Word: triggered
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...able to thwart this evasive action. Known as "prime-boost," it gives the immune system a whiff of the virus' scent before hitting it with the actual vaccine. In Nabel's lab, that whiff consists of a snippet of DNA from HIV's outer coating--not enough to trigger a full immune response but, as his work was the first to show in animals, enough to put the system on alert. In the past this strategy hasn't worked in humans because our immune system, unlike those of other mammals, doesn't respond robustly enough to DNA alone. To amplify...
...important trigger for this turnaround, surprisingly enough, was vaccine research's most notable failure. In the 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic began to spread, scientists tried to fight it as they had polio and chickenpox--by crippling the virus and using it to train a patient's immune system to ward off the real infection. Nobody really understood how the process worked at the molecular level, but until AIDS came along, that didn't matter much...
...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...
...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...
...like potato chips and doughnuts), nuts lower blood levels of triglycerides and LDL (bad) cholesterol while raising HDL (good) cholesterol--a perfect formula for preventing heart disease. Many nuts, such as pecans and walnuts, also contain a phytochemical called ellagic acid. In preliminary laboratory studies, ellagic acid seemed to trigger a process known as apoptosis, in which cancer cells kill themselves. Nuts provide another benefit: they contain vitamin E, a potent antioxidant that may help ward off heart disease and cancer. The downside? At about 150 calories per ounce, they are a sure ticket to the fat farm. Eat them...