Here is the first man to be cured of HIV- AIDS

Timothy Ray Brown, 45, from San Francisco Bay Area, is in the news – as the first man cured of HIV- AIDS. “I think so,” he calmly tells his interviewers who ask if he actually is cured. Brown has been facing cameras, gun mikes and diagnostic kits ever since the publication of a research paper on his unique case in the journal Blood in December 2010. The researchers led by Kristina Allers and Gero Hutter at Charite University Medicine Berlin documented what can be dubbed as a miracle. The successful reconstitution of a set of white blood cells that the HIV eats up in Brown’s body is a “very rare” occurrence, they noted. Brown, who was tested HIV back in 1995 in Germany, was later diagnosed with another disease — leukaemia or blood cancer...

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Mystery unlocked in photosynthesis step

Tempe, Ariz. - An international team of scientists, including two from Arizona State University, have taken a significant step closer to unlocking the secrets of photosynthesis, and possibly to cleaner fuels. Plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). Understanding how these photosystems work their magic is one of the long-sought goals of biochemistry. The ASU scientists working with collaborators at the Max Planck Institute at Mülheim a.d....

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Synthetic lethality: A new way to kill cancer cells

Ovarian and breast cancer treatments being developed that mix a protein inhibitor and traditional anticancer drugs are showing signs of success, according to a new review for Faculty of 1000 Biology Reports. Susan Bates and Christina Annunziata looked at several recent papers on this form of treatment, which takes advantage of the synthetic lethality of BRCA (breast cancer susceptibility genes) and poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) proteins to attack cancerous cells whilst sparing healthy ones. BRCA and PARP are two key players in DNA repair and have different but complementary functions in the cell. Loss of the BRCA protein still allows the cell to survive but greatly increases its chances of becoming cancerous through...

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