Health experts have warned for years that the overuse of antibiotics is creating “superbugs” able to resist drugs treating infection. Now scientists at Indiana University and elsewhere are finding evidence that an invisible war between microorganisms may also be catching humans in the crossfire.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University have engineered a tethered ribosome that works nearly as well as the authentic cellular component, or organelle, that produces all the proteins and enzymes within the cell.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have demonstrated a direct connection between two signaling proteins and liver fibrosis, a scarring process underlying chronic liver disease, the 12th leading cause of death in the United States.
A team led by Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used the OLCF’s Titan to achieve a milestone in the field of biomolecular simulation, modeling a complete photosynthetic organelle of the bacteria Rhodobacter sphaeroides in atomic detail. The project, a 100-million atom spherical chromatophore, is the first of its kind, giving scientists a system-level understanding of a fundamental biological process based on all-atom precision.
Sergei Maslov, a computational biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, and Alexei Tkachenko, a scientist at Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), have developed a model that explains how simple monomers could rapidly make the jump to more complex self-replicating polymers. What their model points to could have intriguing implications for the origins of life on Earth and CFN's work in engineering artificial self-assembly at the nanoscale.
One question of the origin of life in particular remains problematic: what enabled the leap from a primordial soup of individual monomers to self-replicating polymer chains? A new model published this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, proposes a potential mechanism by which self-replication could have emerged. It posits that template-assisted ligation, the joining of two polymers by using a third, longer one as a template, could have enabled polymers to become self-replicating.
Immune cells that hang around after parasitic skin infection help ward off secondary attack. These skin squatters may prove to be the key to successful anti-parasite vaccines.
Research published in the journal Cell Reports challenges the most popular theory about why our bodies deteriorate in old age. Scientists know that as we grow older our cells accumulate particles, called free radicals. It has long been thought that free radicals wreak havoc by damaging proteins and impairing their function – but the new research shows that proteins can survive unscathed.
Study suggests that drugs targeting the lymphotoxin-beta receptor may improve liver cancer treatment.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have developed a computer algorithm that is helping scientists see how drugs produce pharmacological effects inside the body. The study, published in the journal Cell, could help researchers create drugs that are more efficient and less prone to side effects, suggest ways to regulate a drug's activity, and identify novel therapeutic uses for new and existing compounds.
A new study by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveals a protein’s critical – and previously unknown -- role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing and extremely difficult-to-treat blood cancer. The study was published July 23 in Cell Stem Cell.
The Histone Antibody Specificity Database (www.histoneantibodies.com), is a newly launched online portal that lets scientists find the right antibodies for their research with a much higher degree of confidence than ever before.
Other topics include editing genes, cellular switchboards, treating menopause and more...
Like a collection of ragtag villagers fighting off an invading army, the mix of bacteria that live in our guts may band together to keep dangerous infections from taking hold, new research suggests. But some “villages” may succeed better than others at holding off the invasion, because of key differences in the kinds of bacteria that make up their feisty population.
A biomedical breakthrough in the journal Nature reveals never-before-seen details of the human body’s cellular switchboard that regulates sensory and hormonal responses. The work is based on an X-ray laser experiment at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
In recent years, immunotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment for certain cancers. Now this strategy, which uses patients’ own immune cells, genetically engineered to target tumors, has shown significant success against multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells that is largely incurable. The results appeared in a study published online today in Nature Medicine.
A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has generated a novel system for growing cardiac tissue from undifferentiated stem cells on a culture plate. This heart on a chip is a miniature physiologic system that could be used to model early heart development and screen drugs prescribed during pregnancy. Researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley; the Gladstone Institutes, in San Francisco; and UC San Francisco, reported their work in the July 14, 2015, online issue of Nature Communications.
A new study in Developmental Cell, from Stowers Institute for Medical Research Associate Investigator Tatjana Piotrowski, Ph.D., zeros in on an important component in fish: the support cells that surround centrally-located hair cells in each garlic-shaped sensory organ, or neuromast.
An Argonne/University of Tennessee research team reconstructed the crystal structure of BAP, a protein involved in the process by which marine archaea release carbon, to determine how it functioned, as well as its larger role in carbon cycling in marine sediments.
Stem cells are key for the continual renewal of tissues in our bodies. As such, manipulating stem cells also holds much promise for biomedicine if their regenerative capacity can be harnessed. Researchers are making headway in this area by studying stem cells in their natural environment in fruitflies.
In the face of growing concerns about the reproducibility of published scientific data, a special task force of the American Society for Cell Biology has made 13 recommendations to tighten standards, improve statistics and ethics training, and encourage self-policing by life scientists.
A single molecule called DNA-PKcs may drive metastatic processes that turn cancer from a slowly growing relatively benign disease to a killer.
Canadian and British researchers have discovered that chromosomes play an active role in animal cell division. This occurs at a precise stage – cytokinesis – when the cell splits into two new daughter cells.
A team from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and their collaborators developed and evaluated the MiSI method for classifying microbial species that could be supplemented – as needed – by traditional approaches relied on by microbiologists for decades.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s James Crowe, M.D., Ann Scott Carell Professor and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, and his team are reporting the first large panel of antibody treatments against the chikungunya virus in the current issue of Cell Host and Microbe.
Other topics include repairing injured nerves, busted heart attack treatment, decorative brain molecules, and more...
As advances in medicine allow individuals to live longer, people are facing unique age-related health challenges. As they age, organs such as the kidneys become more susceptible to injury, and their ability to self-repair is decreased. Researchers from the University of Missouri have found a cellular signal that causes kidney cells to die, making the kidneys prone to injury. This finding could lead to improved kidney function in the elderly.
When Greek mythology and cell biology meet, you get the protein Callipygian, recently discovered and named by researchers at The Johns Hopkins University for its role in determining which area of a cell becomes the back as it begins to move.
Cedars-Sinai researchers have successfully tested two new methods for preserving cognition in laboratory mice that exhibit features of Alzheimer’s disease by using white blood cells from bone marrow and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain.
Studying brain scans and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy adults, scientists have shown that changes in key biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease during midlife may help identify those who will develop dementia years later, according to new research.
The investigation of a simple protein has uncovered its uniquely complicated role in the spread of the childhood cancer, osteosarcoma. It turns out the protein, called ezrin, acts like an air traffic controller, coordinating multiple functions within a cancer cell and allowing it to endure stress conditions encountered during metastasis.
New research suggests that a molecule commonly found “decorating” brain cells in higher animals, including humans, may affect brain structure. The study showed that small changes made in how sialic acid attaches to cell surfaces can cause damaged brain structure, poor motor skills, hyperactivity and learning difficulties in mice.
Researchers reveal how cells in the peripheral nervous system degrade myelin after nerve injury, a process that fails to occur in the central nervous system. The results could provide new targets for manipulating demyelination in injury and disease.
For cell division to be successful, pairs of chromosomes have to line up just right before being swept into their new cells, like the opening of a theater curtain. They accomplish this feat in part thanks to structures called centrioles that provide anchors for the curtain’s ropes. Researchers recently learned that most cells will not divide without centrioles, and they found out why: The protein p53 monitors centriole numbers to prevent potentially disastrous cell divisions.
Other topics include memories and protein, physics and gas mileage, agriculture and food safety, vaccine for Dengue, retinoblastoma proteins in cancer progression, and more.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a new method for culturing stem cells which sees the highly therapeutic cells grow faster and stronger.
A review article published on the journal Oncotarget focusing on RB role in apoptosis provides a comprehensive overview on the role of RB proteins in the coordinated control of cell decisions.
Research from Eric Kandel’s lab has uncovered further evidence of a system in the brain that persistently maintains memories for long periods of time.
Researchers have developed antibodies to help study critical chemical modifications responsible for a protein’s development
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a cell signaling pathway that appears to exert some control over initiation and progression of colorectal cancer, the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. A key protein in the pathway also appears to be predictive of cancer survival rates.
University of Washington researchers have used a plant hormone to produce cell-to-cell communication in baker's yeast -- a first step in learning to build multicellular organisms or artificial organs from scratch.
Rather than cellular trash, half of a transfer RNA (tRNA) molecule appears to actively spur cell proliferation in breast and prostate cancers, suggesting a new role for tRNA and a possible target for a new class of therapy.
Researchers have developed a new informatics technology that analyzes existing data repositories of protein modifications and 3D protein structures to help scientists identify and target research on “hotspots” most likely to be important for biological function.
Other topics include resurgence of whales off southern California, treating chronic kidney disease, and a breakthrough in a heart-specific type of stem cell.
Future therapies for failing hearts are likely to include stem-like cells and associated growth factors that regenerate heart muscle. Scientists have just taken an important step towards that future by identifying a stem-like “progenitor” cell that produces only heart muscle cells.
A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute reveals a key part of the Ebola virus life cycle at a higher resolution than ever before. The research sheds light on how Ebola virus assembles—and how researchers might stop the often-fatal infection.
The Salk Institute and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute created a compound that stops a cellular recycling process
Other topics include weight loss, medical marijuana, smart traffic lights, diabetes, heart disease, and more.
Indiana University cancer researchers found that a particular microRNA may be a potent therapeutic agent against pancreatic cancer. The research was published June 22 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Working with heart muscle cells from diabetic rats, scientists at Johns Hopkins have located what they say is the epicenter of mischief wreaked by too much blood sugar and used a sugar-gobbling enzyme to restore normal function in the glucose-damaged cells of animal heart muscles.
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