Scientists have identified an important link between kidney damage and cardiac problems, creating new possibilities for treating the primary cause of death in kidney disease patients.
Researchers tracked a chain reaction that leads from kidney damage to weakening of the skeleton to increased phosphorous in the blood. They showed that higher phosphorous levels were directly linked to vascular calcification, a stiffening of the smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels. Vascula
A few rare people who consistently nod off early, then wake up wide-eyed much before dawn, can blame a newly-found mutant gene for their sleep troubles, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers announced today.
This odd “time-shift” trait — called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) — was studied in one affected family by neurologist Louis J. Ptacek, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, and Ying-Hui Fu, at the University of California, San Francisco. Th
Scientists have identified a gene and mutation within it that causes a rare sleep behavior, in which individuals have a “fast” biological clock. The gene’s enzyme could lead to a therapeutic target for the disrupted sleep patterns seen in such groups as those facing jet lag or nighttime work shifts.
More broadly, the gene provides a probe for exploring the regulatory mechanisms of the body’s internal biological clock, or circadian rhythms — a waxing and waning of g
Scientists have discovered that a protein that was originally believed to be involved in tuberculosis antibiotic resistance is actually a “missing enzyme” from the biosynthetic pathway for an agent used by the bacteria to scavenge iron.
The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the April 8 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journal.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculos
The protein Mnd2 inhibits premature separation of chromosomes during the formation of gametes. The now published discovery of this regulatory function may help to understand the origin of some common congenital chromosome defects. The project of a team of the University of Vienna funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) contributes to the Campus Vienna Biocenter maintaining a top-level position in the field of cell division research.
During the division of somatic cells (mitosi
In a paper in this month’s freely-available online global health journal PLoS Medicine, Roland Haubner and colleagues describe how a compound they have developed can be used together with highly sensitive positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to measure the amount of new blood vessel growth in some tumors.
New blood vessel growth – angiogenesis – is important for the growth of tumors; several drugs target angiogenesis specifically. The compound previously developed by
Hemoglobins, key components of our blood, are ancient proteins with well-known roles in oxygen transport and respiration in animals. Hemoglobins are also present in plants and bacteria, but until now the physiological role of plant hemoglobins has been unclear. A group of researchers reveal this week that one such mysterious plant hemoglobin serves to assist in the fixation of nitrogen in the root nodules of legumes through a process that is conceptually not unlike that undertaken by mammalian
Like many other marine creatures, Aplysia, a common sea slug, enlists chemical defenses against its predators, but the mechanisms by which such chemical attacks actually work against their intended targets are not well understood by researchers. New work has now shown that such chemical defenses can involve modes of trickery that had not previously been appreciated as components of chemical defense.
When attacked by predatory spiny lobsters, sea slugs (also known as sea hares) rel
Findings by USC researchers provide new potential options for prevention, therapy
Mutated BRCA1 genes cause ovarian cancer indirectly, by interfering with the biochemical signals one ovarian cell sends to another, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Their work is being published in the March 29 issue of the journal Current Biology.
“Befor
Use of “functional imaging” to track plant nutrients has many potential applications
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have applied some of the same techniques used in medical imaging to track the distribution of nutrients in poplar trees in response to a simulated insect attack. The research provides new insights on a long-debated theory about how plants respond to environmental stress, and shows that radiotracer imaging can be a big help
Gene therapy methods that specifically target muscle may reverse the symptoms of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, according to new research in mice conducted by medical geneticists at Duke University Medical Center. Infants born with the inherited muscular disorder called Pompe disease usually die before they reach the age of two. The researchers also said their approach of targeting corrective genes to muscles may have application in treating other muscular dystrophies.
Patien
Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine are several steps closer to the day when a profoundly deaf patient’s own bone marrow cells could be used to let him or her hear the world.
The IU group, led by Eri Hashino, Ph.D., was able to transform, in the laboratory, stem cells taken from adult bone marrow into cells with many of the characteristics of sensory nerve cells — neurons — found in the ear. The results suggest that these adult stem cells could be used t
Mice lacking a key protein involved in cholesterol regulation have low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol, levels more than 50 percent lower than normal mice, and researchers suggest that inhibiting the same protein in humans could lead to new cholesterol-lowering drugs.
In a study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and available online this week, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center deleted the Pcsk9 gene in mice. The gene, pr
Leon Goldstein, a professor of medical science at Brown Medical School, set out to plumb a molecular mystery.
Along with Mark Musch, a longtime University of Chicago collaborator, Goldstein conducted an experiment with the red blood cells of skates to understand how these skinny, graceful fish can swim from salt water to fresh water. For humans, such a drastic environmental change would prompt an equally drastic physiological change: Our cells would take in too much water, d
A new use of the drug Herceptin appears to offer a much more powerful treatment advantage than expected for patients with HER-2-positive breast cancer, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
When combined with chemotherapy and used before surgery in early stage breast cancer the drug proved so beneficial – eliminating 42 percent more tumors than chemotherapy alone – that the clinical trial testing of this new treatment plan was halted early, th
Technology could lower costs for high-throughput genetic scans
A “color-blind” method of fluorescence detection developed by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University could open new doors that would take DNA sequencing to the patient’s bedside, the doctor’s office and even the scene of a crime or a battlefield.
“We could eventually do direct detection of a DNA sequence from native DNA” without manipulation now performed in the laboratory
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