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A scientific breakthrough could help alleviate blood shortages and reduce the danger of accidental blood-type mismatches, researchers and executives for a U.S. biotech firm said yesterday. An international team of scientists announced that it has found a way to convert Types A, B, and AB blood into Type O -- the universal donor blood group that can be given to anyone -- and the American company that commissioned the research said such "universally transfusible" blood has the potential to solve problems associated with storing, transporting and transfusing blood. "The prospects for this are huge ... since blood now must be...

The massive repository of genetic material is poised to advance research—just don’t bother asking for your samples back Inside DoDSR Image: Dina Fine Maron SILVER SPRING, Md.—Nestled inside a generic-looking office building here in suburban Maryland, down the hall from cable-provider Comcast, sits the largest blood serum repository in the world. Seven freezers, each roughly the size of a high school basketball court, are stacked high with row upon row of small cardboard boxes containing tubes of yellow or pinkish blood serum, a liquid rich in antibodies and proteins, but devoid of cells. The freezers hover at –30 degrees Celsius—cold...

Blood type may have something to do with stock investment styles and the success of investment, a poll of 1,126 individual investors suggests. The poll was conducted by stock investment portal site Paxnet from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8. According to the firm, investors with blood type A and AB were more likely to pursue stable investment strategies and were relatively successful in investments, while those with blood type of O and B made more aggressive investments and often lost money. Out of 394 investors with blood type A, 184 (47 percent) made profit in stock investment, as did 79...

What would it have been like to meet a Neandertal? Researchers have hypothesized answers for decades, seeking to put flesh on ancient bones. But fossils are silent on many traits, from hair and skin color to speech and personality. Personality will have to wait, but in a paper published online in Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147417), an international team announces that it has extracted a pigmentation gene, mc1r, from the bones of two Neandertals. The researchers conclude that at least some Neandertals had pale skin and red hair, similar to some of the Homo sapiens who today inhabit their European homeland....

Medieval DNA, Modern Medicine Volume 60 Number 6, November/December 2007 by Heather Pringle Will a cemetery excavation establish a link between the Black Death and resistance to AIDS? Beneath Eindhoven's modern skin of brick and asphalt lie the bones of its medieval townspeople. Studying their DNA may reveal the origin of the genetic resistance to AIDS. (Courtesy Laurens Mulkens) From the start, Nico Arts sensed that the frail remains of a child buried in front of a medieval church altar had an important story to tell. Arts is the municipal archaeologist in Eindhoven, a prosperous industrial city in the southern...

Black Death mutant gene resists Aids, say scientists Jan 4 2005 By Alan Weston, Daily Post IT HAS been described as the 'world's greatest serial killer'. The Black Death was a catastrophe which wiped out nearly half the European population, with 20m people dying between 1348 and 1350. But new research being carried out by a team from Liverpool University has shown that the disease may have produced an unexpected side-effect - resistance to the deadly HIV/Aids virus. Professor Christopher Duncan and Dr Susan Scott have already caused shockwaves among historians with their claim that the Black Death was caused...

The gene known as MC1R suggests the Neanderthals had fair skin and even freckles like redheads. After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk... The report, published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, concludes that: "These results suggest the genetic change responsible for the O blood group in humans predates the human and Neanderthal divergence" but came "after humans separated from their common ancestor ... chimpanzees." ...One gene...

The blood analyzed recently from two weeping icons in Italy and found to possess extraordinary, unique characteristics is of the AB blood type -- the same type reported in the well-known bleeding Host miracle at Lanciano, Italy, and also detected on the famed Shroud of Turin.It was last week that word came from noted Italian author Renzo Allegri [left] that blood genetically analyzed from the weeping icons was tested by a prestigious university and allegedly found to be unique to earth -- unlike any genetic structure in the world blood bank. The odds against it being of the particular...

Scientists have discovered that a particular type of enzyme can cut away antigens in blood types A and B, to make them more like Type O -- considered the 'universal' blood type, because it's the only type that can be donated to anyone without the risk of provoking a life-threatening immune response. The team, from the University of British Columbia of Canada, worked with a family of enzymes called 98 glycoside hydrolase, extracted from a strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Over many generations, they were able to engineer a super high-powered enzyme strain that can very effectively snip away blood antigens...

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a new protein that controls the presence of the Vel blood group antigen on our red blood cells. The discovery makes it possible to use simple DNA testing to find blood donors for patients who lack the Vel antigen and need a blood transfusion. Because there has not previously been any simple way to find these rare donors, there is a global shortage of Vel-negative blood. The largest known accumulation of this type of blood donor is found in the Swedish county of Västerbotten, which exports Vel-negative blood all over the world....