Chemists and biologists at Northwestern University have found a way to detect and estimate the size and structure of a miniscule toxic protein suspected of triggering Alzheimer’s disease. The findings, researchers say, could help scientists better understand the underlying mechanisms of the disease and lead to the development of new treatments that could slow or possibly arrest its progression.
The findings also could potentially be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease in livin
Using a new, more sensitive-testing approach they developed for fungi, Penn State food scientists have found that mushrooms are a better natural source of the antioxidant ergothioneine than either of the two dietary sources previously believed to be best.
The researchers found that white button mushrooms, the most commonly consumed kind in the U.S., have about 12 times more of the antioxidant than wheat germ and 4 times more than chicken liver, the previous top-rated ergothioneine
The human brain is composed of billions of cells, each a separate entity that communicates with others. The chemical interaction of those cells determines personality, controls behavior and encodes memory; but much remains to be understood.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools for studying the chemistry of the brain, neuron by neuron. The analytical techniques can probe the spatial and temporal distribution of biologically import
The ups and downs of the stock market reflect investors’ balance between greed and fear, goes an old saying. Until now, though, economists have not had a way to incorporate such emotions into their models of investors’ strategies. However, in the September 1, 2005, issue of Neuron, Camelia M. Kuhnen and Brian Knutson of Stanford University report the identification of two key brain regions activated before people make risk-seeking versus risk-aversion investment mistakes.
They said
Just as travelers figure out which restaurant is good by the numbers of cars in the parking lot, bumblebees decide which flowers to visit by seeing which ones already have bee visitors.
Bumblebees that watched other bees forage on green artificial flowers were twice as likely to choose the green flowers over orange flowers when it was their turn to forage, according to new research.
The finding is the first demonstration that insects can learn by just watching the behavi
Increased summer precipitation apparently helping to spread spores of pathogen
Biologists studying a lethal blight of lodgepole pines in northwestern British Columbia present strong evidence in the September issue of BioScience that climate change is to blame for the outbreak. The blight, caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, causes trees to lose their needles and, in the case of the British Columbia outbreak, eventually die. D. septosporum has long been recognized as a
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found a compound that shows promise as a way to block the spread, or metastasis, of lung cancer.
The researchers found that the compound blocks an enzyme that is known to keep cells immortal and that is implicated in almost all human cancers. From results in mice, they determined that the compound, called GRN163L, also works rapidly and in doses that would be reasonable for therapy. It may be particularly useful after surgery or in
A step towards understanding cell mutations that cause a variety of human diseases, particularly in children -including that which brings about premature aging and early death – has been taken by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Silberman Institute of Life Sciences and the John Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The scientists have focused their research on a study of induced mutations in the nuclear envelope of cells from the tiny C. elegans worm. Their aim
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have created highly magnetized nanoparticles based on metallic iron that could one day be used in a non-invasive therapy for cancer in which treatment would begin at the time of detection.
“We envision a potential for these materials to combine both detection and treatment into a single process,” said Everett E. Carpenter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry at VCU.
Carpenter is discussing his ongoing work of the synth
A group of Montreal researchers has discovered that GCN2, a protein in cells that inhibits the conversion of new information into long-term memory, may be a master regulator of the switch from short-term to long-term memory. Their paper Translational control of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory by the eIF2a kinase GCN2, which was published in the August 25th issue of the journal Nature, provides the first genetic evidence that protein synthesis is critical for the regulation of memory f
Dr. Bjorn Vennstrom and colleagues in Spain and at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) have identified novel neural functions of thyroid hormone (TH), revealing that it is required during discrete periods of brain development to confer “normal” behavior.
The scientists used transgenic mice heterozygous for a mutant form of the thyroid hormone receptor alpha1 that has about a ten-fold reduced affinity for its natural ligand, TH. They observed that reduced TH signaling during developm
25 years after the initial discovery of p53, Dr. David Lane and colleagues at the University of Dundee have discovered multiple isoforms of the p53 tumor suppressor protein.
Their paper, which will be released online ahead of print in Genes & Development, establishes that, like the other p53 family members p63 and p73, p53 exists in human cells in at least six different isoforms. Dr. Lane and colleagues identified a heretofore unrecognized internal promoter and alternative splic
It has been identified by the World Health Organization as the most dangerous infectious disease, causing more deaths — more than 2 million a year — than any other single infection. Approximately one-third of the world’s population is already infected. “It” is Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
A Kansas State University chemistry professor is seeking to stem the tide in the war against TB. According to the WHO, no new antituberculosis drugs have been marketed during the last 30 ye
A Duke University chemist has found differences in how ultraviolet light affects the photochemistry of human pigments that he says may explain why red-haired people are more prone to skin cancer than those with black hair.
Duke chemistry professor John Simon and his collaborators used a broadly-tunable ultraviolet laser and a special microscope to distinguish between the oxidation potentials of pigments of redheaded and black-haired people. Oxidation potentials measure how li
Montreal researchers identify new anti-cancer, anti-infection response control mechanism
Dr. André Veillette, a researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), and his team will publish in the upcoming issue of the prestigious journal Nature Immunology of Nature Publishing Group, a discovery that could significantly advance the treatment of cancers and infectious diseases. Current treatments frequently achieve only limited results with these types of di
The first rhino ever conceived by artificial insemination has died in the womb a few hours before its birth. The death occurred on August 9 in the Budapest Zoo. The mother of the unborn rhino, Lulu (aged 25), had suffered from uterine bleedings. The reason for the complication was presumably a partial separation of the placenta 12 hours prior to birth, says scientist Dr. Thomas Hildebrandt of the Berlin-based Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW). He and his colleagues from the IZW had dev
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