By Megan Scudellari BRAIN, INTERRUPTED It affects thousands per day, yet has no treatment, and receives only a small fraction of the funding allocated to much less common diseases. Now, researchers studying traumatic brain injury are making a last-ditch effort to transform the field. MedicalRF.com On a sunny Friday, postdoc Suzanne McKenna pulled into a left turn lane in Cary, NC, and stopped, waiting for the light to change. It was time to wrap up a few err

In an unexpected twist, a new study casts a classical protein in a surprising new role: Pax6, a well-recognized factor in brain and eye development in mice, appears to play a very different and crucial part in the development of the human brain. Mature neurons (red) and glial cells (green) derived from hESCs Image courtesy of Su-Chun Zhang The research, reported this week in linkurl:Cell Stem Cell,;http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/ provides "exciting new insights into the fundamental process

Antibodies are the main ingredient in a wide range of biopharmaceuticals, but making them is no picnic. Now, chemists have good evidence there may be an easier way: plastic. Currently, in order to manufacture antibodies, mice (or other live animals) are injected with a foreign antigen over several weeks, stimulating B cells in the bloodstream to produce antibodies. Those B cells must then be harvested from the mouse's spleen and transferred to a bioreactor where they are often fused with anothe

The vertebrate transition from fin to limb is one of the juiciest mysteries in evolutionary biology, and this week, scientists may have identified another clue to the puzzle. Published online today (June 23) at linkurl:Nature,;http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html a team of researchers describe two previously unknown proteins essential to fin development in bony fishes -- the loss of which may have been a key step in the evolution of fins to limbs during tetrapod development. "It's a very exc

Animal physiologist Richard Browning stood at the edge of the water, shocked. On Saturday night, May 1st, forecasters predicted the Cumberland River, running along the edge of linkurl:Browning's research farm;http://faculty.tnstate.edu/rbrowning/ at Tennessee State University in Nashville, would crest at only 35 feet (around 10 meters) on Sunday evening -- high, but not high enough to damage the farm. But when he and his team arrived Sunday morning, the river had risen to 38 feet. Half the farm

University of California scientists are speaking out in favor of UC's threat to boycott Nature Publishing Group over a proposed 400 percent hike in licensing fees. "Nature is making a very unfortunate move here," said linkurl:Alex Bell,;http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/atbgrp/research.html a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. "Multiple-fold increases are unjustified. I think it's bordering on exploitation." In a letter mass e-mailed to faculty earlier thi

Today, more than a century after a German-Polish botanist first described the process of fertilization in flowering plants, scientists have identified an elusive molecular signal critical to that process. The finding, published this week in linkurl:PLoS Biology,;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000388 sheds light on the evolution of plant fertilization mechanisms and could lead to strategies to overcome species-specific barriers for crossbreeding crops.

Forget baking soda volcanoes and lima beans in paper towels. The fourteen high school students at the recent BIO International Convention in Chicago were more interested in how to differentiate stem cells into pancreatic endoderm, which factors inhibit cell proliferation in glioblastomas, and why an antioxidant has anti-angiogenic effects on epithelial ovarian cancer. "We enjoy it," smiles Raina Jain of Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the first-place winner of this year's linku

After a 15-year marathon, researchers have created the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome.

Scientists are taking the debate over how to address neglected tropical diseases to the pages of PLoS Medicine, with one camp arguing in favor of more drug development, and another pushing for more funding and research on public health strategies such as sanitation and education. In 2005, researchers coined the term "neglected tropical diseases" to refer to thirteen diseases primarily occurring in rural, poor areas that have been largely ignored by policymakers and public health officials. Thes

At first, the YouTube videos seemed hilarious -- young people smoking Salvia divinorum, laughing uncontrollably, falling over furniture. But the more Jason Daniel, a fourth-year PhD candidate in public health at San Diego State University, watched, the more it was simply disconcerting -- people lying on the ground, losing control of their limbs, convulsing. "They didn't look like they were having a terribly good time," says Daniel. After weeks of watching YouTube videos three to four hours per

As stimulus funds run out and other federal programs take priority over science research and development, academic research programs will soon feel the squeeze, says linkurl:Diane Auer Jones,;http://www.washcampus.edu/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=Diane%20Auer%20Jones&category=Staff%20List CEO of the Washington Campus, a non-profit business leadership and education organization, and former assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the US Department of Education. But the culling of academic