Science & Technology

Fatty molecules may modulate the electrical characteristics of nerve and heart cells by regulating the properties of key cell pores, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine.

Combinatorial chemistry provides researchers a vast library from which to choose.A researcher studying drug design for nerve damage therapies has gotten her answer to questions by following some old advice: she used the library. It’s not the kind of library her mother or teacher suggested, but a combinatorial chemistry library of many different protein sequences that some day might help her and her colleagues develop a successful timed drug delivery system.

A WUSTL researcher has identified a bacterium as the pathogen living on bubbles in hot water environments.A team of researchers, led by an environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, has applied a molecular approach to identify the biological particles in aerosol responsible for making employees of a Colorado hospital therapeutic pool ill. They found: when the bubble bursts, the bacteria disperse, and lifeguards get pneumonia-like symptoms.

USAF 388th Range SqdGenesis was recovered in the Utah desert with fears that all data were lost.Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have begun to measure noble gases present in the solar wind delivered to Earth by the Genesis spacecraft, the first sample return mission since the lunar Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The first detailed studies of two of the largest human chromosomes have revealed enormous gene “deserts” lacking any protein-coding sequences and relics of the merger of two ape chromosomes to form a single human chromosome.

LightmanAlan Lightman, popular novelist and MIT physicist, will deliver the ArtSci Council, Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi Lecture for Washington University’s Assembly Series. His talk, “The Physicist as Novelist,” will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 13, in Graham Chapel.

What makes a woman a woman?The mysteries of both human sex chromosomes have now been laid bare with the publication of the sequence of the human X chromosome in the journal Nature. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England led the effort to sequence the X, with significant contributions from the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University.

The Monsanto Fund has awarded Washington University $3.7 million to develop, build and operate two custom mobile classrooms. Washington University will lead a partnership, including the St. Louis Science Center, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, to create and provide programming on the vehicles. The program will help young elementary school students develop enthusiasm for learning and doing science, through interactive experiences and exhibits.

Scientists may have found a way to throw a wrench in the transmissions of several speed demons of the parasite world. Researchers at the School of Medicine and Harvard University have identified a protein that could help them develop drugs to stop or slow cell invasion by malaria and other parasites known as apicomplexans.

Photo by Robert BostonA fossil of a diminutive human nicknamed “the Hobbit” likely represents a previously unrecognized species of early humans, according to the results of a detailed comparison of the fossil’s brain case with those of humans, apes and other human ancestors.