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A.
An Economical Way to Produce an Anti-malarial Drug
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A Chinese plant known as
the sweet wormwood may hold the future for curing
malaria, which continues to affect up to 500 million
people around the world and causes 12 million deaths
per year – primarily children in Third World countries.
But current methods to extract molecules from the
wormwood plant to create a highly effective anti-malarial
drug called artemisinin, has its drawbacks.
Keasling:
The problem with artemisinin is that it
is far too expensive for anyone in Africa or in
any developing world country to afford. The goal
of our project is to produce artemsinin at 1/10
of its current costs.
Narrator:
Jay Keasling, a chemical engineer at the University
of California, Berkeley, is working to create artemisinin
in an economical and environmentally friendly way.
Keasling:
The research that we’re doing for this anti-malarial
drug is to take genes from a plant that produces
the anti-malarial drug and transfer them to a bacterium,
so that that bacterium can produce the anti-malarial
drug and can do so in an environmentally friendly
way and economically.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.
B.
Why Research Communities Should Partner with Mental
Health Systems
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Researchers at the University
of California, San Diego have discovered that less
than half of the more than two million Americans
with schizophrenia do not take their anti-psychotic
medications on a regular basis. Delip Jeste, who
led the study, says this results in higher hospitalization
costs and for patients and caregivers, less quality
of life.
Jeste:
What is needed is really a partnership between the
research community and the public mental health
system. And our study was actually an example of
such a partnership. This was based at our center,
which is funded by NIH and it was a partnership
of UCSD with the San Diego County public mental
health system.
Narrator:
Jeste says once researchers find that certain
therapies work, they need to get that information
out to real world practice.
Jeste:
What has happened in the past, typically
researchers have done studies that are restricted
to research settings. Researchers need to work with
clinicians who are practicing out there in the community.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.
C.
The Brain Atlas Project: A Reference for the Human Brain
Narrator:
This is Science Today. No two human brains are alike,
so when scientists are looking at the brain, how do
they know if what they’re looking at is normal? It’s
a question that researchers who study brain function
and structure have struggled with for many years. That’s
why neurology professor Arthur Toga co-conceived UCLA’s
newly compiled Brain Atlas Project. It’s basically a
database filled with seven thousand digitally mapped
images of the brain.
Toga: Because it’s computational,
we can render exquisite visualizations or three-dimensional
models that can be interacted with and spun around
and colored in different ways and shown to illustrate
how one structure relates to another structure. So
for a teaching tool, it’s a remarkable advance.
Narrator: This reference system
for the human brain is available on the web for scientists
to use.
Toga: The electronic way that this
project is being conducted provides for seamless cooperation
between scientists at different sites, all around
the country, all around the world.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m
Larissa Branin.
D.
A Twin Study Suggests Communication, Not Genetics,
Affect Longevity
Narrator:
This
is Science Today. For a long time it has been known
that identical twins live longer than fraternal twins,
but until now, nobody has known why. Malcolm Zaretsky,
a molecular and cell biologist at the University of
California, Berkeley, recently found that frequent
communication by phone or mail between identical twins
keeps them alive longer.
Zaretsky:
I looked at various factors, environmental factors,
to see what could be responsible for the greater longevity
of identical twins. And I found that communication
between twin partners was a very significant factor.
Narrator:
This finding suggests that meaningful human
relationships, and not just genetics, affect our longevity.
Zaretsky:
Identical twins who communicated frequently
had a mortality rate, which was about 5% less than
identical twins who did not communicate frequently,
but that was not the case with fraternal twins—their
mortality rate was the same whether they communicated
frequently or not.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.
E.
The Cause and Effect of Macular Degeneration
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Age-related macular degeneration
is a disease that leads to loss of central vision
and affects up to ten percent of people over sixty.
Lincoln Johnson, a researcher at the University of
California, Santa Barbara’s Center for the Study of
Macular Degeneration, says the central visual field
is what you use for watching TV, reading a book or
looking at a person’s face.
Johnson:
That light from that person’s face hits a part of
your retina called the macula and it’s the most sensitive
part of your retina. The cells there that sense light
die and then you’re left with a big dark grey to black
hole in the middle of your field.
Narrator:
Johnson has discovered that the same molecules
present in the brain plaques of patients with Alzheimer’s
disease are also found in abnormal deposits in the
eye called drusen. These are present in patients with
macular degeneration.
Johnson:
So that’s what we have now – a candidate to trigger
this inflammatory response, which causes downstream
damage to additional cells that are normal and are
thus causing the disease to progress.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.
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