arborvitae

Remaindered links #2

toresalte — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:10:41 +0000

Cannibalism and Prion Disease May Have Been Rampant in Ancient Humans

Some call it the laughing disease; others, kuru. This neurodegenerative disorder is universally fatal and 40 years ago killed almost 10% of a small New Guinea tribe called the Fore. Now molecular biologists propose that similar epidemics plagued prehistoric humans.

Remaindered links #1

toresalte — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:31:24 +0000

Phoenix from the ashes: The 5 million year old virus
French researchers have revived one of the silent passengers in our genome. There can be found quite some HERVs (human endogenous retroviruses), remnants of retroviruses, integrated in our genome. The youngest of these is HERV-K family. Now Phoenix, a purported ancestor of the HERV-K line has risen from the ashes, and the revived virus is indeed infect mammalian cells, although at a very low infectivity.
Finding Gives Boost To Bioinformatics Use in Fighting Disease
The use of computers to advance human disease research – known as bioinformatics – has received a major boost from researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI), who have used it to successfully predict immune response to one of the most complex viruses known to man – the vaccinia virus, which is used in the smallpox vaccine. Immune responses, which are essentially how the body fights a disease-causing agent, are a crucial element of vaccine development.

State of the Pandemic

toresalte — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:26:49 +0000

Seed Magazine has a special graphical feature on the spread of HIV/AIDS that really is worth taking a look at.

Welcome

toresalte — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:19:24 +0000

Welcome to arborvitae! Arborvitae will be a blog devoted to life science and medicine in general. More specifically it will deal with my obsessions in biology: Infectious disease, immunology, evolution, biodiversity and of course, the most interesting of all, evolution of infectious disease.