DNA is known to scientists for more than one hundred years. Swiss biologist Friedrich Miescher and chemist (doctor of education) identify it first in 1868 in the blood-soaked bandages and swabs of bandages for wounded soldiers in Tübingen, and later, after 1870 in Basel - the sperm of salmon of which the first isolate pure DNA. He called the discovery of the substance nuklein and in 1874 managed to break nucleic of protein and acid acid in 1889 was named by his student Richard Altman "nucleic". DNA is recognized as the only carrier of heredity in 1944 as a result of an experiment made ​​by Oswald Avery and his colleagues Colin McCarthy MakLoyd and MacLynn. The structure of the DNA double helix was discovered in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University. For this discovery they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins in whose lab made ​​X-ray crystallographic analysis of DNA, suggested to Watson and Crick's idea of ​​its structure.

Viruses are not cells and cell structure, unlike bacteria, parasites, people and anything that is sure to take live. Note that life is first and viruses - the other. In fact, the majority of scientists consider viruses as a matter of the boundary between the living and the undead.

How is this possible? Is not that a mistake?
 
As is well known, living matter has the following immutable characteristics - ability to self-organize and self-reproduction. For this purpose, each living cell and in every living organism vital processes occur - feeding, respiration, excretion, etc., so to speak, keep cells and organisms alive. In viruses, however, things are very different.

Generally, viruses are particles (but not cells!), Representing a small amount of DNA or RNA wrapped in a protein, fewer carbohydrates and / or lipids (fatty substances). Proteins on the surface of the viral envelope, which can have various forms, recognize and provide host cell of virus in it. When the virus enters the cell, its DNA is integrated in this cell that it "forces" to form virus particles assemble spontaneously and leave the cell.

Viral just like living organisms, there are self-organization processes and reproduction. They, however, they are performed only in the host cell, and all other vital processes are absent altogether. By entering into the cell, viruses (which, incidentally, outside the cell are called virions) are completely dead particles. Only when entering it, they show some properties of living matter - samoorganizarane and reproduction. However, these qualities are not considered sufficient virus to be identified as living matter. For life is inherently inherent nutrition, respiration, excretion, etc. or summary speaking to a constant metabolism. Indeed, some organisms may greatly slow it down, but no body can stop it completely, and so called life.

Viruses do not have their own structures to carry out metabolism, and harness resources and structures of the host cell to carry out its goals. Therefore, they can not be called living. Apparently, however, they are not dead matter, since if it gets into the cell organization and show a high capacity for self-reproduction - something completely alien to the undead.
 
An interesting question is how the virus originated. It is believed that early in the evolution of the first primitive cells, viruses were parts of cells that are separate and distinct self-replicating particles. This theory is supported by the astonishing ease with which viruses penetrate into the cell and then subject yourself - it is placed entirely at their disposal, accepting them as part of ourselves.

The biggest breakthrough in understanding the genetics of cancer before. So Iyls Ross, professor of cancer genetics at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, described the results of an international effort of more than 1,000 scientists, presented in late Wednesday.

Their study - the largest ever study of "faults" of DNA that promote the development of cancer - revealed a series of genetic markers with which can identify people most likely to develop these conditions. In this case for three of the most encountered its forms - prostate, breast and ovarian.

According to London's "Guardian" doctors have said that they can in five years with a simple saliva test based markers make for each risk profile and create a foundation for individual monitoring. For people with an increased risk of developing cancer would go more often reviewing and possibly developing cancer will be detected at an early stage, when there is a much greater chance of prolonging life.

Test based on genetic markers can identify men who are 50% likely to become ill from prostate cancer. This would not only allow the UK have called for a national program. screening of men, it will stop the practice because of inaccurate blood tests a quarter of people with this diagnosis are treated, there was no need.

To identify genetic markers for prostate cancer, the researchers compared the DNA data of 25,000 patients with the disease with the same number of healthy men. So were discovered 23 new "defect" in the DNA, increasing the risk of disease, 16 were identified as "culprits" to reach the most aggressive form. In practice, few men wear markers for prostate cancer, but 1% of them have DNA "defects" that increase the risk of developing it 5 times.

The same procedure has found 49 new DNA "defect" associated with the risk of developing breast cancer.

The third part of the project included the 130 institutes worldwide to compare DNA profiles of women with ovarian cancer with this healthy. This established eight new sections of DNA associated with increased risk of disease.

Professor Iyls believe that a simple test in the GP's office soon enough every patient to have a personal account of the risk of these diseases. Physicians can improve performance by adding factors of lifestyle specific person - the risk of breast cancer, for example, alcohol increases and decreases from birth and breastfeeding.

The big problem started after that - experts disagree on what age should these tests, complement it with ultrasound, magnetic rezonas and biopsies and what kind therapy to apply.

The result of the research was published in Nature Genetics and several other scientific journals.

Dear Clients, 

We're happy to announce another one of our great promos, this time the products are different cell culture media:

Antidepressant duloxetine effectively treat peripheral neuropathy induced by chemotherapy showed a phase III clinical study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

According to Ellen Smith of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, after 5 weeks of treatment, patients receiving duloxetine experienced a significant reduction in morbidity compared with placebo.

Peripheral neuropathy occurs in 20-40% of patients treated with neurotoxic chemotherapy. Such fees are (paclitaxel, docetaxel, etc.)., Vinca alkaloids (vincristine, vinblastine) and platinum compounds (cisplatin, oxaliplatin, etc.).. The condition can persist for years after treatment and greatly reduced quality of life.

Previous studies have shown that inhiborite reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine (class of antidepressants) have the potential to influence the state. Duloxetine also is known to reduce morbidity and diabetic neuropathy.

In order to clarify the properties of duloxetine, the researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 220 patients with stage I or greater sensory neuropathy induced by anti-cancer therapy. All participants were over the age of 25 and assessed their painful 10-ball standard scale, three months after the completion of a chemotherapy course. Half the patients received duloxetine and half - placebo, allocation is done randomly. The soreness was re-assessed after the study.

The end result of the study shows that 5-week treatment with duloxetine significantly reduces morbidity in peripheral neuropathy. This, in turn, enhances the quality of life and employability of patients. The benefits of duloxetine seem greatest for people who have completed chemotherapy with platinum compounds.

The most common side effects of duloxetine documented during the study were fatigue, insomnia and nausea.
 
Although good design of the study does not include follow-up of patients for an extended period, so it is impossible to tell how lasting are the effects of duloxetine in this indication.

Common laboratory research practice utilizes PCR to validate transgenic mouse lines. Validation of these lines typically involve multiple primer sets with various annealing temperatures leading to a very tedious and time consuming process. To allow researchers the opportunity to evaluate multiple transgenes within one PCR reaction, Gentaur offers the MultiGene OptiMax. Traditional thermal cyclers utilize a Peltier microchip block that is enabled for either homogeneous or gradient temperature mode. Additionally, with a traditional thermal cycler, a user can only utilize one annealing temperature per experiment. The new Gentaur MultiGene OptiMax has six distinct Peltier microchip elements that allow users to select up to six different annealing temperatures. This allows for the possibility to evaluate multiple genes in one experiment.

• We now have a faster machine.
• Brand new better than gradient function.
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• Custom block optimisation
• Brand new PC Viewer

For more details:

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SPECIAL OFFER UNTIL THE END OF 2013

Today we officially introduce XerumFree™ XF205.

After more then a year of development and testing internally and externally we kicked off production.

The 5 times concentrated XF205 will bring you nothing but advantages. Both technically and commercially.  

XerumFree™ XF205 will give you:

Results
Being concentrated, adding XF205 has a minimum impact on a basal medium. If you completely or partially (for autocrine growth) change the medium there will be only  little disruption of the concentration. 

Ease of use
In most cases 2% directly added to your ready basal medium will be sufficient, lower or higher amounts for special applications are no problem. Stored cold means ready to use; no more hassle to thaw and test. Just use it straight from the bottle.

Consistency 
Only fully defined media give predictable results: supplements with animal derived components and e.g. hydrolisates are not consistent. There is no need for batch testing; every bottle will be exactly the same. 

Cost efficiency 
Not only the savings on storage, testing and logistics count but using XerumFree™ means that experiments with expensive reagents or ingredients will not fail due to the medium. Repeatable results in your own or other facility are saving valuable time and budget. The extreme low protein content makes downstream processing cheaper.

Freedom to operate
No growth factors, no hormones, no animal components. Adding XF205 to a basal medium gives you a platform that is fully defined and the possibility to develop your application on top. Repeatable, safe and robust. 

FDA-ready 
Any application that will have to pass the regulatory bodies one day  (e.g. the FDA) benefits from the defined composition. The risks of presence of viruses or TSE is eliminated completely as no single component is of animal origin, and we certify that.

Quality
GMP produced is the best guarantee for quality. Produced in the Netherlands in a production facility authorized by the ministry of Health we can assure quality from bottle to bottle and from lot to lot.

Universal
XerumFree™ can be used with most cell lines, primary cells and stem cells. Making it the best choice to streamline cell culture routines and at the same time reducing the need for special media.

Strategic choice
The coming years are predicted to make FBS scarce, changing to XerumFree™ is a strategic choice for availability in the future.

Weather it is to replace FBS or any other undefined supplement:
   
XerumFree™ XF205 simply makes fully defined easy.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced that it would invest $ 100 million in a new initiative which aims to highlight how the brain works, and help treat diseases such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's, the BBC reported. The "Human Genome" is transformed genetics. The same should be done with the knowledge of the human brain, Obama said in a speech at the White House.  

"This is a great mystery waiting to be solved. BRAIN Initiative will give scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain to better understand how we think, learn and remember. And this knowledge will be transformation", said Obama.

The project is called Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN). Investment of 100 million dollars will be used to develop new technologies to explore how billions individual cells in the brain interact. Researchers will focus on how the brain record, store and process information, and will explore the relationship between brain function and behavior. Ethics Committee will supervise the research. 

Obama said that investment in science is justified because it will help create jobs and boost the economy. In his words, basic research has been the engine of growth. The announcement of the funding comes after the recent news of the launch of a major European project in the field of neuroscience. Around 80 European research institutions, along with several non-EU countries will participate in the Human Brain Project, costing more than € 1 billion. The project will use the supercomputer models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual human brain.

By investigating an African patient’s HIV infection, researchers have traced the development of an antibody that is effective at neutralizing many strains of HIV, according to a study published today (April 3) in Nature. The researchers—who identified the original HIV variant as well as the broadly neutralizing antibody, and pieced together their evolution over the course of infection—hope that a vaccine mimicking this process could encourage the development of such effective HIV-fighting antibodies.

The new research provides “really in-depth information on how a particular type of broadly neutralizing antibody emerges over the course of a natural HIV infection,” said Leonidas Stamatatos, an immunologist at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute who did not participate in the study.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies—able to block many strains of HIV from binding target cells—are notoriously rare: only about 20 percent of HIV-positive people ever generate such antibodies. One of the most attractive neutralizing targets is the HIV envelope protein (Env) that binds T cells, which is present on every variant of HIV. But Env is covered in sugar molecules that often mimic host structures, making it hard for the immune system to distinguish virus from self. In order to avoid an adverse autoimmune reaction, the body produces few B cells whose antibodies can recognize these common structures. One approach to developing an effective HIV vaccine is to stimulate these rare B cells, but because Env’s sequence can vary widely between HIV strains, researchers didn’t know much about the right Env variant for the job.

In order to find an Env that could stimulate an antibody with broadly neutralizing potential, Barton Haynes at Duke University and researchers at the Center for HIV-AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) set up eight acute infection clinics in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and one in North Carolina, where they could watch antibody and virus develop within weeks of infection.

Haynes and his team found one patient who developed a broadly neutralizing antibody within 3 years of infection. The antibody, dubbed CH103, could block infection of target cells by 55 percent of the HIV virus particles they tested, which expressed a total of 196 different types of Env. Because the team had blood samples from the patient starting 4 weeks after infection, they could isolate the original antibody, CH103’s predecessor, as well as determine the sequence of the original Env protein that first spurred the antibody’s production.

As HIV proteins accrue mutations during an infection, antibodies evolve to increase specificity and adapt to changing targets. Finding the antibody that bound the original Env allowed researchers to identify which mutations conferred broadly neutralizing activity to CH103 and identify mutations in Env that could have contributed to CH103’s development. Haynes and his colleagues hope to recreate the evolution of CH103-like antibodies using the right combination of Env variants in a vaccine.

“The study provides important information on how one might design a rational vaccination strategy,”Dennis Burton, an immunologist at The Scripps Research Institute who did not participate in the study, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “[It’s] a significant leap.”

An effective vaccine will need to elicit more than one type of antibody to block HIV infection, so Haynes and his team are also examining the evolution of broadly neutralizing antibodies and their corresponding HIV proteins in other patients, as well.

Indeed, the bulk of the work is just beginning, said Stamatatos, who noted that the possible combinations of Env “are nearly infinite.” It’s also not clear yet whether the Env mutants should be given together, or provided sequentially in a fashion more akin to a natural infection. Haynes and his colleagues are currently beginning to test both strategies with different Env combinations in macaques and mice engineered to express human antibodies.

H.-X. Liao et al., “Co-evolution of a broadly neutralizing HIV-1 antibody and founder virus,”Nature, doi:10.1038/nature12053, 2013.

On 3 April 2013, the China Health and Family Planning Commission notified WHO of an additional four cases of human infection with influenza A(H7N9). The four patients are from Jiangsu province in eastern China. There is no link between the cases.

To date, the total number of confirmed cases of human infection with influenza A(H7N9) virus in China is seven. Three confirmed cases were reported earlier from Shanghai and Anhui provinces, including two deaths.The patients include a 45-year-old woman with illness onset on 19 March 2013; a 48-year-old woman with illness onset on 19 March 2013; an 83-year-old man with illness onset on 20 March 2013; and a 32-year-old woman with illness onset on 21 March 2013. All of these patients are in a critical condition.

More than 160 close contacts of these four cases in Jiangsu province are being closely monitored. Thus far, none of them have developed any symptoms of illness. Retrospective investigation is ongoing into two contacts of one of the cases reported earlier from Shanghai. Both of these contacts developed symptoms of illness; one died and the other recovered. No laboratory confirmation is available for these two contacts.

The Chinese government is actively investigating this event and has heightened disease surveillance for early detection, diagnosis and treatment. Infection prevention and control has been strengthened in health-care settings. Communication efforts between human and animal health and industry sectors have increased. The government has advised the population to maintain good personal hygiene, including frequent handwashing and avoiding direct contact with sick or dead animals.

WHO is in contact with national authorities and is following the event closely. The WHO-coordinated international response is also focusing on work with WHO Collaborating Centres for Reference and Research on Influenza and other partners to ensure that information is available and that materials are developed for diagnosis and treatment and vaccine development. No vaccine is currently available for this subtype of the influenza virus. Preliminary test results provided by the WHO Collaborating Centre in China suggest that the virus is susceptible to the neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir and zanamivir).

At this time there is no evidence of ongoing human-to-human transmission.

WHO does not advise special screening at points of entry with regard to this event, nor does it recommend that any travel or trade restrictions be applied.

For additional information, here is a full view of Gentaur's AIV-related products: 

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