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An inexpensive, industry-compatible process developed by researchers at UW-Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center produces high yields of the versatile chemical HMF, which is used to make many bio-based chemicals, plastics and fuels. Deepening orange hues in these vials reflect higher levels of HMF produced with longer reaction times.

David Vail, right, professor and oncologist at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, delivers the very first vaccine in the Vaccination Against Canine Cancer Study to Trilly, a nine-year-old Gordon Setter, as she is held by veterinarian Kara Magee, left, and veterinary technician Rubi Hayem. Photo by Meghan Lepisto On Thursday, May 2, the very first dog received the very first vaccine intended to protect her from cancer.

Stressed-out people make bad food decisions, eating higher-calorie foods and eating more often. Stressed-out parents may be making those unhealthy choices for the children who depend on their judgment, new research finds. "Stress makes us choose more energy-dense foods, more comfort food," says University of Wisconsin-Madison nursing professor Myoungock Jang.

Petrochemicals, the oiland gas-derived compounds that serve as the molecular backbones for much of modern commerce, commanded a $539.3 billion market value in 2018. Replacing just a few of those petroleum products with chemicals made from plants or microbes could put a substantial dent in the world's fossil fuel consumption.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed a promising new cell therapy with potential to improve tissue healing after orthopedic injuries. The new cell therapy, recently described in the journal Stem Cells, accelerated the recovery of ruptured Achilles tendons in a rodent model, and may similarly aid other healing tissues, shortening the time until these structures regain functional strength.

Upper respiratory infections remain one of the most common triggers of asthma attacks in children, but not every cold leads to a dangerous worsening of symptoms, even among children with severe asthma. The reasons for this have mostly gone unanswered for decades, but a new study led by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health provides some insight on what differentiates a cold that leads to an asthma attack from a cold that remains a cold.

MADISON - New research suggests that the microbial communities associated with chronic wounds common in diabetic patients affect whether those wounds heal or lead to amputations. Work led by University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology Lindsay Kalan and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania found that particular strains of the common pathogen Staphylococcus aureus exclusively infected diabetic foot ulcers that never healed, indicating these strains may delay healing.

DNA and the genome, we know, provide the blueprint for life. But it is the proteins made according to the genome's instructions that are the nuts and bolts of living organisms, providing the molecular building blocks for all cells and that are critical targets for therapy. There are many different kinds of proteins that make up the human body and they are widely studied.

When a patient arrives at a hospital with an infection, her doctor must decide which antibiotic might have the best chance of curing her - no easy feat when disease-causing pathogens are increasingly resistant to multiple antibiotics. For that reason, hospitals often track the antibiotic resistance profiles of infectious microbes that they isolate from sick patients, which provide information on the most and least effective drugs.

If caught early, nearly all cases of colon cancer are curable. Though this should make screening tests straightforward, colon cancer screening suffers from a paradoxical combination of low compliance rates and overdiagnosis. In a study published April 8, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists identified four blood-based fingerprints - human protein markers - associated with the pre-cancerous forms of colon cancer that are most likely to develop into disease.

A promising alternative to conventional power plants, solid oxide fuel cells use electrochemical methods that can generate power more efficiently than existing combustion-based generators. But fuel cells tend to degrade too quickly, eating up any efficiency gains through increased cost. Now, in an advance that could help lead the way toward longer-lived green energy devices, engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have revealed new insights about the chemical reactions that power fuel cells.

An invention designed to transform how and where high-powered research microscopes are deployed - and who gets to use them - will make its way from Madison this spring to the fertile biology labs of greater Boston. A portable, shareable scientific microscope nicknamed Flamingo, created in 2018 by imaging pioneer Jan Huisken of the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will make its cross-country journey thanks to support announced today by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

Scientists have long known that the protein p53, when mutated, is a critical factor in the onset of many different kinds of cancer. In its unmutated form, however, it is known to protect against cancer. These dueling qualities make the p53 protein and the gene that makes it among the most studied in biology, yet the molecular mechanisms that govern its stability and function have yet to be fully understood.

For News Media   Contact: A.J. Boydston, aboydston [at] wisc (p) edu × Graduate student Johanna Schwartz next to the multimaterial printing setup that she built. Image courtesy A.J. Boydston and Johanna Schwartz 3D printing has revolutionized the fields of healthcare, biomedical engineering, manufacturing and art design.

For News Media FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE × University of Wisconsin-Madison postdoctoral researcher Jesús Ballesteros holds a small horseshoe crab. A study he led with integrative biology Professor Prashant Sharma used robust genetic analysis to demonstrate that horseshoe crabs are arachnids like spiders, scorpions and ticks.

"Microbial communities run the world," says Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "People always laugh when I say that," she adds. "But it's true." Our rich new understanding of microbial communities and their influence on human health or crop productivity has led to the dream of changing these communities to produce benefits.

For News Media FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE × A sheet of tiny swimming organisms that "push" themselves through fluid with, say, flagella, create forces in the liquid that bend the sheet in asymmetric, shrinking folds. Image courtesy of Saverio Spagnolie Freeing thousands of microorganisms to swim in random directions in an infinite pool of liquid may not sound like a recipe for order, but eventually the swarm will go with its own flow.

UW-Madison research published today (Feb. 11, 2019) reveals how one mutation causes fragile X, the most common inherited intellectual disability. "Fragile X syndrome has been studied as a model of intellectual disability because in theory it's comparatively simple," says senior author Xinyu Zhao, a professor of neuroscience in the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Examinations of National Institutes of Health grants in the last 15 years have shown that white scientists are more likely to be successful in securing funding from the agency than their black peers. A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that bias is unlikely to play out in the initial phase of the process NIH uses to review applications for the billions of federal grant dollars it apportions annually to biology and behavior research, even though the reviewers at that early stage in the process are aware of each grant applicant's identity.

A Cyphomyrmex ant. These fungus-growing ants harbored a microbe that made the newly discovered antibiotic cyphomycin. Photo by Alex Wild Medicine was transformed in the 20th century by the discovery and development of antibiotics, the vast majority of which came from one source: soil bacteria. But we seem to have tapped out that supply.