NextBio announced that a free version of its life science search engine has been made available to the general public. Using NextBio, any researcher or clinician can search the world’s public life sciences data and literature - over 10,000 experiments, 16 million articles, and literally billions of data points. Moreover, users can import their own experimental data into the NextBio search engine, share it with the community, and collaborate with others.

Popularity: 5% [?]

One of the biggest obstacles to treating patients with HIV has been resistant reservoirs of highly infectious virus.  Researchers at Brigham Young University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with break through research, have discovered the nature of one of these reservoirs, follicular dentritic cells (FDCs) , that harbor virus during drug trreatment.   Read the details of their discoveries in the June issue of Journal of Virology.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Dr. Shirley E. Poduslo, neuroscientist in the Medical College of Georgia Schools of Medicine, has published research on two large families in Georgia that reveals a genetic basis for late onset Alzheimer’s Disease.   The SNP pattern was found in 9 out of 10 affected family members, and in 36 % of 200 other victims of late onset Alzheimer’s in the Alzheimer’s DNA bank.   The variation was found in the TRPC4AP gene, a gene that is not well studied and thought to be involved in calcium regulation.   Dr. Poduslo will be pursuing the specifics of the mutation in collaboration with the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida.  Her current research will be found in the American Journal of Medical Genetics online advance publications. 

Popularity: 6% [?]

The FDA has released a document in an attempt to harmonise pharmacogenomic definitions and sample coding guidance.  It is  the FDA’s approach to integrating the international disciplines of pharmacogenomics and pharmacogentics and will help establish a global standard in drug development.   In addition the guideline gives definitions and information regarding aspects covered by the definitions itself and notes that certain principles discussed in the document may also be applicable to related disciplines, such as proteomics and metabolomics.

From the guidance, the FDA defines a genomic biomarker as a measurable DNA or RNA characteristic that is an indicator of normal biologic, pathogenic processes, a response to therapeutic or other interventions.  

Pharmacogenomics is defined as the study of variations of DNA and RNA characteristics as related to drug response.  Pharmacogenetics is defined as the study of variations in DNA sequence as related to drug response.

The new document, titled E15 Definitions for Genomic Biomarkers, Pharmacogenomics, Pharmacogenetics, Genomic Data and Sample Coding Categories, will be updated as necessary with new scientific knowledge.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Special Seminar Series

Biodiversity Loss and the Rise of Zoonotic Pathogens

Wednesday May 14, 2008

Welch Hall Level 2 Refreshments 3:45 p.m. Lecture 4 p.m.

Recommended Review Article:

Ostfeld, R. and F.  Keesing.  2000.  The function of biodiversity in the ecology of vector-borne zoonotic diseases.  Canadian Journal of Zoology - Revue Canadienne de Zoologie 78(12):2061-2078

Related Articles:

Dobson, Andy et al. 2006. Sacred cows and sympathetic squirrels: the importance of biological diversity to human health. PLoS Medicine3(6):e231

Ostfeld, Richard and K. LoGiudice. 2003. Community disassembly, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of an ecosystem service. Ecology 84(6):1421-1427

LoGiudice, K.; Ostfeld, R.; Schmidt, K. A. et al. 2003. The ecology of infectious disease: effects of host diversity and community composition on Lyme disease risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100(2):567-571

Epstein, P.R. 2002. Biodiversity, climate change, and emerging infectious diseases. Conservation Medicine 2002:27-39

Pongsiri, M. J. and J. Roman. 2007. Examining the links between biodiviersity and human health: an interdisciplinary research initiative at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ecohealth 4(1):82-85
 

Popularity: 16% [?]

Insight Lectures Series

On the Fractal Geometry of Roughness in Nature and Culture

Tuesday May 13 Abby Dining Room 5:30 p.m.

Recommended Reading:

Mandelbrot, Benoit B.  The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Henry Holt & Co., Inc. 1982. ISBN-13: 9780716711865 Markus Library QA 614.86 M2711 1982

Savoy, Eugene.  Theory of Interaction: the simplest explanation of everything. Geones Books. 2002. ISBN-13: 9789549103458

Halley, J. D. and D. A. Winkler.  2008.  Critical-like self-organization and natural selection: two facets of a single evoltuionary process? Biosystems 92(2):148-158

Batty, M. 2008.  The size, scale and shape of cities.  Science  319(5864):769-771

Lan, C.H.; Lan, K, T.; and C.Y. Hsui. 2008.  Application of fractals: create an artificial habitat with seveal small strategy in marine environment. Ecological Engineering32(1):44-51

Su, Z. Y. and T. Wu. 2007.  Music walk, fractal geometry in music. Physica A 380(1-2):418-428

Chaui-Berlinck, J. G.   2006.  A critical understanding of the fractal model of metabolic scaling. Journal of Experimental Biology 209(16):3045-3054

Konvalina, J. et al. 2006.  Combinatorial fractal geometry with a biological application.  Fractals 14(2):133-142

Denny, M.W. et al. 2004.  Quantifying scale in ecology: lessons from a wave-swept shore Ecological Monographs 74(3):513-532

Kiselev, V. G.; Hahn, K.R. and D. P. Auer.  2003.  Is the brain cortex a fractal? NeuroImage 20(3):1765-1774

Huisman, J. and F. j. Weissing. 2001. Fundamental unpredictability in multispecies competition. American Naturalist 157(5):488-494

Popularity: 17% [?]

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge and the University of Bristol have just completed sequencing the emerging drug resistant superbug, Steno, with the hope that it will lead more swiftly to effective treatment, or containment of the spread of this infectious agent.  The work is published in Genome Biology.  Pan-resistant microbes such as Steno are emerging with resistance to all available antibiotics.   Steno   (Stenotrophomonas maltophilia) infections are more rare than MRSA, and are hospital acquired, where they are known to lurk in biofilms in moist micro-environments and enter the body through catheters and ventilation tubes.  

Dr. Lisa Crossman, first author of this latest research, co-authored earlier research results July 2007 in  the Journal of Bacteriology. 

Popularity: 16% [?]

Proteases, the Extracellular Matrix and Cell Death: lessons from the overexcited brain

Monday, April 28, 2008 Welch Hall (2nd floor)

3:45 pm. Refreshments 4:00 p.m. Lecture

Recommended Review Article:

Kaul M, Lipton SA. (2005) Experimental and potential future therapeutic approaches for HIV-1 associated dementia targeting receptors for chemokines, glutamate and erythropoietin. Neurotoxicity Research 276(20): 16593-16596

Related Articles:

Lee, S.R.; Lok, J.; Rosell, A. et al. (2007) Reduction of hippocampal cell death and proteolytic responses in tissue plasminogen activator knockout mice after transient global cerebral ischemia. Neuroscience 150(1): 50-57

Chu K, Lee ST, Sinn DI, et al. (2007) Pharmacological induction of ischemic tolerance by glutamate transporter-1 (EAAT2) upregulation. Stroke 38(1):177-182

Penkowa M, Florit S, Giralt M, et al. (2005) Metallothionein reduces central nervous system inflammation, neuro degeneration, and cell death following kainic acid-induced epileptic seizures Journal of Neuroscience Research 79(4):522-534

Kaur J, Zhao ZG, Klein GM, et al. (2004) The neurotoxicity of tissue plasminogen activator? Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 24(9): 945-963

Finlay M, Clements JM, et al. (2004) Reduction of excitotoxicity and associated leukocyte recruitment by a broad-spectrum matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor Journal of Neurochemistry  89(6): 1378-1386

Swanson, R. A.; Ying, W.; Kaupinnen, T.M. (2004) Astrocyte influences on ischemic neuronal death Current Molecular Medicine 4(2):193-205

Popularity: 34% [?]

Spring Open House

April 24, 2008

10 a.m. - 2 p.m.     Free coffee and refreshments

Welch Hall - Second Floor

On April 24, 2008 Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, will present its two electronic products: ScienceDirect and Scopus.

ScienceDirect, full text platform, offers over a quarter of the world’s STM (Science, Technical, and Medical) articles integrated with a growing range of authoritative books, including reference works, handbooks and book series .

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. In addition, Scopus offers seamless linking to full-text articles and other library resources.

Markus Library will also re-introduce our new SFX retrieval tool. No more dead ends when searching library databases for articles!  Just push the red SFX button and see all your options for accesing the information.

Save the day and come to the Markus Library to find out how fast, easy, and effective literature research can be. We will provide free coffee and refreshments.

Popularity: 50% [?]

C. elegans in an Evolutionary Context

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Welch Hall (2nd Floor)

3:45 pm Refreshments      4:00 pm Lecture

Recommended Review Article:

Braendle, C.; Millioz, J.; and Marie-Anne Felix. (2008)  Mechanisms and evolution of environmental reseponses in Caenorhabditis elegans. Current topics in Developmental Biology (2008):171-207

Related Articles:

Kiontke,K.; Barriere, A.; Kolotuev, I. et al.   (2007)  Trends, stasis, and drift in the evolution of nematode vulva development. .Current Biology  17:1925-1937

Cutter, A. D.; Felix, M.A.; Barriere, A. et al.   (2006)  Patterns of nucleiotide polumorphism distinguish temperate and tropical wild isolates of Caenorhabditis briggsae. Genetics  173(4):2021-2031

Felix, M.A. and A. Barriere. (2005)  Evolvability of cell specification mechanisms. Journal of Experimental Biology  304B(6):536-547

Felix, M.A.  (2004) Developmental biology of nematodes - what we learn from Caenorhabditis elegans.  Nematogy: advances and perspectives 1:71-174

Delattre, M. and Marie-Anne Felix.  (2001)  Microevolutionary studies in nematodes: a beginning.  Bioessays  23(9):807-819

Popularity: 52% [?]