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Richard H. Ebright
Richard High Ebright is an American molecular biologist. He is the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology. Early life and education Ebright received an A.B. '' summa cum laude'' in biology from Harvard University in 1981 and a PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics from Harvard University in 1987. He was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1984 to 1987. Career Ebright was appointed as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Rutgers University and as a Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology in 1987. He was co-appointed as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1997 to 2013. Ebright's research has included the experimental demonstration that amino-acid-base contacts mediate DNA sequence recognition in protein-DNA interaction, the determination of the three-dimensional structural organization o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, Dutch Reformed Church. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States, the second-oldest in New Jersey (after Princeton University), and one of the nine U.S. colonial colleges that were chartered before the American Revolution.Stoeckel, Althea"Presidents, professors, and politics: the colonial colleges and the American revolution", ''Conspectus of History'' (1976) 1(3):45–56. In 1825, Queen's College was renamed Rutgers College in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers, whose substantial gift to the school had stabilized its finances during a period of uncertainty. For most of its existence, Rutgers was a Private university, private liberal arts college but it has evolved int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rho Factor
A ρ factor (Rho factor) is a bacterial protein involved in the termination of transcription. * Rho factor binds to the transcription terminator pause site, an exposed region of single stranded RNA (a stretch of 72 nucleotides) after the open reading frame at C-rich/G-poor sequences that lack obvious secondary structure. Rho factor is an essential transcription protein in bacteria. In ''Escherichia coli'', it is a ~274.6 kD hexamer of identical subunits. Each subunit has an RNA-binding domain and an ATP-hydrolysis domain. Rho is a member of the RecA/SF5 family of ATP-dependent hexameric helicases that function by wrapping nucleic acids around a single cleft extending around the entire hexamer. Rho functions as an ancillary factor for RNA polymerase. There are two types of transcriptional termination in bacteria, rho-dependent termination and intrinsic termination (also called Rho-independent termination). Rho-dependent terminators account for about half of the ''E. coli'' factor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wuhan Institute Of Virology
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (WIV; ) is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The institute is one of nine independent organisations in the Wuhan Branch of the CAS. Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. The institute has collaborated with the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France, and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The institute has been an active premier research center for the study of coronaviruses. History The WIV was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It was established by scientists Gao Shangyin, a graduate of Soochow University (Suzhou), and Chen Huagui. In 1961, it became the South China ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gain-of-function
Gain-of-function research (GoF research or GoFR) is medical research that genetically alters an organism in a way that may enhance the biological functions of gene products. This may include an altered pathogenesis, transmissibility, or host range, i.e. the types of hosts that a microorganism can infect. This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics. For example, influenza B can infect only humans and harbor seals. Introducing a mutation that would allow influenza B to infect rabbits in a controlled laboratory situation would be considered a gain-of-function experiment, as the virus did not previously have that function. That type of experiment could then help reveal which parts of the virus's genome correspond to the species that it can infect, enabling the creation of antiviral medicines which block this function. In virology, gain-of-function research is usually employed with the intention o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Tabak
Lawrence A. Tabak (born 1951) is an American dentist and biomedical scientist serving as the principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. He served as acting director from 2021 to 2023. Previously he was the director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research from 2000 to 2010. Education Tabak is a native of Brooklyn, New York. He received his undergraduate degree from City College of New York, his D.D.S. from Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, and both a Ph.D. and certificate of proficiency in endodontics from the University at Buffalo. Tabak's 1981 dissertation was titled ''Structural and functional studies of monkey salivary mucin''. Career Tabak was the senior associate dean for research and professor of dentistry and biochemistry and biophysics in the University of Rochester Medical Center. He was a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award recipient, Tabak's major research focus has been on the structure, biosynthesis a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Collins
Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, from 17 August 2009 to 19 December 2021, serving under three presidents, and for over 12 years. Before being appointed director of the NIH, Collins led the Human Genome Project and other genomics research initiatives as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the 27 institutes and centers at NIH. Before joining NHGRI, he earned a reputation as an LSU Fan at the University of Michigan. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. Collins also has written a number of books on science, medicine, and religion, including the ''New York Times'' bestseller, '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Fauci
Anthony Stephen Fauci (; born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president. As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci has served the American public health sector in various capacities for more than fifty years and has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. He has been director of the NIAID since 1984 and has made contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiency diseases, both as a research scientist and as the head of the NIAID. From 1983 to 2002, Fauci was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals. In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, for his work on the AIDS relief program PEPFAR. During the COVID-19 pandemic, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NIAID
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's mission is to conduct basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases. NIAID has on-campus laboratories in Maryland and Hamilton, Montana, and funds research conducted by scientists at institutions in the United States and throughout the world. NIAID also works closely with partners in academia, industry, government, and non-governmental organizations in multifaceted and multidisciplinary efforts to address emerging health challenges such as the H1N1/09 pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. History NIAID traces its origins to a small laboratory established in 1887 at the Marine Hospital on Staten Island, New York (now the Bayley Seton Hospital). Officials of the Marin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SARS-CoV-2
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a provisional name, 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and has also been called the human coronavirus 2019 (HCoV-19 or hCoV-19). First identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that is contagious in humans. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a virus of the species ''severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus'' (SARSr-CoV), related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus that caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. Despite its close relation to SARS-CoV-1, its closest known relatives, with which it forms a sister group, are the derived SARS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biosecurity
Biosecurity refers to measures aimed at preventing the introduction and/or spread of harmful organisms (e.g. viruses, bacteria, etc.) to animals and plants in order to minimize the risk of transmission of infectious disease. In agriculture, these measures are aimed at protecting food crops and livestock from pests, invasive species, and other organisms not conducive to the welfare of the human population. The term includes biological threats to people, including those from pandemic diseases and bioterrorism. The definition has sometimes been broadened to embrace other concepts, and it is used for different purposes in different contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic is a recent example of a threat for which biosecurity measures have been needed in all countries of the world. Background and terminology The term "biosecurity" has been defined differently by various disciplines. The term was first used by the agricultural and environmental communities to describe preventative measur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biosafety
Biosafety is the prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health. These prevention mechanisms include conduction of regular reviews of the biosafety in laboratory settings, as well as strict guidelines to follow. Biosafety is used to protect from harmful incidents. Many laboratories handling biohazards employ an ongoing risk management assessment and enforcement process for biosafety. Failures to follow such protocols can lead to increased risk of exposure to biohazards or pathogens. Human error and poor technique contribute to unnecessary exposure and compromise the best safeguards set into place for protection. The international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety deals primarily with the agricultural definition but many advocacy groups seek to expand it to include post-genetic threats: new molecules, artificial life forms, and even robots which may compete directly in the natural food chain. Biosafety in agriculture, chemistry, med ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biological Weapons
A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterrorism or biological warfare (BW). In addition to these living or replicating pathogens, toxins and biotoxins are also included among the bio-agents. More than 1,200 different kinds of potentially weaponizable bio-agents have been described and studied to date. Biological agents have the ability to adversely affect human health in a variety of ways, ranging from relatively mild allergic reactions to serious medical conditions, including serious injury, as well as serious or permanent disability or even death. Many of these organisms are ubiquitous in the natural environment where they are found in water, soil, plants, or animals. Bio-agents may be amenable to "weaponization" to render them easier to deploy or disseminate. Genetic modification m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
