Herpes viruses, though not life-threatening, are usually considered to be embarrassing and annoying. Researchers at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, however, are using the virus to potentially fight breast cancer, which, according to the American Cancer Society, is the most common cancer among women.
In fact, excluding cancers of the skin, breast cancer accounts for nearly one in three cancers diagnosed in U.S. women.
“Our immune systems are engineered to fight cancer,” said Dr. Konstantin “Gus” Kousoulas, professor of virology in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences and director of the Division of Biotechnology & Molecular Medicine. “The human body’s T-cells belong to a group of white blood cells and play a central role in immunity. However, cancer cells cause the T-cells to essentially fall asleep.
“The tumor emits signals to down-regulate the T-cells. Our herpes virus can be engineered to awaken those cells and modulate the immune system so that it recognizes the tumor cells and destroys them.”
The herpes virus was engineered to selectively replicate in cancer cells; it does not affect normal cells.
“Herpes virus replicate cells on their own,” said Kousoulas. “Cold sores are caused when the herpes virus replicates and kills normal cells; the cold sore is made up of the dead cells. Our herpes virus has been engineered to only replicate and destroy cancer cells, thus killing the tumor. Patients would not contract the herpes virus itself.”
Recently Stuefer and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that clover plants warn each other via the network links if enemies are nearby. If one of the plants is attacked by caterpillars, the other members of the network are warned via an internal signal. Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars.
Smithsonian researchers are among the leaders in a worldwide effort to revolutionize the way scientists identify species in the laboratory and in the field with a technique called DNA barcoding. Similar to the barcode that identifies an item at the grocery store, a DNA barcode is used to identify and distinguish biological species.
Those recording synapses, bent back onto themselves – brain piggy-backing and reading itself as it read the world – exploded into hopes and dreams, memories more elaborate than the experience that chiseled them, theories of other mind, invented places as real and detailed as anything material, themselves matter, microscopic electro-etched worlds within the world, a shape for every shape out there, with infinite shapes left over: all dimensions springing from this thing the universe floats in. But never hot or cold, solid or soft, left or right, high or low, but only the image, the store. Only the play of likeness cut by chemical cascades, always undoing the state that did the storing. Semaphores at night, cobbling up even the cliff they signaled from.”
Scientists may have discovered the cause of a devastating syndrome in honeybees that has destroyed 50% to 90% of hives in the USA — posing enormous problems for crops that depend on them to reproduce.
Researchers from the University of Darmstadt in Germany and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry reported this week on a family of mites that have forsaken asexual reproduction and re-evolved to reproduce sexually. Reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the revival of a complex trait such as sexual reproduction after it had been dormant for millions of years raises interesting questions about our understanding of evolutionary biology.