Monday, September 7, 2009

“3 Genetic Variants Are Found to Be Linked to Alzheimer’s - Gainesville Sun” plus 4 more

“3 Genetic Variants Are Found to Be Linked to Alzheimer’s - Gainesville Sun” plus 4 more

3 Genetic Variants Are Found to Be Linked to Alzheimer’s - Gainesville Sun

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 05:16 AM PDT

One of the teams, led by Julie Williams of Cardiff University in Wales, scanned the genomes of about 19,000 patients, the largest study so far conducted on Alzheimer's, and turned up two variants that have a statistically significant association with the disease. A second study, led by Philippe Amouyel of the University of Lille in France, also found two variants, one of which is the same as detected by the Cardiff team.

The fact that two studies could agree on at least one gene is an advance. More than 550 genes have been proposed in various small-scale studies as the cause of Alzheimer's, but all have failed the test of replication by others, Dr. Amouyel said.

The three new variants have been detected by using much larger numbers of patients and by employing the new technique known as a genome-wide association study, in which patients' DNA is scanned with devices programmed to recognize half a million sites of variation along the genome. The new studies were published Sunday in the journal Nature Genetics.

One of the new variants is in a gene active at synapses, the junctions between brain cells, and the two others help damp down inflammation in the brain. Inflammation is a known feature of Alzheimer's, but it is often regarded as a consequence of the disease. Dr. Williams said that the detection of the new variants, which undercut the brain's efforts to restrain inflammation, suggested inflammation might play a primary role.

The gene that has the largest effect in Alzheimer's is a variant called ApoE4, discovered in 1993 in the laboratory of Allen Roses of Duke University. Dr. Roses said that the three new genes had minor effects compared with the variant site near ApoE4, and that their biological role in the disease was unclear, despite the statistical data pointing to their involvement.

Albion student runs with wolves at animal park - WHAS 11

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 08:22 AM PDT

Spending a summer working with wolves at an Indiana animal park gave an Albion College basketball player thrills quite different from those he gets on the court.

Center Wayne Bond, a senior biology major, said his internship at Wolf Park in Battle Ground, Ind., was a dream job.

He spent the summer leading walking tours of the research and teaching facility. He also had direct contact with the park's 14 adult wolves, three red foxes, two coyotes and its bison herd.

Bond said his favorite memory is of racing the wolves in his car while feeding them meatballs laced with medicine.

"We fed should them dead animals and they don't have anything to chase," Bond said. "The opportunity to race is a really big thing for them. I would take my car out and you could see the excitement on their faces.

"I beat them the first three or four races, but they beat me the last time. They are so fast."

Bond said he has more in common with wolves than might be obvious.

Like them, he traveled frequently while growing up. Born in Germany, he moved with his family to Arkansas when he was 9. He attended three high schools before graduating from Michigan's Portage Central High School and enrolling at Albion College.

"Bond credits the near-constant shuffling for helping him develop his good-natured and flexible personality" and "helped shape a love for wolves," Albion College spokesman Bobby Lee wrote on the school's Web site.

Bond started 13 games last season for the Britons.

"I was so happy" to learn of the job, Bond said in a statement. "I had a game that day so I could only celebrate for a few minutes before getting my mind back to defeating Hope (College)."

Cellist writes music for monkeys - Omaha World-Herald

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 08:00 AM PDT

WASHINGTON — David Teie, a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra who also composes, is getting widespread attention for what may be, to date, his greatest hit.

It was a piece of music written for a tamarin monkey.

In an article published in the journal Biology Letters, Teie and Charles Snowdon, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, reveal the results of a research project in which they demonstrated that monkeys, who are equivocal about music written for people, had decided reactions to music that was written specifically for them.

Teie wrote four pieces informed by the calls of the monkey colony, two based on affiliative calls — that is, happy ones — and two based on fear calls.

While he incorporated characteristics of the monkeys' calls in his music, he was not trying to imitate them, nor simply to create sound effects.

The "fear" piece, written deliberately to agitate the monkeys (a kind of tamarin Metallica), is in F minor, he said, speaking by phone from Prague, Czech Republic, where he was visiting family.

The piece was then boosted three octaves, electronically, to bring it into the normal range of a tamarin.

When they heard it, the monkeys exhibited marked signs of anxiety. They reacted to the "happy" music with equally definite but happier behavior. When exposed to human music, by contrast, they had no reaction at all.

To enhance the scientific standing of the project, the experiment was run twice; Teie wrote two different "fear" pieces and two different "happy" ones. The results were the same.

Teie was the instigator of the project, which grew out of his investigations into how music affects human emotions (which he hopes to present in a book-in-progress called Human Music).

His idea is that music written for humans is developed out of sounds that were programmed into our brains as they were forming — sounds heard in the womb.

If this was true, he reasoned, it made sense that other species wouldn't respond to human music, and if he could find their triggers, he might be able to write music that would affect them.

Teie has already been extrapolating his findings into music for other species.

From his Web site, musicforcats.com, you can download three songs written specifically for felines, although progress is slow.

"It takes a surprisingly long time to produce and record and make up one of these songs," he says.

Teie also writes music for human beings.

His flute concerto will have its world premiere from the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra this spring.


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ODOT plans to improve sight distance on Ohio 44 where bicyclist Miles ... - Cleveland Plain Dealer Blog

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:12 AM PDT

Newbury Township — A short-yet-deadly stretch of Ohio 44 claimed its third life in seven years last summer when a crash killed an experienced cyclist. Now, the Ohio Department of Transportation says it will move earth to make the roadway safer.

ODOT plans to eliminate a grassy-and-treed roadside embankment that restricts views where the two-lane highway curves past Music Street in rural Geauga County. The cyclist — Miles Coburn, 58, of Cleveland Heights — died after pedaling into the path of an oncoming sport utility vehicle sweeping around the bend in August 2008.

A safety study commissioned by ODOT found that the curve at Music did not meet current sight distance standards. The report issued earlier this year recommended removal of part of the hill.

The $250,000 project is scheduled for 2012, said Jocelynn Clemings, an ODOT spokeswoman.

Other recommended improvements have been made. ODOT added solar-powered flashing signs to mark the intersection and installed reflective posts to better define the edge of the winding road. The agency also upgraded pavement markings and road reflectors and added caution signs.

"Anything we can do to improve it, we're intending on doing," Clemings said.

The state targeted this section of Ohio 44 -- an area roughly bounded by Music Street and Pond Road -- given its standing as a high crash location. In 2007, ODOT ranked it 22nd on a list of 200 trouble spots around the state. The crash rate was nearly four times the statewide average for a two-lane rural road.

The speed limit is 40 mph, though yellow caution signs advise drivers to slow to 25 mph. The hairpin curve at Music creates somewhat of a blind turn for northbound motorists -- or cyclists — turning left.

"When you're coming around, you can't see what's coming at you. It's pretty hairy trying to make that turn," said Craig Bednarek, who lives close enough to the intersection to hear the collisions and call 9-1-1. He said cutting back the embankment and expanding the view would "make a real difference."

Maybe even lifesaving.

Coburn's brother, Chris Coburn, also a cyclist, called the intersection of Ohio 44 and Music Street a "death trap." The spot falls on a scenic route traveled by many who ride into Geauga from Cleveland's eastern suburbs. After the crash, many questioned whether the design of the state road included fatal flaws.

"Until everyone can feel confident it's safe," Chris Coburn said, "it'll be an open issue for us."

Symposium on environment

Miles Coburn, the John Carroll University biology professor who died last year while cycling in Geauga County, will be remembered this week with an environmental symposium and 15-mile bicycle ride through the eastern suburbs.

Friends and family of Coburn created a nonprofit organization — Ride for Miles — to celebrate the work and play of the 58-year-old from Cleveland Heights. The group raises money to support environmental education and bicycle safety. Coburn, an avid environmentalist, used to bike up to 5,000 miles a year.

The symposium includes daily 4 p.m. programs Tuesday through Friday at John Carroll's Dolan Center for Science and Technology. The seminars focus on local and global environmental issues.

The bicycle ride starts at 10 a.m. Saturday at the John Carroll campus. The $20 registration fee helps fund the symposium.

For more information, go to Ride for Miles or call 216-397-3088.



'Synthetic Biology' Holds Promise, but Doubts Simmer - ABC News

Posted: 29 Aug 2009 04:54 PM PDT

"Plastics" may have been the Baby Boomer watchword, but "synthetic" rules today.

That's "synthetic" as in synthetic biology, the hottest biomedical buzzword, promising new drugs, new fuel and someday, new life.

"If we can make life, then we understand it," says molecular biologist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla. Starting with the building blocks of animal and plant cells, synthetic biologists are reengineering living things today and hope to create synthetic life tomorrow. The ultimate goal, Benner says, is "synthesizing life from scratch."

That makes experts, including human genome pioneers Craig Venter of Rockville, Md., and Jay Keasling of the University of California-Berkeley, hopeful and cautious at the same time about the promise and peril of the field.

In July, a team led by Carole Lartigue of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., reported the field's latest advance in the journal Science: a way to genetically engineer bacteria, previously considered impossible. "Nobody else has done anything remotely like this before," Venter says.

The immediate application is engineering defanged vaccine strains for use against the bacteria family chosen for the study. But a lot of other ideas are cooking, from saving the planet from global warming to figuring out just how life started in the first place.

The promise

In 1974, oncologist Wac{lstrok}aw Szybalski of the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison coined the term "synthetic biology" as a way to describe biologists shuffling genes among organisms. The term has taken on multiple meanings since then in science, says David Rejeski of the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The public largely has no clue, he says: "Nobody really knows what it is."

One popular definition championed by MIT's Drew Endy, who founded the non-profit Biobrick Foundation, is an engineering one, in which the parts of cells act as the screws, bolts, bricks and mortar of future biology. Others, such as Venter and Harvard's George Church, talk of building completely man-made cells, with parts all made from scratch.
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