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A scientific paper published in the journal PLoS Pathogens could open new perspectives to improve efficiency and cut costs in the production of vaccines for hepatitis A, which is the viral liver disease that most affect the entire population. The study was prepared by experts of the Research Group of enteric viruses, a team leader in genomic studies of hepatitis A, led by Rosa M. Pinto and Albert Bosch, Department of Microbiology teachers and members of the Research Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety at the University of Barcelona (INSA-UB).
According to WHO, each year there are about 1, 4 million cases of hepatitis A, a disease caused by the hepatitis A virus (HAV), which is spread primarily by fecal-oral route via water or food. HAV is a virus of the picornavirus family (with RNA as genetic material) with icosahedral capsid, is highly resistant to environmental conditions, and is described only a single serotype.
“It’s a virus with many features, difficult to study and manipulate in the laboratory. Still unaware of many aspects of their biology: it has a slow replication cycle, and that makes the process of obtaining the antigen for vaccines is too slow and costly, “says Albert Bosch.
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A third human case, the contemporary Neanderthals and modern humans, was identified by the genes contained in the hand bones discovered in Siberia.
Out of Africa ? Yes, mankind has spread from Africa, but when? A fossil dating from about 40,000 years found in Siberia complicates the riddle: the sequencing of genes suggests that it contains belongs to a hominid, which was not a Neanderthal or a modern man.
The fossil comes from the Siberian Altai, and more specifically the Denisova Cave, a large cavity rich in prehistoric artifacts and traces, as it has been occupied for 125 000 years. Johannes Krause and colleagues from the Max-Planck Institute in Leipzig and various European and American universities, have sequenced the full mitochondrial DNA content in one of the few human fossils from the cave Denisova, a single bone belonging a finger.
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The birds are not descended from theropod dinosaurs, according to findings from a new study that challenge accepted theories for decades about the evolution of flight.
The new analysis, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done with the fossil of a rare specimen discovered in 2003, called Microraptor, in which three-dimensional models were used to study its possible potential flight and concluded feathered species that this small animal must have been a glider, ie could not fly away but simply planning to descend from the branch of a tree or other high point.
The research findings are consistent with a series of studies in recent years, which is a progressive discrediting the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs, according to critics of this theory.
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By an expedition to the Gobi Desert in China, a team of Scientists have verified that a group of dinosaurs, despite sporting a look similar to birds, was independent of them.
The finding extends the fossil record of the family Alvarezsauridae, a rare group of dinosaurs with bird-like a claw in his hand, and arms are too short and strong, distancing birds over the group in the evolutionary tree.
So far, no direct evidence that some dinosaurs this type lived during the Late Jurassic, about 160 ago million years.
This research sheds new light on the little-known development Initial birds in the Late Jurassic in China, to weed out alvarezsauridos as the ancestors of birds.
Jonah Choiniere scientist at George Washington University, has name the newly discovered dinosaur species: Haplocheirus Sollers.
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