It is the concentration of a few signaling molecules that determines the fate of individual cells during the early development of organisms. In the renowned journal Current Biology, a team of molecular biologists led by Pia Aanstad of the University of Innsbruck reports that a variety of molecular mechanisms accounts for the interpretation of the concentration of the signaling molecule Hedgehog.

The development of an organism is a complex process to which a dozen or hundreds of signaling molecules contribute. Some of these molecules have dozens of functions in the fruit fly and in humans alike. One of these molecules – Hedgehog – controls the development of, for example, the extremities, the central nervous system, the teeth, eyes, hair, lung and the gastrointestinal tract. “What is most remarkable: The cells are told what to do not only because the molecule is present but also by the different concentrations of the molecules in the tissue”, says group leader Pia Aanstad of the Institute for Molecular Biology of the University of Innsbruck. “The concentration of Hedgehog makes the thumb of the right hand grow on the left hand side and the thumb of the left hand grow on the right hand side.” Thus, scientists define Hedgehog as a morphogen – a signal that is concentration-dependent and controls the pattern formation of an organism. A mutation in this signaling pathway induces dramatic and embryonically lethal malformations in the early developmental stage such as the formation of just one central eye. Defects in the Hedgehog signaling pathway in humans are a cause for one of the most common birth defects – holoprosencephaly. “Hedgehog genes are not new in evolution and the signaling pathway functions in the fly, mouse, fish and in humans similarly”, says Pia Aanstad. In her research work she focuses on the zebra danio or zebra fish. Due to the short developmental cycle, the scientists are able to observe the development of the small tropic fish in fast motion. “We want to better understand how the cells process the signals of the signaling molecules and how they react.”

Mutants do not react to high concentrations

Already during her time as a post doc in San Francisco, U.S., Pia Aanstad discovered a mutated zebra fish whose Hedgehog signaling pathway was disrupted. The fish showed a genetic alteration at the so-called Smoothened (Smo) protein, which is located at the cell membrane and transfers the Hedgehog signal into the cell. In 2005, Aanstad and her colleagues published a paper in the renowned journal Nature, in which they showed that Smo is concentrated at cilia (cellular projections) and also functions at the cilium. “By using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy, we have now shown that in the new mutants a small genetic alteration at the extracellular part of this protein inhibits localization in the cilia and that while the cells identify the Hedgehog signals, they interpret the concentration incorrectly”, explains Pia Aanstad. “This is evidence for the notion that cells use various molecular mechanisms for interpreting different Hedgehog concentrations.” This fact may also be of importance for the diagnosis and treatment of certain cancers (basal cell carcinoma), where the constant up-regulation of the Hedgehog signal is responsible for uncontrolled cell growth. Aanstad published the findings together with her colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco in the journal Current Biology.

Source: University of Innsbruck

This press release is also available in German.

It appears that some superbugs have evolved to develop the ability to manipulate the immune system to everyone’s advantage.

A team of researchers at The University of Western Ontario, led by Joaquin (Quim) Madrenas of the Robarts Research Institute, has discovered some processes that reduce the lethal effects of toxins from superbugs, allowing humans and microbes to co-evolve. This discovery may lead to novel alternatives to antibiotics that specifically target the toxic effects of these superbugs. The findings are being published in the journal Nature Medicine and are available online today.

Madrenas holds a Canada Research Chair in Immunobiology and is a Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, and Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western. He also is head of Immunology at Robarts Research Institute and Director of the FOCIS Centre for Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics.

Staphylococcus (staph) aureus is the leading cause of infections in hospitals and the second most common cause of infections in the general population. By itself, it is linked to more than half a million hospital admissions a year in North America with estimated costs of more than $6 billion per year. Among the many weapons produced by this superbug, the most potent and lethal ones are known as superantigens. These lethal weapons cause massive and harmful activation of the immune system that leads to Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). TSS is a very serious disease that carries a high mortality, for which we do not have a specific treatment.

Scientists have been puzzled as to why, when the body is directly exposed to the TSS toxins, a human can die within hours whereas individuals may carry toxin-producing staph and not get sick or die.

What has the staph bug got that prevents the immune system of the host from being kicked into high gear? Madrenas and his collaborators at Western, Calgary and Chicago have identified the process that allows the bug to stay in the body without causing that massive activation of the immune system.

The secret lies in molecules found in the cell wall of staph. These molecules bind to receptors known as TLR2 on immune cells of the host triggering the production of a protein called IL-10, an anti-inflammatory molecule that will prevent TSS.

“It is clear that staph superbugs have developed strategies to control the toxicity of its lethal superantigen toxins, thereby preventing TSS. We believe that this is an important mechanism that warrants continued investigation. It also illustrates that evolution may operate not only by competition but also by networking ultimately leading to peaceful co-existence” says Madrenas.

Based on these studies, Madrenas and colleagues have developed a computer model that will help predict the outcomes of encounters between staph and a host, and will reveal new aspects of these encounters.

Source: University of Western Ontario

HOUSTON — (May 24, 2009) — Using a specially adapted tool called P[acman], a collaboration of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine has established a library of clones that cover most of the genome of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) and should speed the pace of genetic research.

In a report in the current online issue of the journal Nature Methods, Dr. Hugo Bellen (http://flypush.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu/lab/), a professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and his colleagues describe the new libraries.

P[acman]– developed by Dr. Koen Venken (http://flypush.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu/lab/koenv/index.html) in Bellen’s laboratory– allows scientists to study large chunks of DNA in living flies. The vector – officially P/phiC31 artificial chromosome for manipulation – combines different technologies: a specially designed bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) that allows maintenance of large pieces of DNA in bacteria, recombineering that allows the manipulation of large pieces of DNA in bacteria, and the ability to insert the genomic DNA into the genome of the fly at a specific site using phiC31-mediated transgenesis.

Venken adapted the P[acman] vector to create genomic libraries, so that a researcher can choose a gene and find the corresponding clones in the library that cover that gene. Their collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Drs. Roger Hoskins and Joseph Carlson, played a key role in the design, construction, and annotation of the libraries.

“You can insert a single copy of a gene and rescue a mutation, or do a structure/function analysis of the gene,” Bellen said. “If you don’t know where the gene is expressed, you can tag it, put it back and locate where it is expressed.”

The library is available at http://pacmanfly.org/.

Source: Baylor College of Medicine

DURHAM, N.C. –An emerging form of the pathogenic yeast Candida is able to complete a full sexual cycle in a test tube, even though it’s missing the genes for reproduction. And it may also do so while infecting us, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers.

“Sex contributes to the Candida yeast species’ evolutionary success,” said Joseph Heitman, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis in the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and co-author of two papers that tell the story in Nature and Current Biology. “I think the fact that it has a complete sex cycle is likely to play a role in the evolution of drug resistance in this emerging pathogenic yeast species. “

Yeast infections are notoriously hard to treat and yeast are one of the most successful pathogens and commensals in nature, he said. A commensal is an organism that benefits from associating with another organism without affecting the other. Humans are susceptible to three types of yeast infection: thrush (in the mouth and throat), vaginal infection, and a sometimes fatal systemic infection of bloodstream and organs, such as the kidney.

In a paper published online May 24 in Nature, Heitman’s team reports that eight Candida species which have a sexual cycle were missing many of the genes related to reproduction found in other species.

“The unrecognized sex cycle could mean we need to develop new treatments to combat what is really happening in humans infected by yeast,” said co-author Jennifer Reedy M.D. Ph.D.

With co-author Anna Floyd, Heitman and Reedy explored the question further in a study appearing in the May 14 Current Biology. The major question was: how could the yeast sexually produce spores when they lack so many genes responsible for meiosis, the process of sexual cell division that reduces chromosomes to half their number in the progeny?

By examining and defining the structure and functions of the mating-type genes in yeast, Reedy learned that forms of Candida yeast undergo meiosis but generate offspring of several types. About two-thirds have the classic 50:50 division of chromosomes from the split parent cell, but a third of them have an extra chromosome or even double copies of all chromosomes.

“What we found is that the sexual cycle has a new way to create genetic diversity, and it provides a unique vantage point from which we can explore the mechanisms of sexual reproduction,” Reedy said. “This provides a new way to study sexual reproduction and how chromosomal abnormalities arise.”

Heitman said that Candida’s meiosis without meiotic genes may be what gives rise to the progeny with unusual numbers of chromosomes. “Or maybe the genes were lost for a reason, to provide a route to genetic diversity,” Heitman said. “Or maybe these differing types of progeny are the unfortunate consequence of undergoing meiosis without the machinery that species normally have when they reproduce sexually.”

Humans, too, have their share of oddly paired chromosomes. “Experts estimate that about 10 to 30 percent of human eggs or fusion products may be aneuploid, with chromosomes from mother and father not paired exactly one to one, but the great majority of those fusions of sperm and egg don’t make it to the implantation and pregnancy stage,” Reedy said. “That’s why it is important to find models like this, so that we may shed light on related human conditions.”

Source: Duke University Medical Center

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The analysis of a termite entombed for 100 million years in an ancient piece of amber has revealed the oldest example of “mutualism” ever discovered between an animal and microorganism, and also shows the unusual biology that helped make this one of the most successful, although frequently despised insect groups in the world.

The findings were made by George Poinar, an Oregon State University researcher and international expert on life forms found in amber. It was just published in Parasites and Vectors, a professional journal.

This particular termite was probably flying around while mating in a wet, humid tropical forest in what is now Myanmar during the Early Cretaceous period – the age of the dinosaurs. It may have been attacked by a bird or somehow torn open, and then it dropped into the sticky, oozing tree sap that would later become amber, providing an opportunity for the biology of this ancient insect to be revealed in a way that would otherwise have been impossible.

Out of its wounded abdomen spilled a range of protozoa, which even then were providing a key function for the termite – they helped it to digest wood. Between animals and microorganisms, this is the earliest example ever discovered of “mutualism,” which is one type of symbiotic relationship in which two species help each other.

“Termites live on cellulose, mostly from the dead wood they chew, but they depend on protozoa in their gut to provide the enzymes that can digest the wood,” Poinar said. “These protozoa would die outside of the termite, and the termite would starve if it didn’t have the protozoa to aid in digestion. In this case they depend on each other for survival.”

Even more primitive termites may have fed on a range of things they could digest themselves, Poinar said, but eventually they acquired protozoa that dramatically increased their ability to digest cellulose, and through evolutionary processes they came to depend on it.

Today, modern termites are one of the world’s most pervasive and successful insect groups, with about 2,300 known species, mostly in tropical settings, busily at work chewing wood or other plant fiber that protozoa help to digest. They have important ecological roles, helping to create habitat, build soil fertility, recycle nutrients and serve as food for many predators. As a social species similar to ants, some colonies can have 20 million individual insects. And they also cause massive amounts of damage every year to wood structures in much of the world.

Their dependence on these protozoa is now well understood, and the process isn’t always pretty.

Somewhere on the evolutionary scale the termites began producing a liquid that contained protozoa that they would excrete. The termite offspring in turn consume the feces and thereby gain the protozoa in their digestive systems.

It took time for all of this to get worked out, the study indicated. The successful establishment of protozoa in the termites required them to withstand the chemical and physical conditions inside the alimentary tract, use the gut contents as a food source, cause no damage to the host and be carried through successive stages and generations.

But by the different species each specializing at what they do best – the termite eats, the protozoa digests – the two groups have both had extraordinary evolutionary success.

“The relationship between termites and protozoa is very close and has been stabilized now for a very long time because of its obvious value,” Poinar said. “It’s exciting to understand that this classic example of mutualism has been going on now for at least 100 million years.”

As well as outlining this age-old example of mutualism, the new study revealed 10 new fossil flagellate species of protozoa, a new species of termite, a new genus of fossil amoeba and 14 additional trophic and encysted protist stages.

Poinar for many years has studied life forms and other material found trapped in amber. As a semi-precious stone that first begins to form as sap oozing from a tree, amber has the unique ability to trap very small animals or other materials and – as a natural embalming agent – display them in nearly perfect, three-dimensional form millions of years later. This phenomenon has been invaluable in scientific and ecological research, and allows researchers to characterize the biology of ecosystems that existed millions of years ago.

The amber that contained the termite used in this study came from a mine first excavated in 2001 in the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, in a formation that was between 97 and 110 million years old.

Source: Oregon State University

As the swine flu continues its global spread, researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have discovered important clues about why influenza is more severe in some people than it is in others. In their research study published online in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org), the scientists show that the influenza virus can actually paralyze the immune systems of otherwise healthy individuals, leading to severe secondary bacterial infections, such as pneumonia. Furthermore, this immunological paralysis can be long-lived, which is important to know when developing treatment strategies to combat the virus.

According to Kathleen Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D., the senior researcher involved in the study and Chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “We have a very limited understanding of why some people who get influenza simply have a bad cold and other people become very sick and even die. The results of this study give us a much better sense of the mechanisms underlying bacterial infections arising on top of the viral infection.”

Sullivan and colleagues recruited pediatric patients with severe influenza and examined the level of cytokines, which serve as the first line initiators of immune response, in the blood plasma. Although they found elevated levels of cytokines, they also found a decreased response of toll-like receptors, which activate immune cell responses as a result of invading microbes. This suggests that the diminished response of these receptors may be responsible for the paralysis of the immune system, leading to secondary bacterial infections. The influenza patients were compared with patients with moderate influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and a control group of healthy individuals. The immune paralysis appeared to be specifically a result of influenza infection and was not seen in patients with respiratory syncytial virus. This process might explain why one quarter of children who die from influenza, die from a bacterial infection occurring on top of the virus.

“Despite major medical advances since the devastating flu outbreak of 1918 and 1919, influenza virus infection remains a very serious threat,” said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, “and the current swine flu outbreak is a grim reminder of this fact. The work by Dr. Sullivan and colleagues brings us a step closer to understanding exactly what goes wrong in some people who get the flu, so, ultimately, physicians can develop more effective treatment strategies.”

Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Overlapping blue lasers recording holograms in a GE micro-holographic disc. GE researchers have demonstrated a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can enable the storage of over 500 gigabytes in a standard DVD-size disc, equal to the capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs, 100 DVDs or the hard drive for a large desktop computer. (Photo: Business Wire)

GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric announced today a major breakthrough in the development of next generation optical storage technology.

GE researchers have successfully demonstrated a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc. This is equal to the capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs, 100 DVDs or the hard drive for a large desktop computer.

GE’s micro-holographic discs will be able to be read and recorded on systems very similar to a typical Blu-ray or DVD player. Holographic storage is different from today’s optical storage formats like DVDs and Blu-ray discs. DVDs and Blu-ray discs store information only on the surface of the disc; holographic storage technology uses the entire volume of the disc material.

Holograms, or three-dimensional patterns that represent bits of information, are written into the disc and can then be read out. Although GE’s holographic storage technology represents a breakthrough in capacity, the hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and BDs.

The GE team successfully recorded micro-holographic marks approaching one percent reflectivity with a diameter of approximately one micron. When using standard DVD or Blu-ray disc optics, the scaled down marks will have sufficient reflectivity to enable over 500 GB of total capacity in a CD-size disc.

“GE’s breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer,” said Brian Lawrence, who leads GE’s Holographic Storage program. “Because GE’s micro-holographic discs could essentially be read and played using similar optics to those found in standard Blu-ray players, our technology will pave the way for cost-effective, robust and reliable holographic drives that could be in every home. The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3-D television is closer than you think.”

GE has been working on holographic storage technology for over six years. The demonstration of materials that can support 500 gigabytes of capacity represents a major milestone in making micro-holographic discs that ultimately can store more than one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes of data. In addition to pushing the limits of storage capacity, GE researchers also have been very focused on making the technology easily adaptable to existing optical storage formats and manufacturing techniques.

“GE’s holographic storage program has turned the corner, and with this milestone we can now intensify our efforts in commercialization opportunities,” said Bill Kernick, who leads GE’s Technology Ventures team. “We’ll continue to engage with a variety of strategic partners to create the best route from product development to introduction into the marketplace.”

GE initially will be focusing on the commercial archival industry followed by the consumer market for its micro-holographic storage technology.

During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing – some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist.

The idea that gravitational forces might pull a planet into its parent star has been predicted by computer models only in the last year or so, and this is the first evidence that such planet destruction has already occurred, said University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes.

“When we look at the observed properties of extrasolar planets, we can see that this has already happened – some extrasolar planets have already fallen into their stars,” he said.

Computer models can show where planets should line up in a particular star system, but direct observations show that some systems are missing planets close to the stars where models say they should be.

Barnes, a postdoctoral astronomy researcher with the Virtual Planet Laboratory at the UW, is a co-author of a paper describing the findings that was accepted this month for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Brian Jackson and co-author Richard Greenberg are with the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

The research involves planets that are close to their parent stars. Such planets can be detected relatively easily by changes in brightness as their orbits pass in front of the stars.

But because they are so close to each other, the planet and star begin pulling on each other with increasingly strong gravitational force, misshaping the star’s surface with rising tides from its gaseous surface.

“Tides distort the shape of a star. The bigger the tidal distortion, the more quickly the tide will pull the planet in,” Jackson said.

Most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system are gas giants like Jupiter except that they are much more massive. However, earlier this year astronomers detected an extrasolar planet called CoRoT-7 B that, while significantly larger than our planet, is more like Earth than any other extrasolar planet found so far.

However, that planet orbits only about 1.5 million miles from its star, much closer than Mercury is to our sun, a distance that puts it in the category of a planet that will fall into its star. Its surface temperature is around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit “so it’s not a pleasant environment,” Barnes said, and in a short time cosmically – a billion years or so – CoRoT-7 B will be consumed.

The destruction is slow but inevitable, Jackson said.

“The orbits of these tidally evolving planets change very slowly, over timescales of tens of millions of years,” Jackson said. “Eventually the planet’s orbit brings it close enough to the star that the star’s gravity begins tearing the planet apart.

“So either the planet will be torn apart before it ever reaches the surface of the star, or in the process of being torn apart its orbit eventually will intersect the star’s atmosphere and the heat from the star will obliterate the planet.”

The researchers hope the work leads to better understanding of how stars destroy planets and how that process might affect a planet’s orbit, Jackson said.

The scientists also say their research will have to be updated as more extrasolar planets are discovered. NASA, which funded the research, recently launched the Kepler telescope, which is designed specifically to look for extrasolar planets that are closer in size to Earth.

Jackson hopes new observations will provide new lines of evidence to investigate how a star’s tides can destroy planets.

“For example, the rotation rates of stars tend to drop, so older stars tend to spin more slowly than younger stars,” he said. “However, if a star has recently consumed a planet, the addition of the planet’s orbital angular momentum will cause the star to rapidly increase its spin rate. So we would like to look for stars that are spinning too fast for their age.”

Source: University of Washington