In a study published in Nature Biotechnology, scientists discover that based on the genome analysis of Tricoderma reesei, the fungus has the genes required to break down plant cell walls, to simple sugars, indicating its possible utility in biofuel production.

The researchers believe that T. reesei's genome includes "clusters" of enzyme-producing genes, a strategy that may account for the organism's efficiency at breaking down cellulose.

On an industrial scale, T. reesei could be employed to secrete enzymes that can be purified and added into an aqueous mixture of cellulose pulp and other materials to produce sugar. The sugar can then be fermented by yeast to produce ethanol.

Photo: Microscope image of T. reesei hyphae with vesicle membranes stained red and cell wall chitin in blue. Credit: Mari Valkonen, VTT Finland. Source: LANL

A new mucosal vaccine against anthrax with a new formulation and mode of delivery (via a nose spray) has been developed.

"Our study found that a mucosal delivery system promises to add a second layer of immune protection against anthrax by priming the disease-fighting cells in mucous membranes lining the nose along with those in the blood, and with just three doses," said Mingtao Zeng, Ph.D., assistant professor within Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and a study author along with Qingfu Xu, also at the medical center. "That, along with the addition of newly precision-designed vaccine components, should represent important steps in the race to provide troops with stronger protection in a vaccine that is easier to use."

The study, testing its efficacy in mice, has been published in the Clinical and Vaccine Immunology journal. More details about the vaccine here. Photo: Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red). Source: Wikipedia, Credit: Arthur Friedlander

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Canada's McGill University has brought us the world's first fully automated anesthesia system: McSleepy.

McSleepy" assists the anesthesiologist in the same way an automatic transmission assists people when driving. As such, anesthesiologists can focus more on other aspects of direct patient care. An additional feature is that the system can communicate with personal digital assistants (PDAs), making distant monitoring and anesthetic control possible. In addition, this technology can be easily incorporated into modern medical teaching programs such as simulation centers and web-based learning platforms.

The said system - nicknamed McSleepy - administers drugs for general anesthesia and monitors their separate effects completely automatically, without manual intervention.

"We have been working on closed-loop systems, where drugs are administered, their effects continuously monitored, and the doses are adjusted accordingly, for the last five years," said Dr. Thomas M. Hemmerling of McGill's Department of Anesthesia and the Montreal General Hospital, who heads ITAG (Intelligent Technology in Anesthesia research group), a team of anesthesiologists, biomedical scientists and engineers.

"Think of "McSleepy" as a sort of humanoid anesthesiologist that thinks like an anesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behavior, even recognizing monitoring malfunction."

This system is expected to be available for commercial purposes within the next five years.

Find more details from McGill University.

Scientists have identified a gene known as Jund, which controls the activity of a group of cells thought to be responsible for potentially severe inflammation of the kidney. This discovery could offer a route for tackling the auto-immune destruction of kidney tissue which can occur in lupus patients, subsequently causing renal failure.

Jund regulates the activity of macrophages, cells which help us fight infection by eating up cellular debris and pathogens, and stimulating immune cells. The new research showed that when these cells are overactive, they can destroy healthy kidney tissue.

Professor Aitman, who led the Medical Research Council team, said: "We are hoping that this discovery will allow us to find a new and effective way of treating this potentially fatal form of kidney failure. By reducing the activity of the Jund gene, we were able to reduce activity of inflammatory cells that can become overactive in certain diseases of the kidney. Such a therapy would be of obvious benefit to patients suffering from auto-immune diseases such as lupus. This would allow them to avoid dialysis and maintain their quality of life."

The study has been published in Nature Genetics.

In the new issue of Cell Transplantation a study demonstrated the potentials of menstrual blood as a source of stromal stem cells with the ability to differentiate into a variety of cell lineages.

Tests showed that MenSCs could differentiate into adipogenic, chondrogenic, osteogenic, ectodermal, mesodermal, cardiogenic, and neural cell lineages. According to Patel, the sample MenSCs expanded rapidly and maintained greater than 50 percent of their telomerase activity when compared to human embryonic stem cells and better than bone marrow-derived stem cells. "Studies have demonstrated that MenSCs are easily expandable to clinical relevance and express multipotent markers at both the molecular and cellular level," concluded Patel.

Researchers emphasized the importance of the abundance and plasticity of MenSCs. Based on the results of their studies, they noted the potential for MenSCs in regenerative transplantation therapies for many different organs and tissues. "The need for regenerative therapies using cells with the ability to engraft and differentiate is vast," said Patel.

Source

This week's issue of Nature features the draft genome of the transgenic 'SunUp' Papaya, the first commercial virus-resistant transgenic fruit tree to be sequenced. From Nature News:

The papaya genome will be of interest to scientists interested in the dietary benefits of different fruits, the evolution of fruiting trees, and other basic questions of biology. Data from the genome will also help in designing field-based assays to differentiate hermaphroditic plants from female ones - a task that currently takes farmers three to four months of cultivation to achieve. Farmers prefer the hermaphroditic plants for easier pollination.

In addition to insights regarding its evolutionary path, the genome analysis also revealed that papaya has fewer functional genes than any other flowering plant already sequenced, but contains more genes for enzymes involved in cell-wall expansion, starch production and for production of volatile compounds.

Read more from the University of Illinois report.