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Once considered unimportant "junk DNA," scientists have learned that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) -- RNA molecules that do not translate into proteins -- play a crucial role in cellular function. Mutations in ncRNA are associated with a number of conditions, such as cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. Now, through the use of "deep sequencing," a technology used to sequence the genetic materials of the human genome, Dr. Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine has discovered that when infected with a virus, ncRNA gives off biological signals that indicate the presence of an infectious agent, known as a...

Enlarge Image Credit: D. Cima/American Red Cross Measles deaths dropped dramatically in the first decade of the 21st century, but progress has stalled since 2007, new estimates show. A report from the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Pennsylvania State University calculates that global measles deaths fell from 535,000 in 2000 to 139,000 in 2010—an impressive 74% reduction, but short of WHO's goal of 90%. More worryingly, the paper, released in The Lancet today, shows that those numbers have essentially remained flat since 2007. The measles virus is one of the...

Chinese bicycle past a few chickens feeding on on a city farm in Beijing April 22, 2009. (UPI Photo/Stephen Shaver)  BEIJING, April 18 (UPI) -- An outbreak of bird flu was reported in northwestern China, resulting in the slaughter of 95,000 chickens, the Ministry of Agriculture said Wednesday. The epidemic H5N1 bird flu virus was discovered Friday at several farms in the village of Touying in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Xinhua reported. More than 23,000 chickens showed symptoms of bird flu on Friday, which was then confirmed by the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory as H5N1 bird flu after...

Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Found In Four Million-Year-Old CaveThe bacteria, found in the isolated Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, over 1300 feet below the earth, may hold the secret to understanding drug resistance. Alexander BesantApril 12, 2012 17:19 Researchers said they discovered ancient bacteria resistant to both natural and synthetic antibiotics while investigating a 4-million-year-old cave in New Mexico. The finding, may have implications for both the understanding of drug resistance and ways of preventing it. The scientists involved collected 93 strains of bacteria from Lechuguilla cave, approximately 1300 feet deep, and found that all the strains collected were resistant to...

Enlarge Image Light therapy . A portable plasma flashlight can kill bacteria in minutes. (Credit: X. Pei et al., Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics) Credit: X. Pei et al., Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (2012) Killing harmful bacteria in hospitals is difficult; out in the field, it can be an even bigger problem. Now, researchers may have a means for remote disinfection in a portable "flashlight" that shines a ray of cold plasma to kill bacteria in minutes. Medical scientists have high hopes for plasmas. Produced in electrical discharges, these gases of free electrons and ions have...

Credit: NASA; (inset) Chi M. Phan Two years ago, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig covered hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico with oil (main image). The oil floated because it is less dense, and therefore lighter, than water. But now scientists say that water can sometimes float on oil—and their findings, which were published last month in Langmuir, could help to mop up oil slicks like the one created by the 2010 disaster. Using a theoretical model, the scientists calculated the forces acting on water when it is dripped onto an oil surface....

US researchers have developed a rapid testing kit for HIV, which uses nothing more sophisticated than quicklime to power it. The device, which relies on heat generated from the hydration of calcium oxide, should be useful in situations where there is no electricity, such as in rural areas in developing countries. The new device can detect HIV in the field at an early stage of infection To contain the spread of HIV and to treat carriers of the virus effectively, it is important to diagnose the condition at the 'point of care' - rather than in a remote laboratory. HIV...

Enlarge Image Viral attack. A handful of P1 phages pierce the membrane of an E. coli bacterium, as seen under electron microscopy (left panels) and a 3D reconstruction (right). Credit: Adapted from J. Liu et al., Virology, 417 (1 September 2011) Forget needles in haystacks. Try finding the tip of a needle in a virus. Scientists have long known that a group of viruses called bacteriophages have a knack for infiltrating bacteria and that some begin their attack with a protein spike. But the tip of this spike is so small that no one knew what it was made...

Enlarge Image Crystalline. Calcium carbonate forming in sterile solutions tends to be amorphous and black (left), but the presence of bacteria coaxes it to form calcite crystals. Credit: Jenny Cappuccio/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory As humans warm the planet by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, some researchers believe that capturing CO2 and trapping it in buried rocks could lower the risk of catastrophic climate change. Now a team of researchers has shown that bacteria can help the process along. They can even be genetically modified to trap CO2 faster, keeping it underground for millions of years. When CO2 is...

Scientists in India are targeting enzymes responsible for catalysing the formation of bonds to repair nicks in the phosphodiester backbone of DNA - called DNA ligases - to tackle the ever-growing health concern of multi-drug resistant bacteria, in particular against tuberculosis.  Unlike current drugs, the new compound targets just the bacterial enzymes instead of both bacterial and human enzymes DNA ligases use either adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) as cofactors (small molecules that help promote biological reactions) in cellular processes, such as DNA repair and replication. Humans only have the DNA ligases that utilise ATP, but bacteria...

FDA Drug Safety Communication: Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea can be associated with stomach acid drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs)  Safety AnnouncementAdditional Information for Patients and ConsumersAdditional Information for Healthcare ProfessionalsData Summary (Tables) Safety Announcement [02-08-2012] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is informing the public that the use of stomach acid drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) may be associated with an increased risk of Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea (CDAD). A diagnosis of CDAD should be considered for patients taking PPIs who develop diarrhea that does not improve. .benefit { font-size: medium; font-weight: bold; color: #f9e4bb; }Patients should immediately...

The best defense against a deadly attack with avian flu is the open scientific enterprise. Today the U.S. National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended that the journals Nature and Science restrict publication about controversial new research relevant to the transmission of avian flu between humans. The fear: Would-be bioterrorists are combing the pages of the journals for tips on how to wreak havoc. The H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 60 percent of the 600 or so people known to have come down with it since it was first identified in 1997. For comparison, seasonal flu in the United...

For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics. In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person. It was an ominous step, because easy transmission can lead the virus to spread all over the world. The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model...

Judy Mikovits, who has been in the spotlight for the past 2 years after Science published a controversial report by her group that tied a novel mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is now behind bars. Sheriffs in Ventura County, California, arrested Mikovits yesterday on felony charges that she is a fugitive from justice. She is being held at the Todd Road Jail in Santa Paula without bail. But ScienceInsider could obtain only sketchy details about the specific charges against her. The Ventura County sheriff's office told ScienceInsider that it had no available details about the charges and was...

Enlarge Image Blood tied. The malaria parasite P. falciparum, which is carried by the Anopheles mosquito (pictured in their larval stage), can't infect red blood cells without a particular protein. Credit: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, is an unusually versatile bug. The single-celled safecracker carries a wide collection of protein "keys" that it can use to jimmy receptor "locks" on the surface of red blood cells, tricking the cells into letting it in. Block one of these entry points with a drug, and the parasite just uses a different key. But now, researchers...

'Good bugs' look promising as anti-inflammatory agent for patients with ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, chronic fatigue syndromeWashington, DC -- In four different studies presented at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC, researchers explored the effectiveness of probiotics for antibiotic-associated diarrhea; as an anti-inflammatory agent for patients with ulcerative colitis, psoriasis and chronic fatigue syndrome; and for people with abdominal discomfort and bloating who have not been diagnosed with a functional bowel disorder, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). These four studies will be featured during an ACG press briefing on Tuesday, November 1, 2011...

A vampire-like bacteria that leeches onto specific other bacteria – including certain human pathogens – has the potential to serve as a living antibiotic for a range of infectious diseases, a new study indicates. The bacterium, Micavibrio aeruginosavorus, was discovered to inhabit wastewater nearly 30 years ago, but has not been extensively studied because it is difficult to culture and investigate using traditional microbiology techniques. However, biologists in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, Martin Wu and graduate student Zhang Wang, have decoded its genome and are learning "how it makes its living," Wu said. The bacterium...

Researcher's compound disables bacteria instead of killing themAfter 70 years, antibiotics are still the primary treatment for halting the spread of bacterial infections. But the prevalence of antibiotic resistance is now outpacing the rate of new drug discovery and approval. A microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has discovered a different approach: Instead of killing the bacteria, why not disarm them, quashing disease without the worry of antibiotic resistance? Ching-Hong Yang, associate professor of biological sciences, has developed a compound that shuts off the "valve" in a pathogen's DNA that allows it to invade and infect. The research is...

Broad-spectrum antibiotics, which are active against a whole range of bacterial pathogens, have been on the market for a long time. Comparably versatile drugs to treat viral diseases, on the other hand, have remained elusive. Using a new approach, research teams led by Dr. Albrecht von Brunn of LMU Munich and Professor Christian Drosten from the University of Bonn have identified a compound that inhibits the replication of several different viruses, including the highly aggressive SARS virus that is responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome. The new method exploits the fact that interactions between certain host proteins and specific viral...

Researchers developed new computational tools to characterize viruses; published this week in mBioThough viruses are the most abundant life form on Earth, our knowledge of the viral universe is limited to a tiny fraction of the viruses that likely exist. In a paper published this week in the online journal mBio, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Barcelona found that raw sewage is home to thousands of novel, undiscovered viruses, some of which could relate to human health. There are roughly 1.8 million species of organisms on our planet, and each...