Vol. 38, No. 18

3-1-2006
By: Research Communications staff

Discoveries briefs 3/2/06

Snows of Kilimanjaro disappearing, glacial ice loss increasing
Five years after warning that the famed ice fields on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro may melt, Ohio State researchers sadly have found that their prediction is coming true. And the impact of the loss of that ice atop Africa's highest peak - disregarding the loss of tourism that will follow the vanishing ice - could add to the heavy drought burden already facing those living near that mountain.

For Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences, his third expedition to the summit of Kilimanjaro was all too much like visiting a sick friend in failing health. In 2002, Thompson and his colleagues shocked the scientific community with their prediction that the ice fields capping the mountain would disappear between 2015 and 2020 - the victims, at least in part, of global warming. Returning to his campus office recently, he admits that nothing has happened to alter that prediction. In fact, the mountain's ice fields may disappear sooner.

"The change there is so dramatic," he said. "We can see it both in the field and from aerial photographs of the mountaintop. I would say it is on track to disappear, and the rate of ice loss may even be accelerating. But we need to look at the numbers to confirm that."

www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/scndkili.htm

Researchers find better way to deliver gene therapy
While gene therapy continues to be a promising area of medicine, a major drawback of this kind of treatment can spell failure for many patients enrolled in gene therapy clinical trials: Most people's immune systems may destroy the viral carrier that is most often used to deliver healthy genes into sick cells. A new study explains that scientists may have found a way around this problem.

Researchers used a laboratory technique called polymerase chain reaction to alter genetic sequences of the outer coating, or capsid, of adeno-associated virus. AAV is a normally innocuous virus that is often used to deliver healthy genes to diseased tissues. "We were able to make random changes throughout the entire genetic sequence of the AAV capsid," said Brian Kaspar, a study co-author and an assistant professor of pediatrics. "And by doing that we generated more than a million different variations of this capsid, including mutations that the human immune system hopefully won't recognize and therefore shouldn't react against."

Now that they have a massive library of AAV variations, Kaspar said it's possible to fish out different capsid mutations based on the type of tissue or kind of disease that scientists want to treat. They can also conduct laboratory tests to determine which AAV capsid variations are able to avoid detection by the human immune system.

www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/newvect.htm

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