Word: dna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plan to use every trick they have learned to boost its effectiveness. They may, for example, mix cytokines with the vaccine, counting on these chemicals to rally extra killer T cells against the virus. They may give a small jolt of electricity along with the priming dose of viral DNA; that shock seems to enhance the DNA's ability to trigger a response. And they are even experimenting with firing the DNA directly into immune-system cells at high pressure with so-called gene guns to make sure the nucleic acids have maximum impact...
...inventors of the gene gun thinks that shooting viral DNA could someday replace traditional vaccines. Dr. Stephen Johnston, director of the Center for Biomedical Inventions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, is using medicine's newfound skill at sequencing genomes to figure out precisely what genes express, or turn on, when a bug first enters a host's cells. Using microarrays, also known as "DNA chips," Johnston is working to identify those genes, then snip them from a pathogen's genome and use them, or the proteins they make, as vaccines to trigger an immune response...
...suspicious of two cases of encephalitis among her patients and prodded the city health department to launch an investigation. The CDC relies on a national network of sentinel doctors to do this kind of monitoring during flu season and uses a similar system of local labs and DNA fingerprinting to track food-borne illnesses. Cities and states have physician-alert programs that do the same...
...problem is that bacteria share genetic information much more readily than anyone thought. Individual cells--often from different species--routinely exchange tiny loops of DNA called plasmids. They will even pick up snippets of DNA from dead bacteria or viruses. Once a strain of bacteria survives destruction by antibiotics, chances are it will eventually pass on the genes for resistance to other germs. "It's a numbers game," says Dr. Stuart Levy, a Tufts researcher and author of The Antibiotic Paradox. And because they live everywhere and reproduce quickly, bacteria have the upper hand...
Relief may soon be on the way. Thanks to advances in the new science of genomics, researchers have started to scour bacterial DNA for new and possibly better targets for drug development. The goal is to produce a compound that works so differently from today's antibiotics that germs won't know how to start developing resistance. Other research has produced drugs that help restore penicillin's ability to clobber resistant germs, provided the compounds are given in combination...