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Document de presse | 2015.11.10
Dengue: asymptomatic people transmit the virus to mosquitoes
Scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia, the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the CNRS provided proof that people infected by dengue virus but showing no clinical symptoms can actually infect mosquitoes that bite them. It appears that these asymptomatic people – who, together with mildly symptomatic patients, represent three-quarters of all dengue infections – could be involved in...
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Document de presse | 2014.04.09
Chikungunya raises concern in the Americas
Despite the presence of potentially susceptible mosquitoes, the first autochthonous cases of chikungunya on the American continent were not reported until December 2013 when a severe epidemic struck the West Indies. In order to assess the risks of the virus being transmitted and spreading throughout the territory, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and Fiocruz (Brazil) undertook the most...
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Document de presse | 2014.05.22
Directing stem cell fates
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur, CEA and CNRS have discovered that the immediate environment of stem cells can have a strong influence on the fate of their descendants. The researchers observed that the forces applied to stem cells during division influenced the likelihood that these dividing cells would produce two new stem cells, one stem cell and one specialized cell, or even two...
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Document de presse | 2013.03.17
Buruli Ulcer: Mechanism Behind Tissue Erosion Revealed
Scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), in collaboration with the Universities of Basel (Switzerland) and Cambridge (UK) have identified the mechanism underlying the formation of Buruli ulcers caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans. Their discovery opens avenues for the development of novel therapeutic approaches for...
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Document de presse | 2013.01.06
Retracing the evolutionary history and emergence of tuberculosis
In association with CEA-Genoscope and the Sanger Institute, scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, the CNRS, INSERM, the Institut Pasteur of Lille, and Université Lille 2 have recently determined the origin of the emergence of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium, the main causative agent of tuberculosis. Researchers have also provided insights into its evolutionary success. They have...
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Document de presse | 2012.10.08
Rooting out the Cause of Blindness in Type 1 Usher Syndrome
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur, the Institut de la Vision, Inserm, and the Pierre and Marie Curie University have determined the cause of blindness associated with type 1 Usher syndrome (the most common genetic cause of deafness and blindness in humans). They have also shown why rodents, the only animal model currently available for research on this disease, are invulnerable to the vision...
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Document de presse | 2012.06.11
Dormancy of stem cells enables them to remain viable…many days post mortem
Under the direction of Fabrice Chrétien*, in collaboration with Shahragim Tajbakhsh**, researchers from the Institut Pasteur, the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, the Paris Public Hospital Network (AP-HP), and the CNRS have shown for the first time in humans and mice, the capacity of stem cells to adopt a dormant state when their environment becomes hostile, including several...
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Document de presse | 2012.05.15
A new optical microscopy approach opens the door to better observations in molecular biology
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur and CNRS have set up a new optical microscopy approach that combines two recent imaging techniques in order to visualize molecular assemblies without affecting their biological functions, at a resolution 10 times better than that of traditional microscopes. Using this approach, they were able to observe the AIDS virus and its capsids (containing the HIV...
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Document de presse | 2012.04.18
A new hope in the fight against tuberculosis
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur and Inserm, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pisa, have uncovered the key role played by specific proteins in the virulence of the mycobacterium responsible for tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. They were able to create an attenuated strain of the mycobacterium, which confers a better protection against tuberculosis than the...
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Document de presse | 2012.03.11
DENFREE: flying towards the efficient control of dengue
Comfortably nested in the salivary glands of mosquitoes, the dengue virus moves around and infects everybody unlucky enough to be bitten. But on the wings of mosquitoes, it can’t possibly go very far and usually stays within a restricted community… unless it “changes vehicle” and travels further away thanks to the infected humans. Starting in January 2012, the Institut...