Tag Archives: virus

Toward a universal flu virus vaccine

News: Pandemics    February 7, 2011
If the vaccine developed by a team at Oxford University (UK) passes successfully through all the phases of human testing, this will really be big news. As it is, it is an enormously hopeful development toward the control of human influenza (the flu) and the threat of pandemics. Fighting flu viruses is like going after [...]
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Discovery: An immune system within cells

News: Cell Biology    November 2, 2010
The human body has a pretty good immune system. Because it’s so crucial to our health, scientists and doctors have been studying the immune system intensely for a long time. A good deal is known about it, even down to the molecular level. This study of the immune system, besides being good for a general [...]
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Another new world: Seeing biology at the atomic level

Impact: Scientific Instruments    June 7, 2010
From the first telescope, to the electrocardiograph (EKG), to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), advances in scientific instruments – the tools of the trade – can have a huge impact on the science. With each new technology a window opens to observe things that previously might only have been theory, or guesses. Very often, things [...]
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Using artificial photosynthesis (in a virus) to split water

Impact: Synthetic Biology    April 11, 2010
In general, SciTechStory doesn’t start tracking a technology that’s (a) incomplete in implementation and (b) many years from application (if ever). Maybe this one is an exception: Using a virus to support artificial photosynthesis that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. It sounds pretty strange (not that this is a qualification for coverage herein), but [...]
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The shape of viral past influences today’s pandemics

News: Pandemics    March 25, 2010
Say you’re blindfolded and you’re given some kind of ball to identify. You turn it over in your hands. It’s relatively small. It’s very hard. It has pronounced seams with big stitching. You know it’s a baseball…providing, of course, that you’ve handled baseballs before. So it is with your immune system facing a virus. By [...]
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Prions bad. Prion shaping good – for memory

News: Proteomics    February 6, 2010
Understanding how memory in the brain works remains one of the most difficult and insight-resistant issues in neuroscience. Also, like most things about the brain (human brains, any brains), the more we look, the more complex it becomes. The research by a team from Kansas and New York (USA) on prion-like proteins is a good [...]
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