Hopefully the auto-loader at the bottom will pick some previous posts here about calcium, vitamin D and allergy; these may be necessary for the background of a new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine last week

We looked for Cav1 channel expression in Th2 and Th1-cells by real-time PCR and Western blotting. We sequenced the isoforms expressed by Th2-cells and tested whether Cav1 antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (Cav1AS) affected Ca2+ signaling and cytokine production [...] mouse Th2 but not Th1-cells expressed Cav1.2 and Cav1.3 channels. Th2-cells transfected with Cav1AS had impaired Ca2+ signaling and cytokine production, and lost their ability to induce airway inflammation upon adoptive transfer.

This highlights again the close connection of the calcium system to immunology. While the earlier TRPM4 story was basically about mast cells, we now arrived at Th2 cells, yea, yea.

and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2
Yesterday’s farewell sermon of Joachim Funk in Gröbenzell reminded me to the chapter that I once learned by heart (in Greek) and let me today go for some pictures of Kapuzinergasse in Munich, where the walls of St. Anton hold this inscription in big letters (Schmerzhafte Kapelle und Kapuzinerkloste, St. Anton).

Wikipedia describes the last year’ financial crisis as “an economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, or a speculative mania) as a “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. A new and excellent Embo Report (thanks to WK) arrives at the same description of current science, a

dangerous cocktail of short-term gains prevailing over long-term interests, herding, increasing pressure to deliver results, the absence of effective oversight, and blind trust that the system would regulate itself (Show me more…)

From Slashdot today:

Scientific discovery is fraught with false starts and blind alleys. As a result, labs accumulate vast amounts of valuable knowledge on what not to do, and what does not work. Trouble is, this knowledge is not shared using the usual method of scientific communication: the peer-reviewed article. It remains within the lab, or at the most shared informally among close colleagues. As it stands, the scientific culture discourages sharing negative results. (Show me more…)