The pathogen has learned to live with these transposable elements, which could be a problem for it
In the arms race between plant and pathogen, potatoes have had long an ally: human plant breeders, who have struggled to develop blight-resistant spuds.
With all this knowledge about how the pathogen attacks the host on the biochemical level,
But researchers say that past landrace contaminations from illegal GM maize planting (see Nature 456,149;
HIV vaccine doubt: Results of the largest-ever HIV-vaccine trial looked less impressive when full details were published formally last week (S. Rerks-Ngarm et al.
N. Engl. J. Med. doi: 10.1056/nejmoa0908492; 2009) than when they were outlined in a press release a month earlier.
In September, the trial was said to show that a vaccine combination reduced the risk of HIV infection by nearly one-third.
The week ahead 29 october â oe1 November Philadelphia hosts the 47th Annual Meeting of the Infectious diseases Society of America. go. nature. com/ykfvnw 29 â oe30 October
Kenya, hosts the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria's fifth Pan-African Malaria Conference. www. mimalaria. org/pamc 2 â oe6 November The United nations Framework
Currently, research on 82 human, plant and animal pathogens (called select agents) is monitored under a 1996 law that requires the same security procedures for all of them.
The company revealed in April that data supporting a prenatal screen for Down's syndrome were mishandled and could not be relied on (see Nature 459,23;
Obama toured a National Cancer Institute lab, where he was treated to video images of healthy and cancer-riddled brains,
and praised the research made possible by the agency's spending of $5 billion out of the $10. 4 billion it got in economic stimulus funds.
They also indicate that manipulating gut bacteria early in life might reduce allergies and other autoimmune diseases, says Denise Kelly, a gut immunologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK and one of the study's authors.
Researchers began with 54 piglets and divided them equally between an outdoor environment, an indoor environment,
and for their ability to limit intestinal pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella. In contrast, the Firmicutes bacteria made up less than 70%and just more than 50%of the gut flora in indoor and isolated bred pigs respectively.
and how it influences immune function and susceptibility to diseases and allergies, she says. The latest work establishes a strong causal link.
For each case study, the authors calculated the reductions of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYS a measure of potential years of life lost to disease or premature death,
due in part to reduced cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Another analysis, led by Sharon Friel at the Australian National University in Canberra,
%Such a change in the UK would save 2, 850 DALYS from heart disease; in S £o Paulo, Brazil, it would save 2, 1804.
citing the potential contamination of native maize: It is very, very unacceptable. See also'Maize genome sequenced'.
The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the major funding channel for controlling these diseases, last week approved US$2. 4 billion in extra funding over two years.
Pathogen negligence: Canada's government laboratories are doing a poor job of keeping track of some pathogens, according to an audit by the Public health Agency of Canada.
The audit found that the labs'inconsistent tracking systems a mixture of manual and electronic recording might result in a pathogen being lost
or used inappropriately. The audit included the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, which handles samples of H1n1 pandemic flu,
and which earlier this year lost track of 22 vials containing harmless Ebola-virus genetic material.
Tracking systems for the most dangerous pathogens are more rigorous but could still be improved, the audit found.
Brooke Magnanti, now a cancer epidemiologist at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, UK, reveals that she was the anonymous sex worker and blogger Belle de Jour.
He is collaborating with both the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases to study chronic granulomatous disease, a rare genetic white blood cell disorder,
and the University of South carolina to study Alzheimer's disease. Brain science Institute behavioural geneticist Shigeyoshi Itohara is excited most about
what the clones could reveal about the function of the brain. With the differences between species in disposition and cognition, dogs are tremendously valuable to basic genetic studies of higher brain order.
but in 1898, drought, pestilence and hunting left the Tsavo region of Kenya barren of the lions'favourite meals.
Apart from the environmental pressures on the lions, the dominant maneater also had severe wounds in his mouth and jaw,
Nature News Liberia's caterpillar plague Panic struck Liberia in early 2009, after a plague of caterpillars struck villages around the country, munching trees
Aurelius had had upwards of 18 kidney stones in about as many years and Massagee was baffled by an extraordinary and painful build up of muscles in her body that left her weighed down and fatigued.
She received treatment for AL amyloidosis, a build up of protein in the walls of her blood vessels, on 19 june,
works with mouse models of muscular dystrophy at Ohio State university in Columbus. She declined an interview request.
Movetis has European approval to market a constipation drug, prucalopride (Resolor). Market watch Amazonian nations will be the early winners in any market for forest carbon credits,
Tuberculosis funds: Tuberculosis research has seen funding jump in each of the past few years, but the rate of increase is dropping off.
So says a report released on 3 december by the Treatment Action Group, an AIDS research and policy think tank based in New york. Tuberculosis funding increased by 8%last year to US$510 million,
compared with annual increases of 13%in 2007 and 17%in 2006. The balance of funding is also shifting, from government agencies to philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
World health bodies say that within 18 months they will celebrate the eradication of rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease.
It would become only the second disease that humans have wiped from the globe after smallpox,
Rinderpest tops the list of killer animal diseases, says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural organization of the United nations (FAO) in Rome.
Just as smallpox ripped through human populations for centuries, so too has reduced rinderpest drastically animal populations.
Also known as cattle plague, rinderpest can lead to famine when people lose the beasts they need to plough their fields.
It first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of invading tribes, causing outbreaks in the Roman empire in 376-386,
The world's first veterinary science school was established in France in 1762 to train specialists to deal with rinderpest.
is caused by a morbillivirus a group of viruses that also includes measles. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose, diarrhoea and dehydration.
In the 1980s, outbreaks in Nigeria cost around US$2 billion. But that decade also saw a breakthrough in controlling the disease:
In 1994, a global effort to eradicate rinderpest was launched, headed by the FAO and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE), based in Paris. It incorporated several earlier,
By the 1970s, smallpox, too, was found only in the war-torn Horn of Africa, where the last case was isolated in Somalia in 1977.
Although the rinderpest vaccine can provide lifelong protection, it also poses a challenge. Because it contains the live virus
The effort will make it only the second disease to be wiped from the globe the first was eradicated smallpox
Rinderpest tops the list of killer diseases in animals, says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural organization of the United nations (FAO) in Rome.
Rinderpest, otherwise known as cattle plague, has killed many millions of cattle and other wildlife around the world since it first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of the invading tribes, causing outbreaks during the Roman empire in 376-386.
The disease is caused by a virus called a morbillivirus a group that also includes the measles virus. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose,
diarrhoea and dehydration and the disease kills 80-90%of infected cattle in just 7-10 days.
which began in 1994 with the launch of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme. The programme's success depended on widespread vaccination programmes and long-term monitoring of cattle and wildlife.
but that the FAO and the OIE expect to make an official declaration that rinderpest has been eradicated in 18 months.
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.
and how it influences immune function and susceptibility to diseases and allergies. Although many researchers now accept the hygiene hypothesis,
and how infection helps to protect against disease. This paper shows that the first days of life are very important,
a family of bacteria known for their ability to limit intestinal pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella species. By contrast,
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.
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,
Drug-maker Glaxosmithkline (GSK) was aware of cardiac risks associated with its diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) years before they became public
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.
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.
(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.
to treat multiply drug-resistant tuberculosis simply isn't a good idea. The reason the problem arises at all is
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.
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.
project leader on Q fever in goats for the Central Veterinary Institute (CVI) in Wageningen, The netherlands.
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.
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.
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
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 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 genes cause plant cells around the infection site to die, stopping the fungus from further infecting the plant.
The concern is that other wheat-growing countries will become vulnerable to infection. Eventually it will reach North america
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
and then became president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New york, before advising Barack Obama during his run for the presidency.
and it could cause cancer, nerve damage or fetal-development problems among workers and people living near fumigated fields.
Mosquito saliva may signal infection outbreaks: Nature Newsbaiting mosquito traps with cards soaked in honey,
such as chickens and pigs, for antibodies that signal the presence of pathogens. Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses.
which spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey. The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
and to calculate the infection rate in mosquitoes and assess the potential threat. Next, van den Hurk will compare the sensitivity of the approach with those of other standard methods,
including one used to treat thyroid cancer. But there was also good news for the beleaguered company:
on 25 may, after years of struggle, Genzyme won FDA approval to market Lumizyme (alglucosidase-Ã Â) for patients with late-onset Pompe disease, a muscle-weakening illness.
the California-based drug company's treatment for osteoporosis. The monoclonal antibody will be used to treat postmenopausal women who have increased an risk of fractures,
and men experiencing the side effects of prostate-cancer treatment. Last year, a US Food and Drug Administration committee recommended that the drug be approved for certain patients,
27 may News maker William Bishaithe tuberculosis expert will head South africa's Kwazulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV,
Pandemic over: The World health organization (WHO) announced on 10 august that the world is no longer experiencing an H1n1 influenza virus pandemic.
An emergency committee, which convened that day, said that countries were generally not reporting out-of-season outbreaks of the flu strain,
and that H1n1 would probably take on the behaviour of a seasonal flu virus. Margaret Chan,
director-general of THE WHO, said the pandemic had turned out better than feared because the virus hadn't mutated into a more lethal form
and drug resistance hadn't developed. We have been aided by pure good luck she said. Research Student gene-testing dropped:
500, the United nations this week warned of the spread of acute diarrhoea and waterborne diseases such as dysentery and cholera.
and can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer, affects about 3%of the world's population.
Currently, half of the patients with HCV are cured by a course of an immune-boosting protein and a general antiviral,
Cancer-gene testing ramps up: Nature Newsin an approach that many doctors and scientists hope will form the medical care of the future,
and a half been offering people with cancer a novel diagnostic test. Instead of assessing tumours for a single mutation that will indicate
whether a drug is likely to work or not, the hospital tests patients for some 150 mutations in more than a dozen cancer-causing genes,
with the results being used to guide novel treatments, clinical trials and basic research. This form of personalized medicine tailors treatments on the basis of the molecular and genetic characteristics of a patient's cancer cells
Plans were unveiled this week to deploy broad genetic testing for selected cancer patients in Britain's government-run health-care provider, the National Health Service (NHS.
who heads the programme for Cancer Research UK, the charity that is leading the effort. As the NHS treats millions of people each year,
000 NHS cancer patients over two years, beginning in early 2011. By contrast, Massachusetts General has tested about 1, 600 patients,
which will look for several dozen mutations in about a dozen genes linked to cancer, will be carried out on people with lung, breast, colorectal, prostate or ovarian cancers,
or metastatic melanoma, who are being treated at six NHS hospitals. Therapies that target specific tumour-causing mutations have already been approved,
or are on the verge of approval, for most of these conditions, says Peach. Testing a clinical sample for so many mutations at once is a challenge in itself.
Because most existing clinical tests probe individual genes the NHS programme is working with the Technology Strategy Board, a government agency that supports technology development,
By genotyping patients for a broad array of cancer-causing mutations, the new tests will make it easier to assign subjects to clinical trials,
a geneticist who helps lead the hospital's cancer testing programme. For example, its broad genetic test detects a mutation in a gene called BRAF that is already known to be mutated commonly in metastatic melanoma.
Finding such mutations in people with lung and colon cancer made it possible to put them in a trial of an experimental treatment targeting that gene,
Ellisen explains. Basic research should also benefit from the NHS programme, says Peach. Researchers will have access to consenting patients'genetic data as well as to medical records of the outcomes of the treatment.
says Andy Futreal, a cancer geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK,
Peach hopes that the first phase of the cancer programme will pave the way for expanding genetic testing to more patients and other conditions, such as diabetes, AIDS and even psychiatric disorders.
Cancer offers a good testing ground for personalized medicine, because numerous targeted therapies already exist, but there's no reason why this should be restricted to cancer,
says Peach. Fabrice Andrã, who runs a similar cancer diagnostic programme that has so far been offered to about 100 patients at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif
France, says the NHS programme could point the way to implementing personalized medicine across an entire population. It can really change the landscape of how molecular testing is being done for cancer,
he says. If they succeed, then it's going to be a major step forward.
GM maize offers windfall for conventional farms: Nature Newsgenetically modified (GM CROPS can save farmers using conventional seeds even more money than those using the transgenic varieties,
and iron to help to combat blindness and anaemia in rural areas. But the future of Uganda's biotechnology advances remains uncertain.
preventing contamination that could otherwise cast doubt on the analysis. Boaretto explains that she is on site
Some researchers have pinned the die off of native bumblebees on a fungal pathogen, Nosema bombi, which could have been introduced into the United states
The researchers suggested organizing efforts to determine the pathogen's transmission rate and identify any other diseases possibly infecting the bumblebees.
Dengue control The release of male mosquitoes genetically engineered to be sterile can control dengue fever by suppressing the population of the insects that carry the disease, scientists at Oxitec,
Events Cholera in Haiti The escalating cholera epidemic in Haiti had claimed more than 900 lives and caused close to 15,000 infections by the start of this week, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public health and Population.
The cholera strain is most closely related to one from south Asia the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, has said,
although it has pinpointed not the source. Business Genome market Complete Genomics, one of the handful of young US companies offering fast, cheap genome sequencing,
Growth factor makes a comeback in cystic fibrosis: Nature Newsthe stunted development common to cystic fibrosis begins at birth
and could be a direct consequence of a growth-hormone deficiency caused by the disease. In both people and pigs, newborns with cystic fibrosis tend to have abnormally low levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1),
according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
whether a patient with cystic fibrosis will have growth problems later in life, says David Stoltz, a physician in the Department of Internal medicine at the University of Iowa, Iowa City,
Cystic fibrosis is a deadly genetic disease: many patients don't live past the age of 30. Scientists identified the culprit gene some two decades ago (see'Human genetics:
which include scarring and mucus in the lungs and pancreas, diabetes, infertility, weak bones and impeded growth.
In the 1990s, researchers found that individuals with cystic fibrosis have low levels of IGF1 in their blood2,
and growth problems are caused not directly by the cystic fibrosis gene, but rather are by-products of malnutrition and lung inflammation.
The new study challenges that idea by showing signatures of underdevelopment even at birth. Stoltz and his collaborators took advantage of a pig model of cystic fibrosis that they debuted in 20084.
The model has been the subject of much excitement among researchers because unlike the mouse version, it develops symptoms similar to those seen in humans with the disease, such as infection and inflammation in the lungs.
Compared with controls, the team found that newborn mutant pigs had significantly less IGF1 in their blood at birth.
The researchers then screened for IGF1 in samples of dried blood from 23 human newborns with cystic fibrosis.
The cystic fibrosis gene CFTR codes for a protein called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator, which helps to move chloride ions across cell membranes.
that problems with insulin secretion associated with cystic fibrosis are stalled responsible for the IGF1 production in newborns insulin regulates the production of IGF1 in the liver in utero and throughout life.
In any case, the findings point to IGF1 as a potential therapy for cystic fibrosis particularly because regulators in the United states and Europe have approved already synthetic IGF1 for the treatment of severely short stature.
which IGF1 is being administered to adults with cystic fibrosis. But before rushing to treat infants with the hormone,
The factory treated the moths with just enough radiation to damage the chromosomes in their reproductive cells without causing injuries that would prevent their survival in the wild.
but from the scientific community's responses to them much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction.
is engaging in classic black sheep syndrome: members of a group may be annoyed by public criticism from outsiders,
He also examined a scientist just home from years in Myanmar who was told that he had lung cancer.
but harmless Asian worm that imitates lung cancer by triggering an immune reaction that produces tumour-like growths.
Sure enough, on closer inspection, the scientist has now been found to be cancer-free. It's one of the most valuable things
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