A blood protein blocks hardening of enamel on teeth growing inside the jaw

Australian and Chilean researchers solve a 100-year-old mystery and call for education and research to save millions of teeth worldwide.

Case studies available.

One in five children have chalky tooth enamel – visible as discoloured enamel spots – which often causes severe toothache and decay, and sometimes leads to abscesses, extractions and orthodontic problems.

Now, researchers from The D3 Group (based at The University of Melbourne, Australia) and the University of Talca in Chile, have discovered the mechanism causing molar hypomineralisation, the commonest type of chalky teeth.

They report today in Frontiers of Physiology that chalky molars arise when developing enamel is contaminated by albumin – a protein found both in blood and in the tissue fluid surrounding developing teeth. The trigger appears to be childhood illnesses.

RMIT researchers call on Melburnians to plant the right plants and create the right homes for native pollinators.

They say we’ll get better tomato crops, more flowers and boost urban biodiversity.

Link for footage from Botanic Gardens and images of native bees

As Melbourne’s gardens burst into life after a wet spring, native insects are out looking for flowers and pollen. City gardeners rely on bees, butterflies and other insects to pollinate their plants, which is how flowering plants reproduce and grow fruit or seeds.

But city gardens often don’t have the right types of food and homes for these helpful native bees and flies, with knock-on effects for our gardens and for biodiversity. Urban ecologist Katherine Berthon from RMIT University found that only 43% of flowers in the Melbourne city gardens she studied were being used by bees and other pollinating insects.

On this page:

• Media release
• Images of the device in RFDS plane, in ambulances, and brain scans
• Background info about Micro-X, ASA and strokes
• Fact sheet

Saving lives after stroke with a small aircraft or ambulance-mounted CT brain scanner

Adelaide company Micro-X (MX1) has started developing a small CT brain scanner that can be fitted in ambulances and emergency aircraft. If successful, the device will allow paramedics and retrieval teams to diagnose and then start treating stroke patients in the golden hour – the first hour after a stroke.

Background information including:

• press statement from the Nature Publishing Group
• abstract of the paper
• about the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging
• about the Australian Synchrotron

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Are you or your researchers keen to speak up for science? Now more than ever we need to hear stories of science, how science has made an impact and changed our lives. We need to see and hear from passionate researchers who are making a difference.

In this bulletin I’m focussing on training, prizes and showcasing science.

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Posted on behalf of Nadia Rosenthal, Scientific Head, EMBL Australia

It’s been a pretty exciting time for EMBL Australia lately, with international visitors, new group leaders, and even a Nature paper.

But the one thing which really stood out for me in the past year was our EMBL Australia PhD Course.

At last year’s course at WEHI in Melbourne, we spent two weeks with 60 passionate and enthusiastic PhD students.

Not only did the students learn the tools of the trade from top researchers, they also formed an invaluable network of peers, who will hold their own student-run symposium in Sydney later this year.

This year we’ll bring together another 60 PhD students at ANU in Canberra. Applications are open now – read on for more details.

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A team from Melbourne, Monash, UQ and the synchrotron (including core members of the ARC Imaging Centre team) have found what sends our MAITs into action to protect our gut from invaders.

The patented work is the starting point to understanding our first line of defence, and what happens when it goes wrong.  It will lead to new ways of diagnosing and treating inflammatory bowel disease, peptic ulcers and even TB.

• Read the press release and background information, including the abstract and the full paper.
• You can also find the paper at: : www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13160.html
• Visit the Imaging CoE website at: www.imagingcoe.org
• Read the Monash University release here
• Read the University of Queensland release here
• Read the University of Melbourne release here

Contact Niall on niall@scienceinpublic.com.au to get in touch with the team.

This morning Monash, Melbourne, and UQ have a cracking paper in Nature announcing the discovery of a key that wakes up a poorly understood part of our immune system.

It’s the next step for the research which last year won the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research.

Two years ago they discovered that ‘mystery’ immune cells in our gut detect invaders by reacting to components of vitamin B that are only made by certain bacteria and fungi. Now they have a molecular key to turn this off and on.
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