All Work in Progress stories

Finding ingenious design in nature

404132862 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:42:56 -0500

“This,” Joanna Aizenberg says slyly, picking up a latticed tube from her desk in Pierce Hall, “is a glass house you can throw stones at.”

The tube, tapered to a close at one end and festooned with a cluster of curious white fibers at the tip, resembles an upturned dog’s tail. It is, in fact, the skeleton of a deep-sea sponge, she reveals, made entirely out of a natural glass. The tube acts as a kind of high-rise apartment building for shrimp that live symbiotically in the sponge’s tissue.

HOPE in African HIV/AIDS fight

404132862 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:32:16 -0500

It was close to midnight one day this week in Durban, South Africa, when Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce D. Walker switched on his computer and made a visit to 104 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge.

Trafficked

404132862 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:05:26 -0500

Slight and soft-spoken, the dark-eyed girl called Gina looks into the camera and speaks of her ordeal in a flat, disembodied voice, chronicling a story relived a thousand times. “The first night, they forced me to have sex. When I refused, they held me down, beat me, and raped me. I was seven years old.”

It took a novel tack to discover an obesity gene

404132862 — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:23:19 -0400

The racing sailboat was small, and Christoph Lange wanted to be sure he didn't capsize and plunge into the Charles River again, as he'd done half a dozen times that spring. Using his blue sailing shoes for leverage, he carefully arranged himself on the craft's cramped bench and reached for the tiller. The day was mild; the wind barely ruffled the dank water lapping the edges of the ramp that led to the Harvard Sailing Center, in Cambridge, where Lange, assistant professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, had been a member since 2000.

Tracking down the seat of moral reasoning

404132862 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:32:04 -0400

Moral philosophers have long grappled with ethical questions, creating hypotheticals that test basic beliefs about right and wrong. For example:

A trolley is running down a track out of control. If it keeps going, it will run over the five unsuspecting people hanging out on the track. You can prevent this disaster by throwing a switch, redirecting the trolley onto a siding where it will kill one person. Do you hit the switch?

Major progress toward cell reprogramming

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:34:31 -0400

Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers and scientists at Whitehead Institute and Japan's Kyoto University have independently taken major steps toward discovering ways to reprogram cells in order to direct their development - a key goal in developmental biology and regenerative medicine.

Additionally, the group led by Kevin Eggan, an HSCI principal faculty member - whose study is featured on the cover of the latest issue of the journal Nature - has disproved a long-held view of developmental biologists by demonstrating in mice that it is possible to use previously fertilized ova to produce disease-specific stem cell lines using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) - commonly referred to as therapeutic cloning.

Children can perform approximate math without arithmetic instruction

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:10:21 -0400

Children are able to solve approximate addition or subtraction problems involving large numbers even before they have been taught arithmetic, according to a study conducted at Harvard University by researchers from the University of Nottingham and Harvard.

Pursuing a cholera vaccine

50443248 — Tue, 15 May 2007 09:47:03 -0400

The reports from Dhaka are hopeful. It is 2005, and Dr. Firdausi Qadri and colleagues at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, are testing a new cholera vaccine on children. In their study, a single dose of live, crippled bacteria goes down easily in a fizzy drink. Within days, most of the children are showing exactly the kind of robust immune response that should enable them to fend off an attack from the deadly pathogen, with no notable side effects.

The study follows a similar success immunizing adults in the same city. The stage is now set for a large-scale trial to test the vaccine, known as Peru-15, to prevent the seasonal flare-ups of life-threatening diarrhea that dog the poor in Bangladesh and other regions of the developing world.

Opossum genome shows 'junk' DNA source of genetic innovation

50443248 — Wed, 09 May 2007 16:51:38 -0400

A tiny opossum's genome has shed light on how evolution creates new creatures from old, showing that change primarily comes by finding new ways of turning existing genes on and off.

The research, by an international consortium led by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, revises our understanding of genetic evolution. Scientists previously thought that evolution slowly changed the genes that create specific proteins. As the proteins changed, so did the creatures that owned them.

The current research shows that opossum and human protein-coding genes have changed little since their ancestors parted ways, 180 million years ago. It has been the regulation of their genes - when they turn on and off - that has changed dramatically.

"Evolution is tinkering much more with the controls than it is with the genes themselves," said Broad Institute director Eric Lander. "Almost all of the new innovation ... is in the regulatory controls. In fact, marsupial mammals and placental mammals have largely the same set of protein-coding genes. But by contrast, 20 percent of the regulatory instructions in the human genome were invented after we parted ways with the marsupial."

The research, released May 9 also illustrated a mechanism for those regulatory changes. It showed that an important source of genetic innovation comes from bits of DNA, called transposons, that make up roughly half of our genome and that were previously thought to be genetic "junk."

The research shows that this so-called junk DNA is anything but, and that it instead can help drive evolution by moving between chromosomes, turning genes on and off in new ways.

'Usable Knowledge' Web site delivers research to educators

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:29 -0400

The Harvard Graduate School of Education on Dec. 6, 2006, launched a new Web site aimed at connecting the research of its faculty with educators in the field. The Usable Knowledge Web site features a diverse set of media - text, video, and audio - to make the leading research of its faculty accessible to educators all over the world.

The Usable Knowledge Web site is organized around five topic areas that align with high priorities for educators: leadership and policy; learning and development; decisions through data; community and family; and teaching and curriculum.

Harvard researchers map new form of genetic diversity

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:13:32 -0400

A new map of human genetic diversity provides a powerful tool for understanding how each person is unique.

Created by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and other institutions around the world, the map focuses on the number of copies of large segments of DNA present in each individual. Though humans normally have two copies of their DNA, researchers found that some people have three, four, five, or more copies of certain DNA segments, while others have just one copy or are even missing them entirely.

Key antibody IgG links cells' capture and disposal of germs

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:35:21 -0400

Scientists have found a new task managed by the antibody that's the workhorse of the human immune system: Inside cells, immunoglobulin G (IgG) helps bring together the phagosomes that corral invading pathogens and the potent lysosomes that eventually kill off the germs.

The research, by Axel Nohturfft at Harvard University and colleagues at Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Growth of spinal nerves is improved

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:42:56 -0400

Nerves that control the highest level of voluntary movements have been isolated and secrets of their growth revealed for the first time.

During development, these nerves extend themselves from the brain to all levels of the spine with the help of a potent growth factor called IGF-1. This factor is well known to scientists. However, the discovery of its role in guiding the extension of the longest nerves in the body was a big surprise.

The discovery has researchers talking about new ways to treat ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and other paralyzing disorders, as well as regenerating spinal nerves that have been damaged by falls, crashes, and combat.

Three-dimensional, miniature endoscope opens new diagnostic possibilities

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:46:43 -0400

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have developed a new type of miniature endoscope that produces three-dimensional, high-definition images, which may greatly expand the application of minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In the Oct. 19, 2006, issue of Nature, the team from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH describes their prototype device and a demonstration of its use in a mouse model.

"This new ultraminiature endoscope is the first to allow three- dimensional imaging of areas inside the body, " says Guillermo Tearney, MD, PhD, of the MGH Wellman Center, the report's senior author. "Its ability to go places that other imaging tools cannot reach opens new possibilities for medical diagnosis and eventually treatment."

Study shows benefits of eating fish greatly outweigh risks

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:46:48 -0400

Many studies have shown the nutritional benefits of eating fish (finfish or shellfish). Fish is high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids. But concerns have been raised in recent years about chemicals found in fish from environmental pollution, including mercury, PCBs and dioxins. That has led to confusion among the public - do the risks of eating fish outweigh the benefits?

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) tackled that question by undertaking the single most comprehensive analysis to date of fish and health. In the first review to combine the evidence for major health effects of omega-3 fatty acids, major health risks of mercury, and major health risks of PCBs and dioxins in both adults and infants/ young children, the results show that the benefits of eating a modest amount of fish per week - about 3 ounces of farmed salmon or 6 ounces of mackerel - reduced the risk of death from coronary heart disease (CHD) by 36 percent.

Notably, by combining results of randomized clinical trials, the investigators also demonstrated that intake of fish or fish oil reduces total mortality - deaths from any causes - by 17 percent.

Included with the paper, which appears in the Oct. 18, 2006, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (http:// jama.ama-assn.org/), is the first comprehensive summary of levels of omega-3 fatty acids, mercury, PCBs and dioxins in various species of fish and other foods, including chicken, beef, pork, butter and eggs.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.