Dirty pigs beat disease: Nature Newsliving like a pig could be good for you, according to research showing that dirty piglets pick up'friendly'bacteria that help them to develop robust immune systems later in life.
which suggests that a lack of exposure to microbes in early life can affect development of the immune system and increase susceptibility to certain disorders, such as allergies and inflammatory bowel disease.
Denise Kelly, a gut immunologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who worked on the study,
immune health and gene expression (I e. Mulder et al. BMC Biol. 7, 79; 2009). ) Until now, she says,
and how it influences immune function and susceptibility to diseases and allergies. Although many researchers now accept the hygiene hypothesis,
an immunologist at the University of Paris Descartes, there are still questions about how it works,
and how infection helps to protect against disease. This paper shows that the first days of life are very important,
an indoor environment and isolated conditions in which they were fed antibiotics daily. The scientists then killed piglets on day 5 (neonatal stage),
a family of bacteria known for their ability to limit intestinal pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella species. By contrast,
Animals raised in the isolated environment expressed more genes involved in inflammatory immune responses and cholesterol synthesis,
whereas genes linked with infection-fighting T cells were expressed in the outdoor-bred pigs. Glenn Gibson, a food microbiologist at the University of Reading, UK, says that previous studies have suggested that immune responses are linked to organisms in the gut.
This study takes a step forwards by tallying the gene expression response into this, he says. However, he adds
Jonathan Rhodes, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Liverpool, UK, points out that people with chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, known as Crohn's disease, have reduced numbers of Firmicutes,
patients with Crohn's also have reduced overall bacterial diversity, similar to the outdoor pigs, suggesting that the results might not extrapolate directly to human disease.
Kelly argues, however, that the comparable organ sizes of humans and pigs, and the similarities between the microorganisms found in their guts,
The language states that Congress disapproves of the EPA's December 2009 assessment that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health.
By declaring greenhouse gases a public health threat, the EPA is now legally bound to regulate emissions.
The US National institutes of health (NIH) is considering extending the definition of human embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for federal funding,
who recently submitted ten lines derived from pre-blastocyst embryos to the NIH. See go. nature. com/vmucio for more.
Drug-maker Glaxosmithkline (GSK) was aware of cardiac risks associated with its diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) years before they became public
Two senators also challenged Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
to justify an ongoing trial that compares Avandia with a competing drug. The finance committee released documents from the FDA where an advisory committee voted in 2007 to keep Avandia on the market in
GSK says that the Senate report cherry-picked information and mischaracterized its efforts to research
Biomedical priorities: The Wellcome Trust, Britain's biggest charitable funder of biomedical research, has for the first time explicitly set out five priority areas it wants to fund,
in a ten-year strategic plan announced on 22 february. The research challenges where funding will be focused include studies into chronic diseases and the effects of ageing on cell function,
and the interplay between the environment, nutrition and health. In 2008-09 the trust spent a total of £720 million (US$1. 1 billion) on research.
Business Ethanol merger: The large Brazilian ethanol producer ETH Bioenergia announced on 18 february that it would take over the debt-ridden Brazilian Renewable Energy Company (Brenco) to create a world-leading company to make ethanol from biomass.
People NIH change: Raynard Kington, deputy director of the US National institutes of health (NIH), will leave the biomedical agency in late July to become president of Grinnell College in Iowa,
NIH director Francis Collins announced on 17 february. Kington, a physician with a doctorate in health policy and economics, became a key administrator at the NIH over the past decade.
As acting director before Collins took the helm last August, he oversaw the allocation of US$10. 4 billion in economic stimulus funds and the development of new guidelines for funding of human embryonic
stem-cell research. Research president: Austrian social scientist Helga Nowotny has been elected president of the European Research Council (ERC),
Anthrax case closed: Federal authorities in the United states announced on 19 february the conclusion of their investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks,
which killed five people. They determined that biodefence researcher Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator;
such as analysis tracing mailed Bacillus anthracis spores back to a single-spore batch in Ivins's lab at the US ARMY Medical Research Institute of Infectious diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Pollution and other environmental issues in China have caused widespread health problems such as cancer and birth defects and have led to much social unrest.
Many observers think that the publicizing of such huge pollution levels by a country that is often secretive about bad news is a sign that China is taking the issues seriously.
A 19-page statement issued by Ramesh said that his ministry had decided to impose a moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal until independent scientific studies had established that it would not adversely affect the environment or human health.
We have no less than ten GM products to get into the regulatory system for trials including brinjal, chickpea, sorghum, sugar cane, castor oil plant,
Fate Therapeutics, a biotech company based in San diego, California, has been granted the first US patent for genetic reprogramming technology to create induced pluripotent stem (ips) cells.
BASF is hoping to break into a market dominated by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer; its'Amflora'genetically modified starchy potato is awaiting European union approval.
London-based pharma giant Glaxosmithkline revealed plans on 4 february to shut down early-stage research into pain and depression medications,
and open a new research arm dedicated to finding treatments for rare diseases. Lay offs related to the change in strategy would hit research centres in Harlow, UK,
Biologist Axel Ullrich took the medicine prize for his research in cancer (he co-developed trastuzumab,
or Herceptin, used to treat breast cancer); and geneticist and plant scientist David Baulcombe got the agriculture prize for his discovery of small interfering RNA in plants,
1998) that began the scare over a purported link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The retraction came days after the UK General Medical Council censured the paper's lead author,
Some of these samples were not in a good condition: When we opened one old can of syrup,
for example, research on how to increase the productivity of stress-tolerant rice in Asia, and to identify the management
(or male) and that the other side would have a some kind of chromosomal anomaly. Instead, they found the chickens to be almost perfectly split between male and female.
pathogen resistance and hormone signalling. Annotation of the Arabidopsis genome the linking of biological data to sequence information is considered now among the highest quality of all sequenced genomes.
if they claim to have some evidence that the crops might pose a risk to human health or the environment.
but because it contains marker genes that confer resistance to the antibiotics kanamycin and neomycin.
Breeders of GM CROPS use antibiotic-resistance markers to spot which plants have incorporated successfully transgenes. They attach the antibiotic-resistance gene onto the desired trait genes,
and then treat the transgenic seedlings with antibiotics, which kills those plants that haven't taken up the foreign genes.
Environmental groups and some countries have had longstanding concerns about the risk of genes spreading from crops to bacteria and increasing bacterial antibiotic resistance.
What does the science say about that risk? The EFSA considered this in the context of the Amflora application in 2005,
and concluded that the risk of transfer of antibiotic resistance from plants to bacteria was remote,
and that bacteria resistant to the antibiotics were already present in soil, animals and humans.
That position was restated in a broader safety assessment of antibiotic-resistance markers, published by EFSA's GMO
and that introducing genes that confer resistance to antibiotics that are used, for example, to treat multiply drug-resistant tuberculosis simply isn't a good idea.
The reason the problem arises at all is because Amflora is a first-generation GM crop that was developed in the late 1980s.
Modification technologies developed since then allow the use of alternatives to antibiotic-resistance markers, or allow such markers to be spliced out of the plant before cultivation.
Indeed, although the EU, the World health organization and many health bodies accept that the risk of transfer of antibiotic resistance seems low
they have called for antibiotic-resistance markers in GMOS to be phased out. More broadly, other experts say that much more publicly funded research on GMOS would lead to greater public confidence in risk assessments,
says William Patterson, an isotope chemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and lead author of the study1.
Tough lessons from Dutch Q fever outbreak: Nature Newsthe chief veterinary officer of The netherlands has defended the country's decision to cull thousands of goats in an effort to control an unprecedented outbreak of Q fever.
The netherlands can't take a chance, Christianne Bruschke told Nature after a meeting in Breda a city near the heart of the outbreak.
But Bruschke said that in other countries the authorities have been able to ignore the disease
however, epidemiological studies pinpointed goats as the source of the disease in an area increasingly densely populated by humans and dairy farms over the past decade,
Q fever, caused by Coxiella burnetii bacteria, is harboured in mammals, birds and even insects. It can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
After more than 2, 200 confirmed human cases of the disease last year, the Dutch government slaughtered over 50,000 dairy goats on 55 of the country's nearly 400 farms in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading further.
But the Dutch government's approach to controlling the disease remains controversial. Some researchers argue that the mass cull was not necessary
and less extreme measures such as vaccinating the animals may have been enough. I've never encountered anything like that before,
says Paula Menzies of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. But I'm not the person in charge of trying to keep 2,
Vaccination of dairy goats is now mandatory everywhere in the country. After the first round of vaccinations in the southern Netherlands in 2008, initial findings showed that the vaccine,
produced by animal drug company CEVA of Libourne, France, cut down on the amount of bacteria in the goats'milk and afterbirth during lambing season the following year1.
But the first infected goats to be vaccinated were slaughtered in 2009. That put a crimp in possible findings from this year's lambing season
already under way, as to how much vaccination could help already infected farms, says Hendrik-Jan Roest, project leader on Q fever in goats for the Central Veterinary Institute (CVI) in Wageningen, The netherlands.
CVI researchers will attempt to analyze data from the dead goats, he says, but in the end, documenting the impact of the vaccinations may have to wait at least another year.
Researchers are also racing to work out whether one fast-spreading strain of the bacteria is causing human cases of the disease.
Previous analyses of 12 strains of C. burnetii found on infected Dutch dairy farms revealed one
Cbnl01, that seems to be universally present in infected animals (see health/presentations/120110typingofcoxiellaburnetiiwhyisqfevercausingproblemsinthenetherlands. pdf>report.
Roest and his colleagues are now trying to tease out if this bug is the one responsible for human infections.
With the Dutch Institute for Public health and the Environment, Roest's team is carrying out genome sequencing and comparisons of different strains.
But Cbnl01's omnipresence makes it difficult to be sure it's the source of the human disease,
Roest adds. Roest says that CVI researchers and veterinary pathologist Annie Rodolakis of INRA, The french agricultural research institute, will start by looking at how the bacteria spreads in mice.
They then plan to analyze samples from infected humans and animals comparing all Dutch C. burnetii strains to see
if Cbnl01 is the most virulent. For researchers from outside The netherlands, the meeting presented an incredibly wonderful opportunity to learn from the Dutch,
from understanding how the bacteria are distributed at such a large scale to correlating measurements of BACTERIAL DNA levels in bulk milk tank samples with infection rates.
In Canada, we've been dealing with small outbreaks of disease in animals, but we've never done a prevalence survey,
that's because animals don't always exhibit symptoms of disease and detecting infected animals using blood tests something Dutch researchers have improved radically is difficult.
She will take their methodology back to Canada, where testing will begin this summer on sheep and goats on both dairy and meat farms,
The CVI said that starting this year they will also monitor the incidence of the disease in pets and horses.
We need to know a lot more about the disease to understand why it's so different in The netherlands than the rest of the world,
Soil bacteria could yield drug to treat roundworm: Nature Newsa bacterial protein used in a common pesticide kills intestinal parasitic roundworms in mice
and may become a treatment option for humans, researchers say. Intestinal roundworms, including hookworms and whipworms, infect well over one billion people, lowering immune systems for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis and debilitating both physically and cognitively.
The new approach, published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases1, uses crystal proteins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt.
Organic farmers have used Bt to kill insects for decades, and plants have been modified genetically with Bt genes
Compared to the best drugs people have developed to treat human parasitic worms this natural protein is at least three times better,
and is a common laboratory model organism for studying human diseases caused by roundworms, such as river blindness and elephantiasis.
Aroian's previous study2 using a type of human intestinal roundworm parasite to infect hamsters showed a 90%reduction in three doses of Bt.
the two in vivo studies have shown significant therapeutic activity of a crystal protein against two species of nematode,
Nearly all of the current drugs to treat nematode diseases were invented for veterinary purposes, he says,
Do you ever say to your doctor, give me the best vet drug you have for treating my condition?
he says. This is the only disease I can think of when that's what we do.
According to Aroian, this treatment can be grown cheaply in large quantities. Bt is grown in fermenters that hold thousands of litres for use as an agricultural spray
The issue of protecting the toxin as it passes through the stomach to be released in the intestine will have to be addressed
The british Chiropractic Association (BCA) ended its libel claim against the science writer Simon Singh on 15 april,
If passed, the new legislation will require health -and-safety information to be provided for all chemicals,
will replace the ageing Toxic Substances Control Act (see Nature 463,599; 2010). ) Business watch Genetically engineered crops offer significant environmental and economic advantages over non-transgenic varieties,
which are engineered to produce pest-killing toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, use less insecticide. Increased planting of herbicide-tolerant crops may also have reduced the use of many herbicides that linger in soil and waterways
A 55-year-old clinical-trials network needs a major overhaul, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine, the WASHINGTON DC-based health arm of the National Academies.
The Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, enrols 25,000 patients in cancer trials run by 14,000 researchers at 3, 100 institutions each year.
The conference includes lectures and posters from fields such as anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacology. go. nature. com/Errfze 27-29 april The Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Drug Discovery Chemistry conference is held in San diego, California,
with programmes on antibacterial drug development and protein-protein interactions as drug targets. www. drugdiscoverychemistry. com 28-29 april A symposium hosted by the Zoological Society of London examines the link between the conservation of biodiversity
and reductions in poverty. go. nature. com/jr2rlc Number crunch 4%The proportion of global anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions emitted by dairy cows,
We are now at a stage where we have years of extensive research results on the ecological, economic and health aspects of many GMOS.
because there are a lot of health problems in developing countries that have been linked to the spraying of pesticides. Public funding of agricultural research in rich countries has declined,
Business Pfizer payments: On 31 march, the drug company Pfizer began to make public its payments to physicians
and other health professionals for speaking and consulting on its behalf, and for conducting clinical trials of its drugs.
Pfizer said it paid out US$35 million in the last six months of 2009. It was required to post much of the data by an agreement settling a US government investigation into the company's promotion of its drugs for off-label use.
Glaxosmithkline, Merck and Eli lilly already publicly report physician payments; this will be mandatory from 2013, under US health-care reform law.
Carbon trading: Greenhouse-gas emissions from around 11,000 factories and power plants under the 27-nation European union (EU) trading scheme fell by 11%in 2009, according to preliminary,
incomplete data released on 1 april. The fall due to the recession meant that the EU handed out an excess of 60.6 million carbon credits (free permits to emit a tonne of carbon dioxide),
which can be retained for future trading. Steel and cement industries have amassed the greatest surplus. Tighter permit caps are expected from 2013 in the scheme's next phase.
Research Stem-cell therapy: Twenty-two clinics around the world that offer patients experimental adult stem-cell treatments have been surveyed by the International Cellular Medicine Society based in Salem, Oregon.
The study, released on 2 april, provides information about working clinics such as their cell processing and implantation techniques although it does not rank them.
The society has established also a registry to track the health of people who undergo stem-cell therapy.
See detailsstemcellclini. html>go. nature. com/Zrahkc for more. Synchrotrons and ships: The UK government has approved an earmarked £97. 4 million (US$148 million) to expand the country's Diamond synchrotron in Harwell, Oxfordshire;
British science writer Simon Singh has won a key appeal in his court battle with The british Chiropractic Association (BCA.
The 1 april ruling is of wider significance as it could establish greater legal protection for others wanting to debate scientific or medical issues.
The genes cause plant cells around the infection site to die, stopping the fungus from further infecting the plant.
says Zacharias Pretorius, a wheat pathologist at the University of the Free state in Bloemfontein, South africa,
The concern is that other wheat-growing countries will become vulnerable to infection. Eventually it will reach North america
These strains pose an even greater threat to wheat than other types of Ug99 because they are more virulent
and the wheat plants have fewer defences against infection, says Pretorius. Pretorius and his team analysed the genomes of the new stem rust variants
making it able to overcome the Sr24 wheat gene that usually confers resistance to the pathogen.
The fungus and its variants are now able to overcome at least 32 of around 50 resistance genes, according to Ravi Singh, a plant geneticist and pathologist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.
is developing new tools to help defeat the pathogen. Sarah Davidson, associate director of the project, says that it will have isolated eight new resistance genes by the end of the year.
Medical disarray: The Indian government on 15 may took over the Medical Council of India (MCI), three weeks after its president,
Ketan Desai, was arrested on corruption charges (see Nature 464,1251; 2010). ) An ordinance signed by Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil establishes a board of governors to run the council for one year.
which sets and maintains standards of medical education and accredits Indian medical schools. New climate bill arrives in US Senate US senators John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts;
On 14 may, the US National institutes of health doled out the final big chunk of new awards to be funded from its US$10. 4-billion 2009 economic stimulus package:
The 146 individual grants include $7. 4 million to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks for building clinical-trial facilities to study health disparities in Native americans,
and thousands of spiders and scorpions that were used for biomedical research. The curator Franciso Franco has told press agencies that its destruction on 15 may was a loss to humanity.
Phones and cancer: There is no clear link between mobile-phone use and the risk of brain cancer,
according to a major study published this week (The INTERPHONE Study Group Int. J. Epidemiol. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyq079;
) The study, run by the World health organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, interviewed thousands of adults with and without cancer in 13 countries about their mobile-phone usage.
See go. nature. com/uzph7a for more. India defence research: India's largest military technology research body is set for a management revamp under government measures announced on 13 may.
The US pharmacy chain Walgreens postponed plans to start selling a personal genome-testing kit in thousands of its shops last week,
after the Food and Drug Administration began an investigation into whether the kits require regulatory approval.
Cancer acquisition: Astellas Pharma, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, said on 16 may that it had agreed to pay US$4 billion to purchase OSI Pharmaceuticals,
based in New york. The US firm is known best for its anticancer drug erlotinib (Tarceva). Business watch Investors are losing confidence in Monsanto,
the agricultural biotech giant based in St louis, Missouri (see chart). Some farmers aren't seeing big yield increases with the company's new herbicide-tolerant soya bean line, Roundup Ready 2 Yield.
They are also hesitant about buying its forthcoming Smartstax maize (corn), which incorporates eight genes conferring herbicide tolerance and insect protection.
Nobel laureate Harold Varmus is to be the next director of the US National Cancer Institute at the National institutes of health (NIH), replacing John Niederhuber.
The $5. 1-billion cancer institute is the largest of the NIH's 27 institutes and centres.
headed the NIH during the Clinton administration, between 1993 and 1999, and then became president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New york,
before advising Barack Obama during his run for the presidency. The week ahead 20-22 may Mouse models of autism are one of the items on the agenda at the international meeting for autism research
which convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. www. autism-insar. org 22 may This year's International Day for Biological Diversity (as proclaimed by the United nations) has been allotted the theme of poverty
and development. www. cbd. int/idb 23-27 may The American Astronomical Society holds its 216th meeting in Miami, Florida. aas. org/meetings/aas216 News maker Christiana
Nature Newsgrowing cotton that has been modified genetically to poison its main pest can lead to a boom in the numbers of other insects,
In 1997, the Chinese government approved the commercial cultivation of cotton plants genetically modified to produce a toxin from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is deadly to the bollworm Helicoverpa armigera.
Mirids are not susceptible to the Bt toxin so they started to thrive when farmers used less pesticide,
Wu stresses, however, that pest control must keep sight of the whole ecosystem. The impact of genetically modified crops must be assessed on the landscape level,
and traditional medicines) to household income in more than 360 villages across 26 countries, including Ghana, Peru and China.
and development practitioners on both sides would agree that many academics set higher-than-realistic expectations of
But Robert Bergman, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who cosigned a 2007 letter of protest against the use of the fumigant,
and it could cause cancer, nerve damage or fetal-development problems among workers and people living near fumigated fields.
But a report by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) concluded in 2009 that the compound posed significant health risks.
The DPR commissioned an independent review, led by chemist John Froines, to settle the debate (see'Strawberry pesticide leaves sour taste').
and thus would have a significant adverse impact on the public health. This led the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice
The extra, health-protective use restrictions we are proposing â Â are much stricter than those imposed anywhere else in the United states
says Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel-prize-winning chemist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york, who cosigned the 2007 protest letter with Bergman.
says Ted Schettler, science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network in Ann arbor, Michigan,
Our understanding is that there have been no reports of adverse health effects, he said.
Organic farms win at potato pest control: Nature Newsa study suggesting that organic agriculture gives better pest control
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