Myrna Watanabe
This person does not yet have a bio.Articles by Myrna Watanabe

Marshalling Bio-IT in the Name of Preparedness
Myrna Watanabe | | 1 min read
Discerning whether a biological threat comes from terrorism or an emerging infectious disease is one problem that researchers at the Courant Bioinformatics Group at New York University (NYU) want to solve. Bhubaneswar Mishra's multidisciplinary team has created a series of complex software programs that allow researchers who deal with intricate, real-world bioinformatics problems to develop their own algorithms. This allows them to use mathematics to solve real issues in biology.With one interac

Reading Eukaryotic Barcodes
Myrna Watanabe | | 1 min read
If cereal can be barcoded, so can Daphnia or a butterfly, or a hummingbird, or any eukaryotes. A worldwide consortium of research organizations, led by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), has begun a 2 1/2-year project with $669,000 in seed money from the Sloan Foundation, which they hope will lead to a relatively simple, fast, and cheap way of identifying eukaryotic organisms in the field.The point of the Barcode of Life Initiative, to be based at NMNH, is to sequence o

Mirror, Mirror in the Squid...
Myrna Watanabe | | 1 min read
Figure 1When postdoctoral researcher Wendy Crookes and colleagues at the University of Hawaii-Manoa searched for membrane proteins that allow the immune system of the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, to recognize the bioluminescent symbiotic bacteria, Vibrio fischeri, the unexpected turned up. Instead of finding membrane proteins, Crookes says they found proteins with similar characteristics that form hundreds of stacks of reflective platelets in the squid's light organ reflector.1 The

Smallpox Vaccination Plan Is 'Kaput'--Or Is It?
Myrna Watanabe | | 2 min read
Frontlines | Smallpox Vaccination Plan Is 'Kaput'--Or Is It? On Dec. 14, 2002, the Bush Administration announced its plan to vaccinate within a 30-day period about 400,000 to 500,000 healthcare workers and "other critical personnel" against smallpox.1 That plan fizzled amid concerns about possible serious adverse reactions and confusion about who could be vaccinated safely.2 By Oct. 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site indicated that only 38,542 people are v

Tracking the Truth About Bloodhounds
Myrna Watanabe | | 2 min read
Frontlines | Tracking the Truth About Bloodhounds It's common knowledge: Bloodhounds find their quarry. But until recently, the scientific literature has been nearly silent on it. Physiologist Lisa Harvey, of Valley Victor Community College in Victorville, Calif., who is married to a police officer, decided to test the bloodhound's renowned sense of smell when some of the police officers, who use these animals to track criminals, could not get the courts to accept evidence found by the dog

Standing Guard--Inside the Zoo
Myrna Watanabe | | 2 min read
Frontlines | Standing Guard--Inside the Zoo Erica P. Johnson With monkeypox a reality in the United States and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) perhaps only several sneezes away, it makes sense to use zoo animals, which are checked regularly for health problems, as sentinels to monitor public health threats from zoonotic (animal to human) organisms. After birds were found dead from West Nile virus (WNV) in New York zoos in 1999, the Zoo Network was established to monitor zoo animal

Studying SIV to Understand HIV
Myrna Watanabe | | 8 min read
Courtesy of Frank Kiernan PICTURE OF HEALTH? This 15-year-old mangabey at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta has been SIV-infected for at least 10 years. In the past, physicians who treated AIDS patients understood that this deadly disease was one of immune deficiency. Their patients were immunosuppressed, subject to opportunistic infections, and had odd cancers. Today, because of continuing research on the human and primate immune systems and their responses to retr

Then and Now: Smallpox Vaccinations
Myrna Watanabe | | 8 min read
Images: left courtesy of CDC; right courtesy of Dana Johnson/Vanderbilt University Medical Center In the mid-1950s, AIDS did not exist, chemotherapy was in its infancy, and people with genetic immune deficiencies died. At that time, smallpox was a genuine health threat and vaccinations were required, for some people once every three years. Everyone carried a World Health Organization (WHO)-approved vaccination card with their passports. Parents needed them when their children changed schools.

Smallpox Vaccination and (Unnecessary?) Caution
Myrna Watanabe | | 1 min read
Frontlines | Smallpox Vaccination and (Unnecessary?) Caution Courtesy of CDC People with eczema and immunosuppressed patients need to forego voluntary smallpox vaccination to avoid adverse effects or even death. Now, another group joins them: those with heart trouble. Recently, three deaths occurred due to myocardial infarction shortly after vaccination, and adverse cardiac events have occurred in six civilians and 12 military personnel. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

No Life Raft for HIV
Myrna Watanabe | | 2 min read
Frontlines | No Life Raft for HIV Courtesy of Pagsanjan.org The way to plot a story, goes the old saw, is to put people on a raft in the water and put a hole in it. A similar situation faced HIV-1 researcher Marilyn Resh, but with a twist: She had to knock off the occupants while preserving the raft. These rafts--so named because they are insoluble in nonionic detergent--are domains within a cell membrane. The HIV glycosaminoglycan (Gag) proteins occupy these rafts. To build a new HIV part

HIV/AIDS Trials in Developing Countries Must Clear High Hurdles
Myrna Watanabe | | 6 min read
Source: UNAIDS HIV prevalence in adults in Sub-Saharan Africa. Every day, about 14,000 people worldwide become infected with HIV, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). In developing countries, where therapies are not readily available, HIV infection is a death sentence. Of the 3 million deaths attributed to AIDS worldwide in 2001, 2.2 million occurred in Africa1; UNAIDS estimates that in 2002, 3.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were newly infected. I

Doctor, Heal Thyself--Literally
Myrna Watanabe | | 2 min read
Frontlines | Doctor, Heal Thyself--Literally Courtesy of IAVI Seth Berkley travels the world trying to arrange HIV vaccine clinical trials and stimulate HIV vaccine research. Much of the time, the only way to reach him is via his international cell phone number. But his traveling came to a screeching halt when he suffered a serious fracture of the fibula and torn ligaments in both legs while hiking in the Namibian desert last spring. The president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiati

Knocking Down Genes for Fun and Function
Myrna Watanabe | | 6 min read
Reprinted with permission from Nature PROTEIN SILENCING: Silencing of nuclear envelope proteins lamin A/C siRNA duplex (a,d) with GL2 luciferase siRNA duplex (nonspecific siRNA control) (b), and with buffer only (c). Staining with lamin A/C specific antibody (a,c); staining with NuMA-specific antibody (d). Data derived from the Science Watch/Hot Papers database and the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of t

Advancing Whole Genome Amplification
Myrna Watanabe | | 3 min read
Courtesy of Molecular Staging UNRAVELING MDA: Molecular Staging's MDA technology relies on a highly processive, strand-displacing DNA polymerase. As high-throughput genomics and its postgenomics successor, proteomics, are the technologies of choice for rapid screening of new pharmaceuticals, a company that establishes itself as a technology leader in both fields could be ahead of the pack: New Haven, Conn.-based Molecular Staging (MSI). In November 2002, MSI announced in rapid successi

Frontlines
Myrna Watanabe | | 3 min read
Frontlines Photo: Courtesy of Jokn Tooker Imagine the gall Humans don't usually select mates on the basis of their gall, but the male gall wasp does. Antistrophus rufus can search through a maze of dead plants and locate an inconspicuous gall that houses his intended bride, thanks to his ability to detect modified plant chemicals. Graduate student John Tooker and adviser Lawrence Hanks were studying wasp sympatric speciation, examining the chemical cues that gall wasps use to distinguish pla
Page 1 of 7 - 95 Total Items