Word: proteins
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...serve as guinea pigs. Last week officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., announced that the first U.S.-approved human tests of a potential AIDS vaccine would begin this fall. The preparation, developed by MicroGeneSys of West Haven, Conn., consists of the outershell protein of the AIDS virus, which researchers hope will stimulate the body into producing an immune response against the intact invader. Says NIAID Director Anthony Fauci: "This is the first step in what will be a long process toward developing a vaccine to prevent AIDS...
Peptide T, another promising substance for curbing the virus, received mixed reviews. Last December, Neuroscientist Candace Pert of the National Institute of Mental Health reported that the chemical, a synthetic portion of a protein on the AIDS virus that helps it bind to cells, seemed to prevent the virus from entering cells. In May the FDA approved clinical trials, and last week Oncogen, a Seattle biotechnology company, announced that its researchers had confirmed Pert's findings. But Dr. William Haseltine, a virologist at Harvard's Dana Farber Cancer Institute, said neither his laboratory nor six others around the world...
...reports yield some clues. Anthony Pinching and colleagues at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London found evidence of a genetic factor in AIDS vulnerability. They examined blood samples from more than 200 individuals for a protein called group-specific component, which has three genetically determined variants. People with one Gc type seemed to be protected against AIDS infection; those with another type had a high incidence of AIDS...
...current experiments, almost everyone agrees, do not pose any such threat. They involve a modest bit of genetic engineering on the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae, a common parasite that lives on the bark and leaves of many plants. The bacterium produces a protein that serves as a seed for the formation of ice crystals when the temperature drops below 32 degrees F. By snipping the seed-making gene from the DNA of the microbe, Berkeley Plant Pathologists Steven Lindow and Nickolas Panopoulos created a mutant form of P. syringae that does not promote frost. They call their new microbe "ice- minus...
This new brew, says Katz, not only tasted great but was very filling; it was almost equal to animal protein for nutrition. Furthermore, alcoholic intoxicants have "a very special significance in every society," he notes. All these pluses "provided the extra motivation to make sure they had the seeds around as a regular source of this special food...