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Folding@Home update: 3 Work Units completed, 2 computers, 138 points, overall team rank #15,162

Any Freepers "folding@home"???? For those not familiar with F@H -> some diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer and even "mad cow" disease are believed to be linked to protein (mis)folding. A scientist team from Stanford University studies this phenomenon to try and find a cure to these diseases. To do this, they have designed a software (folding@home) which enables people to donate unused power from their computer to speed up medical research!

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection. However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is...

By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts. In two papers appearing in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Rama Ranganathan, associate professor of pharmacology, and his colleagues detail a new method for creating artificial proteins based only on information they derived from analyzing certain characteristics that individual natural proteins have in common with each other. "The goal of our...

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian scientists have discovered pineapple molecules can act as powerful anti-cancer agents and said the research could lead to a new class of cancer-fighting drugs. Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) said their work centred on two molecules from bromelaine, an extract derived from crushed pineapple stems that is used to tenderise meat, clarify beers and tan hides. One of the molecules, CCZ, stimulates the body's immune system to target and kill cancer cells, the other, CCS, blocks a protein called Ras, which is defective in 30 percent of all cancers. QIMR researcher Tracey...

New research into primitive protective proteins from the immune systems of sharks could lead to more versatile drugs to battle diseases such as cancer and dangerous bacterial infections and to robust diagnostic kits that could easily leave the lab, an area of intense research following the anthrax attacks of 2001. In a study published Thursday online by the journal Science, researchers at The Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore determined that the structure of the primitive antibody that marks a difference between the immune systems of sharks and mammals is unusually simple. Ian...

Scientists are reporting that, for the first time, they have made an artificial prion, or misfolded protein, that can, by itself, produce a deadly infectious disease in mice and may help explain the roots of mad cow disease. The findings, being reported on Friday in the journal Science, are strong evidence for the so-called "protein only hypothesis," the controversial idea that a protein, acting alone without the help of DNA or RNA, can cause certain kinds of infectious diseases. The concept was introduced in 1982 by Dr. Stanley Prusiner, a neurology professor at the University of California in San Francisco,...

n an advance that could lead to three-dimensional pictures of proteins and other molecules, scientists have developed a magnetic resonance imaging technique that can detect a single electron. "There's lots of things this will be useful for," said Dr. Daniel Rugar, manager of nanoscale studies at I.B.M.'s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and leader of the research team, which is reporting the findings today in the journal Nature. "There are thousands of proteins in the body whose structures are not known." It is largely proteins' shapes that enable them to carry out the essential functions of the body,...

Herbal alternatives are under attack. Download and print flyers. The flyers urge consumers to tell their congressmen and senators to attend the JUNE 17th Herbal Alternatives Congressional Briefing to learn the truth about herbs & health. It is critical that Congress attends this briefing because: HERBAL ALTERNATIVES ARE UNDER ATTACK. News headlines misinform and mislead decision makers. Products you depend on for your health could soon be banned. MANY CAPITOL HILL STAFFERS AND POLICY MAKERS DO NOT UNDERSTAND NATURAL HEALTH INDUSTRY ISSUES. Since DSHEA was passed in 1994, about 50% of Congressmen and Senators and 80% of Congressional aides have...

Scientists have discovered that monkey cells have innate protection against infection with the human AIDS virus, a clue that may help explain why some people are susceptible to certain viral infections while others are not. The finding, reported in today's issue of the journal Nature, offers one of the first concrete examples of what researchers call an intracellular system of innate immunity and may open the door to the development of new antiviral therapies, the scientists said. The monkeys were protected from the virus by a mechanism that resides within cells and that is independent of the antibodies and white...

NASA nanometer breakthrough uses hot pond protein You couldn't make it up By Paul Hales: Wednesday 27 November 2002, 11:35 NASA SCIENTISTS say they have invented a breakthrough biological method to make ultra-small structures that could be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today’s components. The scientists apparently use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them. These naturally-occurring microbes live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs, according to an article in on-line version of the journal Nature Materials. One of the scientists, Andrew McMillan,...

New word in life's lexiconResearchers find 22nd amino acid in a microbe.24 May 2002JOHN WHITFIELDThere's a new word to life's vocabulary. DNA letters can be rearranged to spell out a 22nd amino acid, researchers have discovered. DNA: the letters of life have more permutations than we thought. © Getty Images The scientists who cracked life's genetic code in the 1950s said that it writes a mere 20 'words' - the amino acids from which the myriad proteins in all life are built. But in 1986 another amino acid was discovered in bacteria. "We thought the 21st was an aberration,...