Perceiving a simple touch may depend as much on memory, attention, and expectation as on the stimulus itself, according to new research from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar Ranulfo Romo and his colleague Victor de Lafuente. The scientists found that monkeys’ perceptions of touch match brain activity in the frontal lobe, an area that assimilates many types of neural information.
Romo and de Lafuente, both of the Institute of Cellular Physiol
A team of researchers led by scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have discovered that a new class of drugs — now in early stage clinical trials — work best in patients with mutations in the BRAF gene. BRAF is a protein that plays a central role in the growth and survival of cancer cells and is mutated in the majority of patients with melanoma and in a minority of patients with colon, breast, and lung cancers. The findings, available in an advance online publication of Natur
Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Virginia hope to reset part of the “epigenetic code” in lupus patients and thus improve treatment.
The epigenetic research focuses on histones, the tiny spools in the nuclei of cells around which DNA winds and compacts when it is not in the process of copying in cell division. Epigenetic changes in the histones are those that can alter gene expression – and associated proteins – without altering the unde
The Cretaceous that lasted approximately from 135 through 65 million years ago was the period of drastic changes in biosphere. It was at that time that mass extinction of dinosaurs and other reptiles took place; birds and mammals came to take their place. In the early Cretaceous, the first flowering plants appeared, they quickly occupied the dominant position overland and settled in diverse ecotopes. These large-scale processes, thanks to which the Earth gradually acquired the contemporary appeara
Our view of wild birds is mostly positive. They are a lovely sight as they soar through the air or drift lazily on updrafts. But there is a downside to this beauty. Birds are reservoirs for all manner of infectious disease and we can do little about it, according to an article in the November 2005 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology.
“Wild birds carry several important human and animal diseases,” explains Dr Keith Jones of Lancaster
In examinations of children with serious reading and writing difficulties German and Swedish researchers have now succeeded in demonstrating for the first time the contribution of a specific gene.
About five million Germans have serious learning difficulties when it comes to reading and writing. It is frequently the case that several members of the same family are affected. So hereditary disposition seems to play an important role in the occurrence of dyslexia. Scientists at th
EuroStemCell researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute have made an important new discovery about the role of oxygen in development. Their research, published this week in Developmental Cell, may shed light on the processes at work in tumour development and has implications for successfully growing stem cells in the laboratory.
Scientists have observed that stem cells grow more easily as undifferentiated cells when oxygen levels are reduced. But until this week, they didn’t kno
University of Navarra researcher, Xabier Sevillano, recently defended his PhD thesis on a novel procedure for the elimination of organic waste from water. The chemist’s work involved studying how one of the most noxious substances, phenol, could be eliminated. National and European legislations limit the dumping of this product. Nevertheless, many companies generate this toxic product in such a way that contamination of water by phenol is frequent.
To fight this contamination, Xabier
A study led by a scientific team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides another important step in our understanding of the critical role that the brain’s molecular pathways play in the development of obesity and related disorders.
The findings, reported in the November 4, 2005 issue of the journal Cell, demonstrate for the first time that the neuronal pathways that help to keep body weight stable diverge at the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) to regulate ei
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have deciphered a key part of the regulatory code that governs how motor neurons in the spinal cord connect to specific target muscles in the limbs.
The researchers said that understanding this code may help guide progress in restoring motor neuron function in people whose spinal cords have been damaged by trauma or disease. The studies suggest that the code — which involves members of the family of transcription factors encoded
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that a protein associated with causing neurodegenerative conditions may, when appearing in normal amounts, actually protect against neurodegeneration.
The findings, appearing in today’s issue of the journal Cell, have surprised the researchers, because an excess of the same specific protein – alpha-synuclein – causes Parkinson’s disease.
“It’s the first time that anyone has shown that synuclein has
A new, sharper picture of the nano-machine that translates our genetic program into proteins promises to help researchers explain how some types of antibiotics work and could lead to the design of better ones.
The high-resolution snapshots of the bacterial ribosome were captured by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with the lab’s Advanced Light Source, which generates intense beams of X-rays that can reve
New insights into vital genome regulation strategy provided
One of the body’s primary strategies for regulating its genome is a kind of targeted gene silencing orchestrated by small molecules called microRNAs, or miRNAs. First observed only a few years ago, these molecules appear to inactivate messenger RNA, itself responsible for translating genes into proteins. Scientists have been eager to know more about miRNAs, clearly important players on the genetic field despite h
A new technique for analyzing the network of genetic interactions promises to change how researchers study the dynamic biological landscape of the cell. The technology, which is called epistatic mini array profiles (E-MAP), has already been used to assign new functions to known genes, to uncover the roles of previously uncharacterized proteins, and to define how biochemical pathways and proteins interact with one another.
E-MAP will enable new understanding of how genes and prote
The most deadly malaria parasite has protein ’wiring’ that differs markedly from the cellular circuitry of other higher organisms, a finding which could lead to the development of antimalarial drugs that exploit that difference
Researchers at UCSD have discovered that the single-cell parasite responsible for an estimated 1 million deaths per year worldwide from malaria has protein “wiring” that differs markedly from the cellular circuitry of other higher organisms, a finding which
Research has implications for improving detection and treatment of bacterial vaginosis and other infections with multiple bacterial sources
Despite being one of the most common infections among women, scientists and doctors know little about the causes of bacterial vaginosis (BV), a usually benign disease that is also linked to serious health problems including pelvic inflammatory disease, an increase in the viral load of HIV from infected women and a two-fold increase in risk f
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