Tobacco might become as well known for keeping us healthy as it is for causing illness thanks to researchers from the U.K. In a new research report appearing in the March 2010 print issue of the FASEB Journal, scientists explain how they developed a genetically modified strain of tobacco that helps temper the damaging effects of toxic pond scum, scientifically known as microcystin-LR (MC-LR), which makes water unsafe for drinking, swimming, or fishing. This plant could serve as a major tool for helping keep water sources safe to use, especially in developing nations.

Researchers in Canada have detected a novel oncolytic viral therapy against prostate cancer with use of a virus called the reovirus, according to study results published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In the life sciences, the safe long-term storage of living materials such as cells or whole organisms, as well as their worldwide exchange between research groups, is becoming more and more important. The University of Freiburg now supports this free material transfer with the establishment of an international centre for research with mosses.

Scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technische Universität München (TUM) under the direction of Prof. Michael Sattler have developed a new strategy allowing them to determine the spatial structure of biomolecules in solution. The method is flexible and generally applicable to obtaining structural information for signal forwarding pathways in the cell or in the regulation of gene expression.

A study involving the world's deadliest substance has yielded a new strategy to clear toxins from the body -- which may lead to more efficient strategies against toxins that may be used in a bioterrorist event, as well as snake bites, scorpion stings, and even some important chronic diseases.

Huixin He, associate professor of nanoscale chemistry at Rutgers University, Newark, and Tamara Minko, professor at the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, have developed a nanotechnology approach that potentially could eliminate the problems of side effects and drug resistance in the treatment of cancer. Under traditional chemotherapy, cancer cells, like bacteria, can develop resistance to drug therapy, leading to a relapse of the disease.

The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes places a huge burden on its victims and poses a tremendous challenge to healthcare systems. Half of all heart attacks and stroke cases, but also many other deleterious conditions, can be ascribed to the effects of this metabolic syndrome. In Germany alone, some seven million people currently suffer from the disease, and the number of cases worldwide is projected to reach 370 million by the year 2030.

Schizophrenia is an incredibly complex and profoundly debilitating disorder that typically manifests in early adulthood but is thought to arise, at least in part, from pathological disturbances occurring during very early brain development. Now, a new study published by Cell Press in the February 25 issue of the journal Neuron, manipulates a known schizophrenia susceptibility gene in the brains of fetal mice to begin to unravel the complex link between prenatal brain development and maturation of information processing and cognition in adult animals.

Research by Johns Hopkins sensory biologists studying fruit flies has revealed a critical step in fly vision. Humans with problems in this same step suffer retinal dystrophies, which manifest as visual defects ranging from mild visual impairments to complete blindness. The article, published Jan. 26 in Current Biology, paves the way for using the fruit fly to screen for therapies to treat human retinal degeneration.

A software program created by an engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) can not only predict the types of specialized cells a stem cell will produce, but also foresee the outcome before the stem cell even divides.