Learning How Viruses Evade the Immune System

MicroRNA genes are a class of very tiny genes found in a variety of organisms. First discovered in 1993 and at the time considered relatively unimportant, they are now recognized as major players in diverse biological processes.

MicroRNAs are important regulators of protein production. Proteins, the building blocks of the cell, must be produced precisely at the right time and place. MicroRNAs specifically latch on to other genes (their targets) and inhibit the production of the protein products of these genes. Hundreds of microRNAs have already been discovered, but the identity of their target genes remains mostly unknown and presents a great challenge in the field.

Elefant developed a computer algorithm that predicts the targets of microRNAs. Her algorithm, named RepTar, searches the thousands of genes in the human genome and through sequence, structural and physical considerations detects matches to hundreds of microRNAs.

For her work in this field, Naama Elefant, a student of Prof. Hanah Margalit of the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University and an Azrieli fellow, was named one of this year?s winners of the Barenholz Prizes for Creativity and Originality in Applied Computer Science and Computational Biology. This discovery also was declared by the magazine Nature Medicine as ”one of the ten notable advances of the year 2007.”

This technique allowed her to research an interesting group of microRNAs originating in viruses. The presence of microRNAs in viruses raised the intriguing possibility that upon viral infection of a host cell, the virus may use microRNAs as weapons in its battle against the host, inhibiting the production of important host proteins.

Indeed, Elefant?s algorithm predicted that an immune system protein, essential for the immune system?s response against viruses, is inhibited by a viral microRNA. This prediction was confirmed in collaboration with the laboratory of Prof. Ofer Mandelboim of the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, who demonstrated experimentally that the microRNA aids the virus in evading the immune system. This study showed for the first time that a viral microRNA inhibits the activity of a gene of the human immune system, placing microRNAs as important players in the battle between viruses and humans.

The discovery holds promising therapeutic implications. It opens a new direction for anti-viral therapy aimed at inhibiting the viral microRNA, and it introduces a possible means to suppress the immune system in autoimmune diseases and transplantations by developing synthetic microRNAs that will mimic the action of natural microRNAs.

The Barenholz Prize is named for its donor, Yehezkel Barenholz, the Dr. Daniel G. Miller Professor of Cancer Research at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School.

Full press release: New Route for Combating Viruses

Photo: Kaye Award winner Naama Elefant, the computer screen shows a DNA sequence in the background (Credit: Hebrew University / Sasson Tiram).

Related: Using Bacteria to Carry Nanoparticles Into Cells - Scientists discover new class of RNA - posts related to RNA - messenger-RNA - Engineering Student Contest Winners Design Artificial Limb

Read The Full Article:
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/07/24/learning-how-viruses-evade-the-i
mmune-system/

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West 66th Street/Lincoln Center Subway Art 18

tags: West 66th street/Lincoln Center Subway Art, Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC

Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers.

Artist: Nancy Spero, 1999. Installed 2004.

West 66th Street/Lincoln Center Subway tile mosaic art #18
as seen at NYC's Lincoln Center stop at Broadway for the downtown (southbound) 1 train.

Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view].

Glass mosaic murals depicting scenes of theater, dance, and orchestra-related subjects are scattered throughout this station.

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streetlincoln_center_18.php

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A gift from Oregon

Regular commenter Patricia sent me a present — isn't this pretty?

The octopus pendant is also very nice. You can get your own at the Emerson Glass Art Studio, if you're envious.

Thanks, Patricia! I will get it away from my cervical model someday, I'm sure.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/345127196/a_gift_from_o
regon.php

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My Comic Con panel: LIVE

I am streaming my Comic Con panel right here, right now.

Live .TV show provided by Ustream

Read The Full Article:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/24/my-comic-con-panel-live
/

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I love my haters. They think about me all of the
time.

Here is my occasional political rant.

What's up with all of the conservatives whining about Obama getting so much [positive] press coverage? McCain and others challenged that he hadn't travelled to the war zones or Europe and that Obama doesn't seem like he's ready to take the reigns on the first day.

Now, the media is following Obama like the Papparazzi. Iraqis, US soldiers abroad, and Europeans, heck, even Gen. Petraus is all ga ga over Barack. They love him! And McCain disembarks with a lone reporter to greet him....Hater.
Media bias aside, Obama's trip an important test USA Today
Media stars will accompany Obama overseas The Herald Tribune

And now that he is coming off as so confident and professional, they are accusing him of acting presumptive -- "He isn't the President yet. He shouldn't be acting that way, like he has it already." Haters!

One more thing -- The Patriotism of the McCains.
Anheuser-Busch was recently taken over by a European company, In-Bev of Belgium. I don't drink AB products (voluntarily) but I liked AB as a brand and as a symbol of American business. They overcame prohibition and built a powerful brand. And thanks to a very weak American economy a foreign company was able to buy it all out - lock, stock, and barrell - literally.
While Barack and other Democrat spoke against the problem, McCain was quiet. In fact his wife earned a mint.


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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SciEdSociety/~3/345161777/i-love-my-haters-they-th
ink-about-me.html

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Carnivalia

Here is an incomplete list of blog carnivals that have recently been published for your reading pleasure;

Carnival of the Vanities, the 24 July edition. This is the original blog carnival which served to showcase excellent writing in the blogosphere, and thus, it has no topic beyond that.

I and the Bird, issue number 80. This blog carnival focuses on bird watching and bird identification, although some of us tempt them to stray into other, more interesting ornithological topics with our contributions.

Carnival of Education, issue 181. This blog carnival focuses on issues and topics associated with education.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/grrlscientist/~3/345087925/carnivalia
_1.php

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Vintage Blasphemy for the Creationists in the
Crowd

tags: dinosaurs, Tardosaurus, paleontology, fossils, Noah's Ark, religion, godlessness

Image: Orphaned (please send the original artist's information to me so I can properly attribute and link back to this person)

Inspired by the recent unveiling of the Tarbosaurus in Japan, I had to include this dinosaur for the creationists, the newly unveiled Tardosaurus, which single handedly (?) destroyed Noah and his ark full of animals.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/grrlscientist/~3/345053265/this_ones_
for_the_creationists.php

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This One's for the Creationists in the Crowd

tags: dinosaurs, Tardosaurus, paleontology, fossils, Noah's Ark, religion, godlessness

Image: Orphaned (please send the original artist's information to me so I can properly attribute and link back to this person)

Inspired by the recent unveiling of the Tarbosaurus in Japan, I had to include this dinosaur for the creationists, the newly unveiled Tardosaurus, which single handedly (?) destroyed Noah and his ark full of animals.

Read the comments on this post...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/grrlscientist/~3/345053265/this_ones_
for_the_creationists.php

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Science Based Triathlete

The Making of a Olympian by Arianne Cohen

In a break with training orthodoxy, Potts and his coach have created a regimen called feedback training in which the training plan is reassessed every 24 hours based on the constant monitoring of three variables: wattage (the power Potts?s body produces), cadence (the tempo of his arm and leg movements) and heart rate. No lap times. No mileage. No grand training schedules planned months in advance. Only raw biological data. ?My coach and I talk a lot about engines,? Potts says. ?In auto racing, you want to put out the highest amount of power with the least amount of fuel. We do the same thing. My heart and lungs are my engine. The goal is to always increase the efficiency of the engine.?

Every night, Doane analyzes his athlete?s response to the day?s training. He?s looking for the best way to expand Potts?s aerobic capacity, power output and lactate threshold, without overtraining. If Doane sees that Potts?s heartbeat has been sluggish?say, beating 140 times per minute while Potts is trying to produce 410 watts?that means his body is struggling to recover from earlier training, so he?ll dial back the intensity of his workouts. If, on the other hand, his heart rate stays in the sweet spot around 165 while he churns through a series of 360- to 400-watt intervals, that means he?s fully recovered and ready to be pushed again. ?We?ve created a feedback loop,? Doane says. In other words, Doane subjects Potts to a careful dose of punishment, and Potts?s body tells Doane, through empirical data, what he needs to do next.

Nice article. As it mentions really almost all Olympic athletes today use a great deal of science in their training.

Related: Baseball Pitch Designed in the Lab - Engineering Sports at MIT - Randomization in Sports

Read The Full Article:
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/07/24/science-based-triathlete/

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Tarbosaurus Takes Japan for Lunch

tags: dinosaurs, Tarbosaurus bataar, paleontology, fossils, Tyrannosaurs rex

The newly unveiled fossil skeleton of the juvenile Tarbosaurus in its protective jacket.

Discovered in 2006, a near-perfect complete skeleton of a juvenile Tarbosaurus find was made available for public viewing for the first time today by the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Science in Okayama, western Japan. This fossil was originally unearthed from a chunk of sandstone in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia by a team of Mongolian and Japanese researchers. The fossil of the young dinosaur is roughly 70 million years old (from the late Cretaceous period) and is the first time that this species has been found "totally intact".

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/grrlscientist/~3/345039485/tarbosauru
s_takes_japan_for_lu.php

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