A team of researchers led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the University of Toronto (U of T) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a protein that is responsible for shaping the nervous system. This research was made possible with the support of a $1.5-million NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair ProgramTM team grant that enabled scientists from across Canada to work together and fast track their research. This research is reported in the December 8, 2005 issue of the journal
Friedman School of Tufts: Nutrition notes
Two obese people follow the same low-calorie diet and do not exercise, but one loses much more weight than the other. Genetic factors may explain this phenomenon, according to José Ordovas, PhD, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Ordovas and colleagues identi
In the December 6 issue of Nature Biotechnology, scientists from 14 different organizations around the world, including the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, propose a new quality standard for biochemical models. MIRIAM (for Minimum information requested in the annotation of biochemical models) will help researchers to reuse, modify and combine computer models of biochemical processes to gain a fuller understanding of life at the molecular and cellular level.
Biologists are making a
People who gain less protection from cancer by eating broccoli may be able to compensate for the difference in their genetic make-up by eating ‘super broccoli’, a variety with higher levels of the active plant chemical sulforaphane, or by eating larger portions.
Lead scientist on the new research, Professor Richard Mithen of the Institute of Food Research (IFR), said: “Eating a few portions of broccoli each week may help to reduce the risk of cancer. Some individuals, who lack a ge
Scientists at the John Innes Centre(JIC), Norwich, UK [1] today report a discovery that explains how plants control the size and development of their cells. Published on-line by the international journal PNAS [2] the report describes how a gene (called RHL1)[3] affects a plant cell’s ability to make multiple copies of its DNA, in turn affecting cell growth and overall plant development.
“Unlike the cells of animals, plant cells typically expand to up to 1,000 times their orig
Should we start being genetically tested for Parkinson’s disease (PD)? According to research just published in the December issue of the “journal Movement Disorders” this might be a possibility in the future if you belong to a family affected by G2019S, a genetic mutation responsible for some PD cases.
Parkinson disease results from the death or loss of function of the nervous cells (neurons) in a brain area called substancia nigra, which is involved in the regulation of moveme
Tourists in Spain often stop to ogle the country’s many saltwater lagoons, used to produce salt since Roman times. Scientists, too, admire these saltern crystallizers–and even more so, the microbes that manage to survive in such briny environs. Now, reporting in the November 28-December 2 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research and collaborators reveal the genome of one bacterium at home in the salty Spanish
Tropical areas of south and central America such as the Amazon rainforest are home to some 7500 species of butterfly compared with only around 65 species in Britain. UCL scientists have ruled out the common theory that attributed this richness of wildlife to climate change, in a paper published on 7th December by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences).
Instead, scientists believe that biology played a far greater role in the evolution of species than
Dispelling years of anecdotes in travelogues, the popular press, and scholarly works, biologists from the University of Bristol argue that it is nearly impossible for elephants to become intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree.
“Elephants display many behavioral characteristics viewed as positive traits in humans, often causing us to identify with them in anthropomorphic ways,” write Steve Morris, David Humphreys, and Dan Reynolds in a forthcoming paper in Physiological an
Valuable results for the complex jigsaw puzzle of cancer development
CDK6 is the plain name of a molecule that is often characteristically altered in medulloblastoma. This type of cancer is among the most common malignant brain tumors in children. Heidelberg molecular geneticians of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now found out that CDK6 can serve as an important indicator to help physicians determine the prognosis of patients. The
’We are beginning to understand how an animal without an adaptive immune system can still protect itself,’ Smith said, adding: ’The sea urchin may use genes that are different from antibodies and possibly even different mechanisms from humans.’
Inside that seemingly docile sea urchin there’s a surprisingly active innate immune system, probably utilizing previously unrecognized immune mechanisms, that may also actively function in vertebrates, including huma
Cholera remains a public health problem in countries without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Researchers are trying to come up with theoretical models for cholera that allow them to understand how an outbreak happens, how it can best be contained, and how it might be prevented. Until now, the existing cholera models have not been able to describe and explain actual outbreaks very well. Taking new experimental data into account, David Hartley and colleagues (of the Universit
Texas–Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) have identified a key biochemical connection between the hepatitis C virus and liver cancer.
The molecular mechanism is similar to the one that links the human papilloma virus (HPV), the cause of genital warts, and cervical cancer, according to Dr. Stanley M. Lemon, the senior author of a paper on the discovery that will be published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National A
Some forms of colorblindness may actually afford enhanced perception of some colors, according to findings reported this week in Current Biology by John Mollon and colleagues at the University of Cambridge.
The most common form of colorblindness is an X-chromosome-linked variant form of color vision technically known as deuteranomaly. Colors are detected by humans through the combined action of three different types of so-called cone photoreceptors, each of which is optimally acti
Statistics isn’t what normally comes to mind what people think of cancer research, but a new statistical tool developed at the Stanford University School of Medicine could smooth out some of the fits and starts that have plagued the effort to understand and treat the disease.
The tool is at the heart of a new study that divides similar-looking kidney tumors into subtypes depending on which of thousands of genes are turned on or off. The idea behind this and related studies
Completing a daily crossword and enjoying a range of activities and interests has long been accepted as a recipe for maintaining a healthy brain in older age, but the reasons for this have never been clear. Now, scientists at the University of Edinburgh are seeking to identify brain’s ’survival’ genes which lie dormant in unused brain cells, but are re-awakened in active brain cells. These awakened genes make the brain cells live longer and resist traumas such as disease, stroke and
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