A gene involved in the action of insulin is associated with type 2 diabetes and the body’s response to insulin, report scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
Donald W. Bowden, Ph.D., the principal investigator, and his colleagues described the gene in two articles in the November issue of Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.
Bowden said the gene is called PTPN1 (Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase N1) and is found on the human c
In order to divide, cells must first replicate their chromosomes. Cells use an array of proteins to accomplish the job, including a large enzyme complex that synthesizes new strands of DNA. In a paper to be published Oct. 22 in the journal Molecular Cell, University of Minnesota researchers report that a particular protein, called minichromosome maintenance protein 10 (Mcm10), protects the enzyme from destruction and, like a molecular tugboat, escorts it to its “port”–the location on a chromo
For the first time, researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected with the Catholic University of Leuven have shown clearly that receptors in yeast cells detect and react to nutrients in the cell. The chance is great that this is also the case with human cells. Because about 40% of today’s medicines act on receptors in our cells, this research opens new possibilities for the treatment of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.
Researchers at Yale and Syracuse Universities found the first direct evidence for a mutation in mitochondrial DNA that directly affects blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
It has long been known that several metabolic traits including high cholesterol and hypertension cluster in individuals more frequently than by chance, but the underlying causes were unknown. This study, published early in Science Express on line, suggests that altered mitochondria may account for the clusteri
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a single change in a person’s DNA can contribute to a range of life-shortening risk factors, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other metabolic disorders.
The mutation affects the genes of the mitochondria – the energy-producing power plants of the cell that are passed from mother to offspring. The researchers are hopeful their discovery could help unravel the complex genetic and environmental factors th
Volcanic ash that encased and preserved sea life in the Silurian age 425 million years ago near Herefordshire, UK has yielded fossils of an ancient sea spider, or pycnogonid, one of the most unusual types of arthropod in the seas today.
Sea spiders are soft-bodied arthropods, found widely in modern oceans. For two-centuries there has been a controversy about the relationship of sea spiders to land spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites because of their unique body form. Sea spiders
Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. Lou Gehrig’s. Huntington’s. These neurodegenerative diseases exhibit loss of nerve function in different ways, from memory lapses to uncontrollable muscular movements, but it is now believed that these diseases share many common molecular mechanisms.
A team of Northwestern University scientists, led by Richard I. Morimoto, John Evans Professor of Biology, has made a key discovery toward understanding one of these mechanisms. In stu
A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.
The “brain” — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorde
The progress of Parkinson’s disease (PD), or any brain-wasting disease, is painful to watch in oneself or in a loved one. Physicians and researchers are not immune to that pain, but they watch the progression of disease with an eye toward understanding it and, one day, halting or reversing it.
Johannes Schwarz, M.D., and a team of researchers from Germany and Canada reported in the October issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine on a study that measured the molecular changes
Scientists in Tokyo have discovered a new protein, named PICT-1, that is involved in regulating PTEN, the second most commonly mutated tumor suppressor in human tumors. This discovery suggests the possibility of a new tumorigenic pathway that is due to defects in a protein involved in stabilizing PTEN rather than defects in PTEN itself.
The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the October 29 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Mol
The suffering of millions of people with allergies could one day be eased thanks to new research from UK investigators. Findings from the University College London branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), published in this week’s Nature, detail how inactivating a key signalling molecule called p110delta reduced the effect of allergies on mice.
Allergies are essentially inappropriate responses by the immune system to allergens such as pollen, dust, insects and ani
UO researchers report ’the old-fashioned way’ is more accurate for comparing DNA sequences
A study published this week in Nature (Nov. 21) shows that the most widely used method for constructing the tree of life from DNA sequences is prone to error. However, a simpler method, largely abandoned in recent years, turns out to be far more accurate.
These surprising findings may change the way evolutionary biologists infer the relationships among species – a cornerstone
University of Pittsburgh’s Gerald Schatten, Ph.D., joins South Korean researchers for symposium at 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine
As members of the United Nations General Assembly are soon to vote on the future of cloning research, possibly within days, leading scientists will be conducting a symposium discussion on the status of current work in cloning and its potential for the emerging field of regenerative medicine.
Gerald
Researchers trim count of human genes to 20,000-25,000
The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, led in the United States by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the Department of Energy (DOE), today published its scientific description of the finished human genome sequence, reducing the estimated number of human protein-coding genes from 35,000 to only 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species.
The paper appears in the Oct.
The revolution was not televised.
In the fall of 1999, the Stanford Microarray Database booted up, and a level of computing power was suddenly available to the field of molecular biology that only a few years earlier was inconceivable. On Oct. 19, the database recorded its 50,000th experiment, marking its place at the forefront of an information processing revolution that has yielded groundbreaking insights into the relationships between genes and illness, as well as fundamental
Finding may reveal clues to origins of autism, other human brain disorders
High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells – a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation.
These are the findings of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and her collaborators at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For t
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