MANILA, Philippines (AP) — One of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded slammed into the Philippines early Friday, and one weather expert warned, "There will be catastrophic damage."
The U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center shortly before Typhoon Haiyan's landfall said its maximum sustained winds were 314 kilometers per hour (195 mph), with gusts up to 379 kilometers per hour (235 mph).
"195-mile-per-hour winds, there aren't too many buildings constructed that can withstand that kind of wind," said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane meteorologist who is meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground.
Masters said the storm had been poised to be the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded at landfall. He warned of catastrophic damage.
Local authorities reported having troubles reaching colleagues in the landfall area.
The local weather bureau had a lower reading on the storm's power, saying its speed at landfall in Eastern Samar province's Guiuan township had sustained winds at 235 kilometers (147 miles) per hour, with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph). The bureau takes measures based on longer periods of time.
Authorities in Guiuan could not immediately be reached for word of any deaths or damage, regional civil defense chief Rey Gozon told DZBB radio. Forecaster Mario Palafox with the national weather bureau said it had lost contact with its staff in the landfall area.
The storm was not expected to directly hit the flood-prone capital, Manila, further north.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said more than 125,000 people had been evacuated from towns and villages in the typhoon's path.
Typhoon Haiyan's wind strength at landfall had been expected to beat out Hurricane Camille, which was 305 kilometers per hour (190 mph) at landfall in the United States 1969, Masters said.
The only tiny bright side is that it's a fast-moving storm, so flooding from heavy rain — which usually causes the most deaths from typhoons in the Philippines — may not be as bad, Masters said.
"The wind damage should be the most extreme in Phillipines history," he said.
The storm later will be a threat to both Vietnam and Laos and is likely to be among the top five natural disasters for those two countries, Masters said. The storm is forecast to barrel through the Philippines' central region Friday and Saturday before blowing toward the South China Sea over the weekend, heading toward Vietnam.
President Benigno Aquino III on Thursday warned people to leave high-risk areas, including 100 coastal communities where forecasters said the storm surge could reach up to 7 meters (23 feet). He urged seafarers to stay in port.
Aquino ordered officials to aim for zero casualties, a goal often not met in an archipelago lashed by about 20 tropical storms each year, most of them deadly and destructive. Haiyan is the 24th such storm to hit the Philippines this year.
The president also assured the public of war-like preparations: three C-130 air force cargo planes and 32 military helicopters and planes on standby, along with 20 navy ships.
"No typhoon can bring Filipinos to their knees if we'll be united," he said in a televised address.
___
Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano in the Philippines and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
Max Mosley may have used poor judgment when he trusted a group of prostitutes to respect his privacy. The girls recorded their sadomasochistic romp, leaving the ex F1 chief red-faced and litigious. Now, thanks to a French court, his shame is Google's headache. To hide the evidence of his escapade, the company may have to spend a whole lot more than the $4,000 Mosley shelled out to the hookers.
A French court has ruled that Google must automatically block links to nine images of Max Mosley participating in an orgy, according to press reports. Mosley is the former president of the International Automobile Federation.
The company reportedly must find a way to prevent all links to the images from appearing in its image search results for a period of five years. The order takes effect two months after the ruling, presumably to allow Google time to build a filter tool.
The company will be fined 1,000 euros (US$1,344) every time one of the images is found through its search engine, starting next year, the court reportedly ruled.
Google previously argued such a ruling would be tantamount to "automated censorship" of the Web.
Privacy vs. Free Speech
In 2008, the British tabloid News of the World published a video and story relating to a "sick Nazi orgy" in which Mosley participated. He admitted taking part in sadomasochistic activity with five women and paying them, but brushed off accusations of there being a Nazi theme and claimed the video breached his privacy.
Later that year, a UK court ruled the News of the World had breached his privacy and said there was no public interest in printing the story. He was awarded US$94,000 in damages.
In 2011, Mosley won a similar ruling against the now-defunct newspaper's publisher, News Corp., in France.
For companies that operate in multiple countries, having to deal with privacy and free speech laws that vary in different regions "makes day-to-day operations quite complicated and difficult," Anupam Chander, professor and scholar in the law of globalization and digitization at UC Davis School of Law, told TechNewsWorld.
"Anyone who has the means, as Mosley does, will resort to court orders," he added, in order to have perhaps unflattering content about themselves removed from Google results.
The ruling would force it to create a software filter to automatically detect and block the images, Google said. Because it cannot stop others from reposting them on the Web, it would essentially be compelled to act as gatekeeper, tracking where people were posting the images and stopping others from accessing them through Google's services.
Not Our Job
In September, Google said it had removed hundreds of links on Mosley's behalf, following its standard process of scrubbing links to certain pages after the content has been deemed to violate the law.
The French ruling forces Google to take a more proactive approach in purging the Mosley images.
Google is merely a platform for helping people find content, and it should not be responsible for policing links, it has argued.
Banning the images from appearing in its search results would not stop people from accessing them through other means, such as on social networks or other search engines, Google has pointed out.
It reportedly plans to appeal the French court's ruling, which also ordered payment to Mosley of a token 1 euro ($1.34) in damages and 5,000 euros ($6,717) in costs.
"Google is obliged to follow the law in countries where they have boots on the ground, where they have servers or where they have employees," Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told TechNewsWorld.
"Certainly, Google does have boots on the ground in France, and so they are obliged to follow French law," she continued. However, "the thing they are being asked to do is so technically difficult and potentially expensive that there's no doubt Google will appeal this decision."
Tricking algae's biological clock boosts production of drugs, biofuels
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: David Salisbury david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu 615-343-6803 Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Tricking algae's biological clock boosts production of drugs, biofuels
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: David Salisbury david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu 615-343-6803 Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Back in mid-October, newly unemployed and still steamed about the UFC Fight Night 29 loss that cost him his job, Joey Beltran went out to lunch with an old friend.
In his younger days, Beltran used to DJ all around San Diego for a company called Xtreme Fun. Birthdays, fundraisers, Bar Mitzvahs; you name it, Xtreme Fun handled it. And on this particular autumn afternoon, with his former Xtreme Fun boss sitting across from him, Beltran decided that he wanted back in the DJ game.
"I was pissed off and depressed about the fight, about the (Fabio) Maldonado decision. I was just like, ‘I don't even want to do this anymore. This is bulls--t,'" Beltran admitted on Monday's edition of The MMA Hour.
"[My old boss was] like, ‘I think you should give it some time, Joey. I don't think you want to do that.' So shout out to that guy for talking me out of it."
That Beltran laughed as the words left his mouth, even less than a month after his UFC career came crashing down, explains just how drastic of a turnaround the fighter has undergone in a remarkably short time span.
Beltran was unemployed scarcely a few weeks before Bellator came calling, inked him to compete in February's light heavyweight tournament, then bumped up that debut with an opportunity he couldn't refuse. Now the 31-year-old is preparing for November 15, where he'll fill in for an injured Tito Ortiz against one of Bellator's most prized signings, former UFC champion Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.
In Beltran's eyes, not only is it a chance to redeem himself with a win over a name opponent, it's also an opportunity to bring back the old Mexicutioner style which first endeared him to fans.
"Here's the thing. Honestly, so much pressure is put on you -- for me, at least. While fighting in the UFC, I just always kind of felt like, geez man, every fight I'm fighting for my career. Every fight, if I lose I'm going to get cut, so for the last couple fights, it's been more on the side of, okay, let's figure out a way that I can win these fights," Beltran said.
"(But) this fight, I know what I'm being brought in there for. I don't have that pressure. If anything, if there's every been a fight where I've had zero pressure, it's funny that it happens to be the most important fight of my life.
"I'm brought in purely for my entertainment value," Beltran continued. "They haven't said that, but I know that. And so I'm going to go out there and I'm going to deliver. I've already told my wife, she's not coming to this fight. I told my family, listen, it could get pretty ugly because I'm going out there to do a job, and my job is to entertain."
Beltran's self-awareness is refreshing, as his assessment of the situation is probably more accurate than not. Bellator has marketed Jackson lavishly since the former champ inked a deal with Viacom, one which included reality television outlets and potential film ventures.
Nonetheless, Beltran wouldn't quite go so far as to say he was brought in by Bellator officials to lose.
"The thing is, I have enough notoriety and enough fans, a little cult following if you will, that like what I do in the cage," Beltran said.
"If I'm looking at it from a promoter's standpoint. Yeah, Rampage already has an established name. But there's a lot of people that are already kind of negative on him, saying he's washed up or he's Hollywood, stuff like that. So I come in, everybody loves an underdog story, and so if I were to win, they could totally market the s--t out of me."
As Beltran readies for his Bellator debut, he does so with high hopes, and understandably so. The pair are expected to headline Bellator 108, even above a heavyweight title tilt between Alexander Volkov vs. Vitaly Minakov.
Bellator's decision to promote Jackson's non-title debut over a championship bout raised some eyebrows, but not more so than the revelation that the fight will be contested at a 210-pound catchweight.
"I was ready to go at 205. You can interpret that however you want," Beltran said flatly. "They presented it to me like, since this is a short notice fight for Joey, we'll do it at 215. And I said, ‘F--k no. Dude, I'll make 205 just fine.' So then we went back and forth and settled at 210.
"215 would've been a big deal, because I know if somebody only had to make 215, they're probably gonna come in at fight time, 250. So I was pushing for that 205."
It's not a distant leap to assume the negotiation over weight meant that either Jackson, or someone within Jackson's camp, feared a botched weight cut. Beltran, who's already seen Jackson once at a media opportunity, says Jackson appeared "pretty big" in person, but added that he "didn't look fat or anything."
Ultimately, though, Beltran isn't concerned by whatever issues may be in play. He's a man who fought at heavyweight for seven years, and after facing the likes of Lavar Johnson and Matt Mitrione, size tends to lose it's significance. The real question on Beltran's mind is the same one weighing on the minds of many fans: does Jackson, a once ferocious competitor, still have anything left in the tank?
"Here's the thing, I don't really know," Beltran finished. "I'm banking on the guy that powerbombed Ricardo Arona through the cage. The guy that knocked out Chuck Liddell twice. I'm banking on that guy showing up to fight. I'm not banking on some washed up 35-year-old has been, or anything like that by any means. I'm banking on a crazy, howling at the moon Rampage coming for my head."
Contact: Birgit Manno birgit.manno@helmholtz-hzi.de 49-531-618-11411 Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
Scientists unravel the role of a pathogen molecule
This news release is available in German.
Braunschweig have now discovered what makes a specific strain of Yersinia pseudotuberculosisone of the main instigators for these infectionsso dangerous: the bacteria produce a molecule called CNFy that facilitates the infection process for them. It changes the host cells in a manner that enables the injection apparatus of Yersinia, which injects toxins into the cells, to work more efficiently. This strengthens the infection and leads to inflammation of the tissue.
Whether an immune cell divides, alarms other immune cells or dies is strictly controlled in our immune system. "Molecular switches" influence these processes and basically set the course for different pathways. In light of the evolutionary competition between the immune system and the microbes, researchers have found that bacteria produce different substances to manipulate the position of the switches to their advantage.
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) have examined one of those substances in more detail. Their results have been published in the American scientific magazine PLOS Pathogens. The team led by Prof Petra Dersch, head of the Department "Molecular Infection Biology", became aware of the molecule called CNFy, because the bacterium Yersinia pseudotuberculosis produces it in large quantities.
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is transmitted via contaminated food and can generate gastro-intestinal diseases. However, not all strains produce CNFy. The scientists had therefore assumed that it played no significant role. The interdisciplinary team has now shown that this was a mistake. "Bacteria only produce molecules that are useful for their purposes. Therefore, we wanted to know why Yersinia would need CNFy," Dersch says.
In order to elucidate its function, the scientists genetically modified a bacterial strain that usually forms CNFy in such a way that it lost the ability to produce this factor. "The altered bacterium was no longer capable of escaping the immune system of the host organism and could not cause disease," reports Janina Schweer, PhD student at the HZI. This is remarkable since the bacteria certainly have other pathogenic characteristics in their repertoire. They have large molecular complexes at their disposal with which they can inject destructive substances into the host cell. This is a very effective method to promote an infection. "It seems that this mechanism is not sufficiently active in some Yersinia. Apparently, the examined Yersinia strain needs CNFy so that its "molecular syringes" can inject sufficient quantities of active substances into the immune cells," explains Prof Jochen Hhn, head of the Department "Experimental Immunology" at the HZI. These active substances, mostly cell toxins, damage the immune cells. Many of the substances cause cell mortality. This facilitates the expansion of Yersinia within the infected organism. During advanced infections, inflammation occurs, as well as damage to the tissue.
The researchers have also identified the molecular target that CNFy manipulates, generating the dramatic consequences: this involves the so-called small Rho GTPases. These enzymes initiate a whole cascade of events, for example alteration of the cytoskeleton. This leads to pores in the host cell surface, through which bacterial syringes can more efficiently transport active agents into the cell. The observed cell mortality of the immune cells is introduced through Rho GTPases as well.
"We here have discovered a very clever strategy of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. With the aid of CNFy, the bacterium manipulates the host cell in such a manner that the injection apparatus can work more effectively," explains Dersch. "It sets the course for an efficient infection and triggers onset of the disease."
The present study shows that CNFy is very important for Yersinia. At the same time, it emphasizes the central role of the injection apparatus that is deployed in a more robust manner via CNFy it is, and remains, an important drug target for intervention measures.
###
Original publication:
Janina Schweer, Devesha Kulkarni, Annika Kochut, Jrn Pezoldt, Fabio Pisano, Marina C. Pils, Harald Genth, Jochen Hhn und Petra Dersch
The cytotoxic necrotizing factor of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (CNFy) enhances inflammation and Yop delivery during infection by activation of Rho GTPases.
PLOS Pathogens, 2013, DOI:
Gastrointestinal infections trigger a wide range of intestinal disorders. They are caused by bacteria such as Yersinia. The Department "Molecular Infection Biology" studies how Yersinia attaches to the intestinal cell layer, prevents attacks of the immune system and spreads within the body.
The Department "Experimental Immunology" at the HZI studies the development of immune cells and the cellular and molecular mechanisms that keep the immune system in balance. The scientists pay particular attention to the so-called regulatory T cells.
The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI)
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany, are engaged in the study of different mechanisms of infection and of the body's response to infection. Helping to improve the scientific community's understanding of a given bacterium's or virus' pathogenicity is key to developing effective new treatments and vaccines.
http://www.helmholtz-hzi.de
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Bacterial toxin sets the course for infection
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Birgit Manno birgit.manno@helmholtz-hzi.de 49-531-618-11411 Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
Scientists unravel the role of a pathogen molecule
This news release is available in German.
Braunschweig have now discovered what makes a specific strain of Yersinia pseudotuberculosisone of the main instigators for these infectionsso dangerous: the bacteria produce a molecule called CNFy that facilitates the infection process for them. It changes the host cells in a manner that enables the injection apparatus of Yersinia, which injects toxins into the cells, to work more efficiently. This strengthens the infection and leads to inflammation of the tissue.
Whether an immune cell divides, alarms other immune cells or dies is strictly controlled in our immune system. "Molecular switches" influence these processes and basically set the course for different pathways. In light of the evolutionary competition between the immune system and the microbes, researchers have found that bacteria produce different substances to manipulate the position of the switches to their advantage.
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) have examined one of those substances in more detail. Their results have been published in the American scientific magazine PLOS Pathogens. The team led by Prof Petra Dersch, head of the Department "Molecular Infection Biology", became aware of the molecule called CNFy, because the bacterium Yersinia pseudotuberculosis produces it in large quantities.
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is transmitted via contaminated food and can generate gastro-intestinal diseases. However, not all strains produce CNFy. The scientists had therefore assumed that it played no significant role. The interdisciplinary team has now shown that this was a mistake. "Bacteria only produce molecules that are useful for their purposes. Therefore, we wanted to know why Yersinia would need CNFy," Dersch says.
In order to elucidate its function, the scientists genetically modified a bacterial strain that usually forms CNFy in such a way that it lost the ability to produce this factor. "The altered bacterium was no longer capable of escaping the immune system of the host organism and could not cause disease," reports Janina Schweer, PhD student at the HZI. This is remarkable since the bacteria certainly have other pathogenic characteristics in their repertoire. They have large molecular complexes at their disposal with which they can inject destructive substances into the host cell. This is a very effective method to promote an infection. "It seems that this mechanism is not sufficiently active in some Yersinia. Apparently, the examined Yersinia strain needs CNFy so that its "molecular syringes" can inject sufficient quantities of active substances into the immune cells," explains Prof Jochen Hhn, head of the Department "Experimental Immunology" at the HZI. These active substances, mostly cell toxins, damage the immune cells. Many of the substances cause cell mortality. This facilitates the expansion of Yersinia within the infected organism. During advanced infections, inflammation occurs, as well as damage to the tissue.
The researchers have also identified the molecular target that CNFy manipulates, generating the dramatic consequences: this involves the so-called small Rho GTPases. These enzymes initiate a whole cascade of events, for example alteration of the cytoskeleton. This leads to pores in the host cell surface, through which bacterial syringes can more efficiently transport active agents into the cell. The observed cell mortality of the immune cells is introduced through Rho GTPases as well.
"We here have discovered a very clever strategy of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. With the aid of CNFy, the bacterium manipulates the host cell in such a manner that the injection apparatus can work more effectively," explains Dersch. "It sets the course for an efficient infection and triggers onset of the disease."
The present study shows that CNFy is very important for Yersinia. At the same time, it emphasizes the central role of the injection apparatus that is deployed in a more robust manner via CNFy it is, and remains, an important drug target for intervention measures.
###
Original publication:
Janina Schweer, Devesha Kulkarni, Annika Kochut, Jrn Pezoldt, Fabio Pisano, Marina C. Pils, Harald Genth, Jochen Hhn und Petra Dersch
The cytotoxic necrotizing factor of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (CNFy) enhances inflammation and Yop delivery during infection by activation of Rho GTPases.
PLOS Pathogens, 2013, DOI:
Gastrointestinal infections trigger a wide range of intestinal disorders. They are caused by bacteria such as Yersinia. The Department "Molecular Infection Biology" studies how Yersinia attaches to the intestinal cell layer, prevents attacks of the immune system and spreads within the body.
The Department "Experimental Immunology" at the HZI studies the development of immune cells and the cellular and molecular mechanisms that keep the immune system in balance. The scientists pay particular attention to the so-called regulatory T cells.
The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI)
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany, are engaged in the study of different mechanisms of infection and of the body's response to infection. Helping to improve the scientific community's understanding of a given bacterium's or virus' pathogenicity is key to developing effective new treatments and vaccines.
http://www.helmholtz-hzi.de
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2008 file photo, a rack of donuts is displayed at a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Boston. Consumers wondering what food without trans fat will taste like, probably already know as food manufacturers began eliminating it years ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.
Condemning artificial trans fats as a threat to public health, the FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to phase them out.
Manufacturers already have eliminated many trans fats, responding to criticism from the medical community and to local laws, Even so, the FDA said getting rid of the rest — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.
It won't happen right away. The agency will collect comments for two months before determining a phase-out timetable. Different foods may have different schedules, depending how easy it is to find substitutes.
"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."
Indeed, so much already has changed that most people won't notice much difference, if any, in food they get at groceries or restaurants.
Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats. And they can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.
Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some baked goods such as pie crusts and biscuits and in ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.
They also are sometimes used by restaurants for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.
How can the government get rid of them? The FDA said it has made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which covers thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.
The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.
Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal-Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016. Recent school lunch guidelines prevent them from being served in cafeterias.
In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2008 ban that led to much of the change. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.
But support is far from universal. A nationwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Center between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6 said that of the 996 adults surveyed, 44 percent were in favor of prohibiting restaurants from using trans fats while 52 percent opposed the idea.
Still, Americans are eating much less of the fat. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among Americans declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram in 2012.
A handful of other countries have banned them, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted strict labeling laws.
Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement that his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.
The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult a ban might be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."
Said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg: "While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern."
Agency officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the prohibition is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."
"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
A former UFC heavyweight champion, "Cigano," has suffered two devastating losses to Cain Velasquez in less than one year, but that won’t make him give up on his title aspirations.
Despite the fact that he lost two of the last three fights the heavyweight kingpin, dos Santos believes he could earn another shot at the title when he gets back to the win column.
"You never know how the division will be in the future," dos Santos told MMAFighting.com. "My goal was, and still is, to become the No. 1 again. I will do my best to make that happen as soon as possible.
"I’m taking a time off to relax and take care of my life. I love to be who I am and do what I do, and I’m sure I’ll be back to show my work really soon. I don’t pick opponents, and I will fight whoever the UFC wants."
"Cigano" met Velasquez for the third time at UFC 166, on Oct. 19 in Houston, Texas, and the fight played out basically as the second bout, on December 2012.
"I’ve made some mistakes again. My strategy was to brawl because I believed I would be in an advantage with that," he said. "But my opponent knew how to block my standup game and do what he does best. After every fight I’m getting more experience and learning. The most important thing I’ve learned in this fight is about strategy, and I believe he was better prepared than me."
"I don’t think the fight should have been stopped earlier because Cain and I were both looking for the victory and defending ourselves at the same time to avoid the fight being stopped," he said. "And you can see that because the fight was over when I went for a submission and hit my head on the mat. I was dizzy and couldn’t defend myself, and then (the referee) stopped the fight.
"All my corners know me and know how I react in every situation, and I’m sure they never thought about it. I believed in the victory all the time. They also believe that. I’m not against throwing in the towel, but I also know my limitations and I would never expose myself to a situation I can’t handle. I would be really sad if they have taken that away from me by throwing in the towel, but I’m positive that with my team it would never happen."
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t9895CbwaF_LA8y8wZRNSTuUBmoziPfM4SmvAXWHZr5wM5Q37u2XFDUZ6UXeOrSoYj_Qmw4qnJGKppu9oZ0hQG0Ix23WLOQOHyewDJVw8=s0-d){kind=small}
Share