RNA, often thought of as merely the chemical messenger that helps decode DNA’s genetic instructions for making proteins, can itself play a crucial role in regulating protein expression. Not surprisingly, this regulation occurs through proteins that bind to RNA. All cells in the body, especially nerve cells in the brain, use and regulate RNA in an exquisite fashion.

Scientists have previously shown that defects in RNA binding underlie several human brain disorders, but their RNA targets

Researchers have used ultraviolet light to “weld” a key regulatory protein to its RNA targets, creating a new tool that can be used to identify novel proteins involved in a variety of human diseases.

Using this technique, the researchers have identified an array of RNA molecules regulated by the RNA-binding protein, Nova, which has been implicated in an autoimmune neurodegenerative disease. The researchers believe their technique may help in finding the RNA targets of other proteins involved

Many diagnostic tests and tests used to monitor disease are not supported by high quality evidence, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers examined how many common clinical tests used in one respiratory medicine clinic in the UK were based on high quality evidence (evidence was graded according to a recognised quality scale).

Only half the tests that were used to make or exclude a diagnosis and a fifth of the tests used to assess a known condition were supported by high

On the occasion of World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2003, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) highlights the need for improved diagnosis of diabetes in coronary artery disease patients

France, 14 November 2003: Preliminary findings from the ESC Euro Heart Survey entitled ‘Diabetes and the Heart’ suggest that diabetes is not only grossly under-diagnosed in coronary artery disease patients, but these individuals also receive sub-standard care of their underlying cardiovascular disease.

Researchers at Jefferson Medical College and Duke University have used gene therapy to help damaged heart cells regain strength and beat normally again in the laboratory. The work takes the scientists one step closer to eventual clinical trials in humans.

Walter Koch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Translational Medicine of the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his colleagues at Duke used a virus to carry a gene into t

Findings hold promise for developing new botulism therapies

Scientists have identified several key molecules that block the activity of a toxin that causes botulism–an important first step in developing therapeutics to counter the disease.

Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT) are useful as therapeutic agents for treating a wide variety of muscle dysfunctions in humans, and are used cosmetically to reduce wrinkles. Paradoxically, the seven serotypes of BoNT, designated A through G,

First-ever blood test for mesothelioma being developed

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) have reported the development of a blood test for mesothelioma, a highly aggressive lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure.

A PNRI team led by Dr. Ingegerd Hellstrom, and an Australian team, led by Dr. Bruce Robinson, of the University of Western Australia, conducted the research, which appears in the November 15th issue of Lancet. The new test promises a si

Breast cancer is the most common and the second-most fatal malignant tumour amongst women who live in industrialised countries. Moreover, when present in young women, it would appear that a genetic predisposition is involved. This predisposition can be due to a number of causes and, amongst the most common, lie the alterations in the gene suppressors of the tumours. The lack of efficiency in these genes may be due to the fact that they are altered (mutated), they are not expressed, or they do not fun

Endoscopic fetal treatment increases survival to 73 percent for a severe defect that hampers lung growth — comparison group in a randomized trial increases survival to 77 percent with standard care in an expert neonatal intensive care unit

Newborns with a severe birth defect that hampers lung growth have an equal chance of survival whether they are treated with maternal/fetal surgery or receive their first operation after birth — if the infant receives life support from the moment o

Super squirrel moms provide silver spoon beginnings

If they could, many women would likely take a page out of the red squirrel’s book. The northern animal can not only decide when its babies are born in the season but how many brothers and sisters will be in a litter, according to new research by University of Alberta scientists.

But not all female squirrels have these “super mom” capabilities whose genes are wired with these traits–there are “dud moms” in the population as

Researchers have developed powerful new techniques to see in unprecedented detail how blood-forming cells develop in zebrafish. The scientists have used this system to transplant blood cells with fluorescent “tags” so they can observe how the cells restore the blood system in mutant zebrafish that do not have any red blood cells.

The techniques may be helpful in learning how bone marrow transplants reconstitute the immune systems of patients whose immune cells have been destroyed by chemothe

For more than a century, scientists have concluded that a species evolves or adapts by going through an infinite number of small genetic changes over a long period of time.

However, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University plant biologist, has provided new evidence that an alternate theory is actually at work, one in which the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.

The research is published in the Nov. 12 i

Hummingbirds visited nearly 70 times more often after scientists altered the color of a kind of monkeyflower from pink – beloved by bees but virtually ignored by hummingbirds – to a hummer-attractive yellow-orange.

Researchers writing in the Nov. 13 issue of Nature say perhaps it was a major change or two, such as petal color, that first forged the fork in the evolutionary road that led to today’s species of monkeyflowers that are attractive to and pollinated by hummingbirds and separat

In women, the risk of coronary heart disease increases significantly after menopause. Estrogen therapy, however, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in healthy postmenopausal women. Estrogen enhances endothelial function of the coronary arteries, and this may contribute to the cardioprotective effects of the female hormone.

The precise mechanisms that mediate the beneficial effects of estrogen on arterial endothelial function are incompletely understood. What is known is that the long

Radio waves ’zap’ tiny areas of heart muscle

An innovative procedure completely cures the overwhelming majority of patients with the most common form of irregular heartbeat, by stopping haywire electrical signals in areas of heart muscle and some of the veins that connect to it.

In several presentations at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2003, and in a new paper in the Nov. 12 issue of the AHA journal Circulation, heart rhythm specialists

A new signaling pathway appears to play a critical role in the development of heart disease, according to researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Now that this marker of cardiac dysfunction, known as the APJ-apelin pathway, has been identified, it could lead to better diagnosis of heart problems, perhaps even allowing doctors to intervene in heart disease by blocking or boosting levels of critical proteins.

“The thing that’s clear is that apelin is increased in heart failure