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Joint Institute Breaks Ground on Expansion, International Partnership

01-23-2008 · Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

Twenty-five years after its founding, a joint research center in East Tennessee is taking on new growth and capabilities that will impact America's energy and security future.

Keywords: joint, institute, breaks, ground, expansion, international, partnership, break

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Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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China embraces agricultural innovations through partnership with India-based international center
12-03-2007 · EurekAlert!
Chinese agricultural scientists and rural communities have embraced diverse agricultural innovations through a partnership with the India-based International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, resulting in higher incomes and better living conditions for rural people. These are among many benefits being highlighted at the 2007 Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research in Beijing on Dec. 3-7.
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DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program delivers first moss genome
12-13-2007 · EurekAlert!
Messages from nearly a half-billion years ago, conveyed via the inventory of genes sequenced from a present-day moss, provide clues about the earliest colonization of dry land by plants. The US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, was among the leaders of an international effort to complete the sequence of the first nonvascular land plant, the moss Physcomitrella patens, published Dec. 13 online in Science Express.
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It takes a village -- Female ducks negotiate joint rearing of ducklings
01-10-2007 · EurekAlert!
Female eider ducks are well known to team up and share the work of rearing ducklings, but it now appears that they also negotiate not only how much effort each puts into the partnership, but also profit-sharing. An international group of scientists used a long-running study of the eider population in a Finnish archipelago to test predictions about how each hen seeks to maximize her benefits from the partnership without making it so unattractive that other hens withdraw their participation.
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New public-private hybrid rice group aims to raise rice yields in the tropics
11-09-2007 · EurekAlert!
The Hybrid Rice Research and Development Consortium, established by the International Rice Research Institute, will strengthen public-private sector partnership in hybrid rice.
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Sea snails break the law
04-24-2007 · EurekAlert!
Lizards gave rise to legless snakes. Cave fishes don't have eyeballs. In evolution, complicated structures often get lost. Dollo's Law states that complicated structures can't be re-evolved because the genes that code for them were lost or have mutated. A group of sea snails breaks Dollo’s law, Rachel Collin, Staff Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and colleagues from two Chilean universities announce in the April, 2007, Biological Bulletin.
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New technologies help Kenyan farmers break into global milk markets
11-07-2007 · EurekAlert!
As global milk prices continue to rise, Kenyan small-scale farmers are poised to become major players in the market for milk, according to researchers at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. In the past, high-quality standards of global producers have prevented countries like Kenya from competing with major exporters. But the steep rise in milk prices worldwide could give smallholder producers an edge in the global market, which is estimated at $48 billion a year.
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First genome comparison of plankton species yields surprises underlying key ocean processes
04-30-2007 · EurekAlert!
An international team of scientists led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute has peered into the genetic makeup of two species of phytoplankton, the tiny plants key in global photosynthesis and carbon cycling, and come away with surprising results about evolutionary engineering and new ideas about the role that a poorly understood chemical element may play in the world's oceans.
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Suzaku explains cosmic powerhouses
12-20-2007 · EurekAlert!
By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in mystery.
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Special report on the Khan Network: Where is the justice?
10-24-2006 · EurekAlert!
North Korea is among several countries that benefited from the global black market in nuclear technology orchestrated by disgraced Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan. Yet, despite their extraordinary role in the latest round of nuclear proliferation, most of Khan's key operatives, including Henk Slebos, have eluded conviction and jail time, according to Kenley Butler, Sammy Salama and Leonard S. Spector, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
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