UAB researchers have found a marker on blood cells that may help the most pressing problem in chronic myelogenous leukemia today — an inability to get patients off treatment. This marker shows heterogeneity among the leukemia stem cells and correlates with leukemic potential.
Physicians and biomedical engineers from Johns Hopkins report what they believe is the first successful effort to wiggle fingers individually and independently of each other using a mind-controlled artificial “arm” to control the movement.
While working to improve a tool that measures the pushes and pulls sensed by proteins in living cells, biophysicists discovered one reason spiders’ silk is so elastic: Pieces of the silk’s protein threads act like supersprings, stretching to five times their initial length. The investigators say the tool will shed light on many biological events, including the shifting forces between cells during cancer metastasis.
Research from investigators at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and colleagues shows the intracellular process of autophagy plays a role in the development of prostate cancer.
A study reported Feb. 12 in the journal PLOS Biology employs genome-wide sequencing to reveal highly specific details about the evolutionary mechanisms that drove genetic divergence in 13 species of wild tomatoes that share a recent common ancestor.
Scientists at UCLA have developed a new approach that could eventually be used to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The stem cell gene therapy could be applicable for 60 percent of people with Duchenne, which affects approximately 1 in 5,000 boys in the U.S. and is the most common fatal childhood genetic disease.
As the Arctic continues to change due to rising temperatures, melting sea ice and human interest in developing oil and shipping routes, it’s important to understand belugas’ baseline behavior, argue the authors of a new paper.
University of Washington scientists have successfully combined two different ultrathin semiconductors — each just one layer of atoms thick and roughly 100,000 times thinner than a human hair — to make a new two-dimensional heterostructure with potential uses in clean energy and optically-active electronics.
A recent study examined injection risk behaviors among heroin injectors in the Colombian cities of Medellín and Pereira to explore the implications for possible increased HIV transmission within PWID.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have won nearly $1.7 million from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to Huntington’s disease.
The human brain is wired to pay attention to previously pleasing things — a finding that could help explain why it’s hard to break bad habits or stick to New Year’s resolutions.
Scientists at The Wistar Institute have defined the role of how a master genomic organizer influences the behavior of these ovarian-associated dendritic cells, revealing a previously unseen way in which cancer is able to manipulate our immune system.
In a first large-scale systematic study, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and McGill University found that most sibling proteins – known as “protein isoforms” encoded by the same gene – often play radically different roles within tissues and cells, however alike they may be structurally.
The team researched a quasi-random assignment of 84 ACHIEVEability participants to their housing units. Investigators evaluated whether micro-neighborhood environments – the group of city blocks immediately surrounding housing units – affected participants’ progress in achieving college credits.
Faulty bioelectric signaling has been found to be responsible for the skull and facial abnormalities that characterize the rare genetic disorder Andersen-Tawil Syndrome (ATS). It may therefore be possible to alter bioelectrical signaling to correct effects of fetal alcohol syndrome and other developmental defects or genetic mutations.
Alcohol itself can directly damage liver cells. Now researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report evidence that alcohol is also harmful to the liver for a second reason — it allows gut bacteria to migrate to the liver, promoting alcohol-induced liver disease. The study, conducted in mice and in laboratory samples, is published February 10 in Cell Host & Microbe.
For most women, expecting a baby brings intense joy --and a fair amount of worry. But what about women with post-traumatic stress disorder? Contrary to what researchers expected, a new study shows that pregnancy may actually reduce their PTSD symptoms. Or at the least, it won’t cause a flare-up.
Recently, a new mutation signature found in cancer cells was suspected to have been created by a family of enzymes found in human cells called the APOBEC3 family. The study, “Strand-biased Cytosine deamination at the Replication Fork causes Cytosine to Thymine Mutations in Escherichia coli,” led by Ashok Bhagwat, Ph.D., professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Differences in the neural wiring across development of men and women across ages, matched behavioral differences commonly associated with each of the sexes, according to an imaging-based study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published February 1 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
A new way of mapping the collection of RNA read-outs that are expressed by a cell’s active genes has been devised to shed additional light on the role of RNAs in cells. These “dark” variations in RNA likely have roles in gene regulation across tissues, development, and in human diseases. The team will use the now-free software to interrogate cells in brain disorders, cancers, and other illnesses.
Using a model blood vessel system built on a polymer microchip, researchers have shown that the relative softness of white blood cells determines whether they remain in a dormant state along vessel walls or enter blood circulation to fight infection.
Vanderbilt engineers have modified the cotton candy machine to create complex microfluidic networks that mimic the capillary system in living tissue and have demonstrated that these networks can keep cells alive and functioning in an artificial three-dimensional matrix.
Stem cell-derived heart muscle cells may fail to effectively replace damaged cardiac tissue because they don’t contract strongly enough, according to a study in The Journal of Cell Biology. The study, “Coupling Primary and Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes in an In Vitro Model of Cardiac Cell Therapy,” by Yvonne Aratyn-Schaus and Francesco Pasqualini and colleagues, may help explain why stem cell-based therapies have so far shown limited benefits for heart attack patients in clinical trials.
Research published in 2012 garnered international attention by suggesting that a possible early human ancestor had lived on a diverse woodland diet including hard foods mixed in with tree bark, fruit, leaves and other plant products. But new research by an international team of researchers now shows that Australopithecus sediba didn’t have the jaw and tooth structure necessary to exist on a steady diet of hard foods.
A look-back analysis of HPV infection antibodies in patients treated for oropharyngeal (mouth and throat) cancers linked to HPV infection suggests at least one of the antibodies could be useful in identifying those at risk for a recurrence of the cancer, say scientists at The Johns Hopkins University. A report on the study is published in the February issue of Cancer Prevention Research.
The way to better wearable electronics is dotted with iron steppingstones. Check out how Michigan Tech researcher Yoke Khin Yap’s nanotubes bridge the gap with quantum tunneling.
One of the most common cancer-causing genes has continuously stymied researchers’ efforts to develop treatments against it. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have dug deeper and exposed a key interaction that may contribute to why mutations in KRAS lead to cancer.
Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government or private research after getting a Ph.D. used to be considered a one-way ticket out of academia. But new University of Washington research finds numerous benefits — to students, researchers and academic institutions looking to diversify their faculty — in making that return trip easier.
The incidence of childhood and adult obesity has increased significantly over the past three decades. New research shows that there is an association between obesity development during adulthood and childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Increasing the level of a naturally-produced protein, called tristetraprolin (TTP), significantly reduced or protected mice from inflammation, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The results suggest that pharmaceutical compounds or other therapeutic methods that produce elevated levels of TTP in humans may offer an effective treatment for some inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis. The report appeared online Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute Florida campus have been awarded nearly $1.2 million from the National Institutes of Health to create a series of drug candidates that advance treatments for such conditions as obesity, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and muscle atrophy.
Abolishing the 24-hour clock by knocking out a key gene during development accelerates aging and shortens lifespan by two thirds in mice, but this effect is absent if the gene deletion is delayed until after birth
For the first time, researchers have shown that an enzyme key to regulating gene expression -- and also an oncogene when mutated -- is critical for the expression of numerous inflammatory compounds that have been implicated in age-related increases in cancer and tissue degeneration, according to new research from Penn. Inhibitors of the enzyme are being developed as a new anti-cancer target.
– Wayne State University’s Jennifer Stockdill, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a $650,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award that will advance understanding of reactions that form novel chemical structures.
By studying stroke victims who have lost the ability to spell, researchers have pinpointed the parts of the brain that control how we write words.
Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis found a way to keep a cancerous tumor from growing by using nanoparticles of the main ingredient in common antacid tablets.
It is normal—in fact necessary—for our immune system to occasionally fly into an inflammatory rage to defend the host (us) against pathogens or even tumor cells. Problems arise when the rage persists or is re-directed against one’s self, as occurs in autoimmune disease.
A study lead by researchers from Rush University Medical Center has provided the first report on the relationship of brain concentrations of mercury to brain neuropathology and diseases associated with dementia. Study results were published in the Feb. 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
New research published Feb. 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older adults with a major risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease known as APOEɛ4 who ate at least one seafood serving per week showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. In contrast, this association was not found in the brains of volunteers who ate fish weekly but did not carry the risk gene.
Mass. Eye and Ear researchers describe the role of endomucin, a molecule that – under healthy circumstances – resists the adhesion of white blood cells as they move through the circulatory system. These findings suggest that promoting the expression of endomucin may prevent the collection of white blood cells that causes tissues to become inflamed.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine and other institutions have recently uncovered abnormalities in embryonic brain development in mice, including transient embryonic brain enlargement during neuron formation, that are responsible for abnormal adult brain structures and behavioral abnormalities.
Since its introduction nearly 23 years ago, the popular injectable contraceptive depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) has been associated with causing substantial weight gain in some adolescent girls. Without being able to identify or predict which girls will gain weight on the drug, physicians typically counsel all teens receiving DMPA to simply eat less. New research suggests that the message may need to change to “eat better.”
There’s apparently safety in numbers, even for cancer cells. New research in mice suggests that cancer cells rarely form metastatic tumors on their own, preferring to travel in groups since collaboration seems to increase their collective chances of survival.
It has long been thought that cancer metastasizes, or spreads, when a single cancer cell escapes from the original tumor, travels through the bloodstream and sets up shop in distant organs. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that these bad actors don’t travel alone; instead they migrate through the body in cellular clusters, like gangs.
For the first time, researchers have treated an animal model of a genetic disorder using a viral vector to deliver genome-editing components in which the disease- causing mutation has been corrected. Delivery of the vector to newborn mice improved their survival while treatment of adult animals, unexpectedly, made them worse.
In a 14-year study involving more than 2,000 teen smokers in 50 Washington state high schools, a team of cancer prevention researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that one year of telephone counseling using motivational interviewing and skills training delivered during the senior year of high school is insufficient to help the smokers quit and stay quit up to six years into young adulthood.
Research from the University of Rochester finds that caring for others dips during adolescence. But when young people feel supported from their social circles, their concern for others rebound.
Scientists show they can use electronic medical records and birth information to verify and strengthen an already suspected link between autistic children and pregnant mothers with obesity and diabetes.
A team of biologists and biomedical researchers at UC San Diego has developed a new method to determine if bacteria are susceptible to antibiotics within a few hours, an advance that could slow the appearance of drug resistance and allow doctors to more rapidly identify the appropriate treatment for patients with life threatening bacterial infections.
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