Stories of modern science ... from UPI

REDHEADS RESPOND TO PAIN KILLERS BETTER

A gene for red hair and fair skin also could help redheads make the most out of painkiller medication, say McGill University researchers. Researcher Jeffrey Mogil says previous research found a female-specific pain pathway in the brain and analgesics that target receptors in this pathway -- called kappa-opioid receptors -- reportedly work only in women. The researchers used quantitative trait locus mapping to identify a candidate gene -- Mc1r linked to pigmentation -- that could be responsible for this sex difference. The researchers tested a clinically used kappa analgesic, pentazocine, on male and female humans with several Mc1r variations causing different hair colors and skin types. The Mc1r variations did not affect analgesic response to pentazocine in men, but caused a heightened response in redheaded, fair-skinned women.

ENCRUSTATION TELLS HISTORY

Encrustation, when marine organisms attach themselves permanently to seashells, provides a history of the sea for researchers to unravel. Virginia Tech doctoral student David Rodland say encrusting organisms or epibionts produce their own tubes, shells or skeletons that become fossilized along with the seashell over time. "You can count the number and diversity of epibionts on a shell, for example, and see how it changes as a function of shell size," he says. "Or you can examine how encrustation varies between different kinds of shells or between the shells collected at different places and under different environmental conditions." Rodland says some researchers have even say encrustation history could be used to estimate the amount of nutrients and plankton available in ancient seas.

REMOVING MERCURY FROM THE LAB

Environmental bad boy Mercury, found in abundance in laboratory switches, pressure gauges and thermometers, can be history in most typical lab settings, say researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mercury is toxic to humans through inhalation, skin contact and ingestion and in a lab it is easily spilled and can go unnoticed in aging equipment. After two mercury spills at the Los Alamos lab in 2000, researchers began looking for mercury-free technology for pressure gauges, electronic relays, switches and thermometers. They found several mercury-free barometers and vacuum gauges, liquid-filled bourdon gauges and electronic thermometers and pressure gauges -- and the result was a significant reduction in mercury-dependent instruments in the lab.

DESIGNER MOLECULES INTERFERE WITH DNA

Virginia Tech scientists are working on compounds that can be released on command in the presence of disease cells. That's important because currently used compounds that interfere with the DNA of cancer cells to kill them also often damage non-cancer cells as well. The researchers have developed a new molecule that can be signaled to bind to target DNA and stop replication. It does not become toxic, however, until it receives a light signal, at which point it cleaves with the DNA so it cannot replicate, the researchers say. Results in test tubes and under the microscope with different cell lines have shown the specially constructed molecules can kill cells in the presence of light.

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(EDITORS: For more information about REDHEADS, contact Jeffrey S. Mogil at (514) 398-6085 or e-mail jeffrey.mogil@mcgill.ca. For ENCRUSTATION, David Rodland, (540) 231-8828 or drodland@vt.edu, for MERCURY, Kevin Roark at knroark@lanl.gov, and for DNA INTERFERE, Karen Brewer, (540) 231-6579 or kbrewer@vt.edu.)