Today, it is with great pride that the ResearchGATE team announces that it has welcomed the 400,000th researcher to its scientific network. Thanks for your continuous feedback, which helped us build the largest scientific network in the world. The 400,000th User is a researcher from United States of America conducting research in Cell Biology.  As ResearchGATE continues to evolve, we will look forward to innovating science and growing this community together.  The next 6 weeks will be very exciting, because we have several new application in our pipeline. We will keep you updated. Thanks again for your great feedback.

Boston, January 20, 2010. This week ResearchGATE was named one of the top 100 global tech start-ups for 2009 by Red Herring, the prominent international technology media group. The Global award has become one of the most prestigious awards in the industry, as Red Herring editors have consistently identified promising technology companies. Google, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and eBay are only a few such examples.

Global winners must demonstrate the ability to handle the challenges of internationalization and a global presence. International collaboration stands at the center of ResearchGATE’s mission. A network for scientists, ResearchGATE has expanded to over 200,000 members from 200 countries in less than two years. The platform was launched in May 2008 and is currently based in Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany.

“The ResearchGATE vision of changing science by facilitating international communication and collaboration has started to become reality the Red Herring Global award attests not only to the platform’s growing prominence but also to its potential within the industry,” says ResearchGATE co-founder and CEO Ijad Madisch, an award-winning virologist. Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria. “Choosing the best out of the previous three years was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed down our list from 1,200 potential companies to 200 finalists.  Trying to get it down to 100
companies was a task upon itself.  The top 100 companies who were chosen should be extremely proud, the competition was difficult.”

"This year was especially difficult", said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. "Despite the global economic situation, there were many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products that we had a difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Now we’re faced with the arduous task of selecting the final 100 winners of the award. We know that this year’s crop will grow into some amazing companies that are sure to go". Finalists for the 2009 edition of the Red Herring Global 100 award are selected from the regional recipients or finalists of the Red Herring 100 awards in 2007, 2008, or 2009 ranging from Asia, Europe, and North America. For the past three years, the award has been given to the top100 global technology companies based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, and clean tech industries sent in their submissions to qualify for the award.

The CEOs of the 200 finalists are invited to present their winning strategies at the Red Herring Global Conference in Laguna Niguel, California, January 12-14, 2010. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony at
the event.

About Red Herring: Red Herring is a global media company uniting the world's best high-technology innovators, venture investors, and business decision-makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters, and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider's view of the global innovation ecosystem, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy.

Today, it is with great pride that the ResearchGATE team announces that it has welcomed the 200,000th researcher to its scientific network.  Thanks for your continuous feedback, which helped us build the largest scientific network that exists today. The 200,000 User is a researcher from Australia, who is currently conducting research in Dietetics and Nutrition.
As we’re headed into the new year, the fact that so many researchers and scientists have signed up and started collaborating only shows that online collaboration and social media will lead the way in 2010. As ResearchGATE continues to evolve, we will look forward to innovating science and growing this community together.

Two independent research groups from China have recently had success cloning a mammal (mouse) from induced pluripotent Stem cells (iPS cells). These pluripotent cells (originally mouse embryonic fibroblast cells, induced to become stem cells) were implanted with an initial 'tetraploid' embryo at the four-cell stage to trigger development from stem cells into a complete fully grown mouse. While a low efficiency was obtained (1% and 3.5%) both of the groups produced live, fertile offspring genetically identical to the stem cells they originated from.

While cloning is nothing spectacular nowadays, this new method opens the door for simpler, easy methods of cloning mammals - including the potential to be used for cloning humans in countries where such cloning is legal.

The commercial availability of kits to turn cells into iPS cells also allows greater access to the source material needed for this method of cloning.

Original publications:


iPS cells produce viable mice through tetraploid complementation

Xiao-yang Zhao1,2,5, Wei Li1,2,5, Zhuo Lv1,2,5, Lei Liu1, Man Tong1,2, Tang Hai1, Jie Hao1,2, Chang-long Guo1,2, Qing-wen Ma3, Liu Wang1, Fanyi Zeng3,4 & Qi Zhou1

iPS Cells Can Support Full-Term Development of Tetraploid Blastocyst-Complemented Embryos

Lan Kang,Jianle Wang,Yu Zhang,Zhaohui Kou andShaorong Gao

It is now believed that luminal progenitor cells – the ‘daughters’ of breast stem cells – are the likely source of basal-like breast tumors that develop in women carrying mutations in the gene BRCA1.
This discovery was made by a team led by Associate Professors Jane Visvader and Geoff Lindeman (couple of other authors' publications: 1,2,3,4; reviews: 1,2)  of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium Laboratory, and was published in today’s issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
Dr. Visvader indicated that in recent years it has been believed that the breast stem cells are what give rise to BRCA1 tumors. Yet breast tissue from women with BRCA1 mutations has been found to have an unexpectedly high number of luminal progenitor cells, as seen in the research conducted by Dr. Elgene Lim and Dr. François Vaillant at the institute.
After the gene expression studies revealed BRCA1 breast tissue and basal breast tumors to be more similar to normal luminal progenitor cells than any other cell type in the breast, focus has shifted away from breast stem cells to errant luminal progenitors.

Source

Researchers at the University of Rouen, France, have discovered a new strain of HIV in a 62-year-old woman from Cameroon now residing in Paris. Prior to this discovery, three HIV strains were known , all related to the simian virus carried by chimpanzees. This new strain differs from the previous three in that it appears similar to a strain of simian virus found in gorillas. While most likely transmitted directly from gorillas to humans, researchers say it is also possible that it began in chimpanzees, moved into gorillas and then to humans, or perhaps moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.
The woman has said that she had no contact with apes or bush meat, which could mean that she became infected with the virus through human contact. The rapid replication of the virus, moreover, indicates that it is adapted to human cells. The prevalence of the strain is yet undetermined, and it could be circulating in western central Africa, according to researchers.

(Source: Randolph E. Schmid (AP), “New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon,”)

HIV is known to enter a cell via CD4 and by the co-receptors CXCR4 and CCR5. Previously researchers believed the envelope of the virus bound to a cell at the membrane surface and fused, allowing entrance of the viral and delivery of the genomic contents to the cytoplasm of the cell. New research, published by Melikyan et al in Cell this month, has opened the door to the field and contradicted the assumptions of many previous researchers. The paper shows that HIV enters the cell through endocytosi, after binding the receptors, and then fuses through the endosome to release the contents of the virus into the cytoplasm of a cell. Hopefully this research will open the door into a better understanding of the virus and allow new potential therapeutic targets, not previously considered, to prevent infection from the virus.

Original paper: Cell Volume 137, Issue 3, 433-444, 1 May 2009:

HIV Enters Cells via Endocytosis and Dynamin-Dependent Fusion with Endosomes

While several groups have shown abberant micro-RNA (or miRNA) expression in cancers, a group from Washington University Medical Centre have shown a direct-link of miRNA's as the primary course of a paediatric lung tumor. Pleuropulmonary blastoma (PPB) is an inherited cancer syndrome and the paper in Science by Hill et al. shows a link between the disease and families harbouring a heterozygous mutation in DICER1, the protein responsible for cleaving/processing miRNAs. They propose that loss of DICER1 expression in the epithelial tissue of the tumour alters proliferation of the surrounding mesenchymal tissue. This is the first paper showing a direct causal link between miRNA's and an associated cancer.

It is not unusual for the disease to be a result of a heterozygous mutation, as in the animal model a deletion of DICER1 is lethal due to the role miRNAs play during natural development. It is expected that DICER1 plays a similar in human development, and abberant DICER1 expression in a paediatric cancer is fitting with the hypothesised role for the protein.

Original article:

DICER1 Mutations in Familial Pleuropulmonary Blastoma

D. Ashley Hill ^1*, J. Ivanovich ², John R. Priest ³, Christina A. Gurnett ², Louis P. Dehner ², David Desruisseau ², Jason A. Jarzembowski ⁴, Kathryn A. Wikenheiser-Brokamp ⁵, Brian K. Suarez ², Alison J. Whelan ², Gretchen Williams ⁶, Dawn Bracamontes ¹, Yoav Messinger ⁶, Paul J. Goodfellow ²

Published Online June 25, 2009
Science



DOI: 10.1126/science.1174334

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26320744_DICER1_Mutations_in_Familial_Pleuropulmonary_Blastoma