Ancient Romains knew some pharmacological effect of Marijuana and have used it in their medicine. In the last time other positive effects have been identified for this plant. Unfortunately cannabis is often used out of medical control and is considered as a drug.

At the moment no animal models are available for human Parkinson’s disease. Everyone knows the importance to have right model to study a disease or test drug to care it; this lack must be rapidly overcome, giving the high number of people that suffers for this disease.

Bibliography is a fundamental part of every scientific publication, from PhD thesis to review and experimental paper, as well as pharmaceutical reports or clinician case reports. Each journal has specific requirements and before starting writing any documents it could be useful know about bibliography rule.

In 2007 a young Japanese woman gave birth to her child and after only one month died for leukaemia, ABL-BRC positive. During her pregnancy she didn’t know to be sick and also doctors didn’t diagnose the disease. After eleven months, also the baby showed a tumour into his cheek. Physicians excluded a possible sarcoma and diagnosed also in this case leukaemia, ABL-BCR positive, the same mother’s disease.

Leber’s congenital amaurosis is a pathology that affects 3000 people in USA and causes loss of sight from birth until reaching complete blindness at about 40 years. This disease interests a gene, RPE65 that helps in rhodopsin synthesis. If this gene is mutated, as occurs in the disease, photoreceptor cells into the retina will die.

After advances in DNA sequencing technology, the major task is to determine the functional role of proteins coded by these sequenced genes. Given the broad range of different functions carried out by proteins, it’s obvious that a multiplicity of techniques will be necessary, while DNA sequencing is achieved by few, easy and simply technique. A series of strategies based on generalization and systemization of genetics are emerging now as important tool to fill the gap between sequence and activity.

Even if manipulation of bacterial genome is often difficult and challenging, engineering allows to better understand bacterial biology and genetics. Researchers from C. Venter Institute improve a protocol to clone bacterial genome in yeast, manipulate it and boot it up in bacteria self. To do this they chose an “easy” model, Mycoplasma, because this organism doesn’t have bacterial wall, its genome is small and A-T rich, so is more properly replicated in yeast than ones rich in G-C.

Food safety is one of most important challenge in our countries. Indeed, adulteration and poising food are often described in newspapers. FDA and ESFA are the organizations issued to guarantee food safety in U.S and Europe, respectively. Which are the most common problems that determine food adulteration.

On October 1st at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, Ig Nobel prizes were awarded. Ig Nobel prize is awarded to improbable researches that first make scientists laugh and then make them think. As correspondent Nobel prizes, awards for different application field are assigned: from medicine to economy, from peace to literature, the most improbable researches are highlighted.

Recent paper published on Nature describes an innovative method to directly sequence RNA. mRNA is usually isolated from total cellular lysate and converted in cDNA by reverse transcriptase; then, cDNA is sequenced with protocols currently used for DNA sequencing. The use of an enzyme for retro-transcription could insert mistakes into cDNA sequence with quite high frequency: an advantage of direct RNA sequencing is to bypass this step.