Curated News: PNAS

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Bacteria are the most abundant form of life on Earth, and they are capable of living in diverse habitats ranging from the surface of rocks to the insides of our intestines. Over millennia, these adaptable little organisms have evolved a variety of specialized mechanisms to move themselves through their particular environments. In two recent Caltech studies, researchers used a state-of-the-art imaging technique to capture, for the first time, three-dimensional views of this tiny complicated machinery in bacteria.

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Bacteria are the most abundant form of life on Earth, and they are capable of living in diverse habitats ranging from the surface of rocks to the insides of our intestines. Over millennia, these adaptable little organisms have evolved a variety of specialized mechanisms to move themselves through their particular environments. In two recent Caltech studies, researchers used a state-of-the-art imaging technique to capture, for the first time, three-dimensional views of this tiny complicated machinery in bacteria.

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The Cassini spacecraft has observed geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus since 2005. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism by which cyclical tidal stresses exerted by Saturn can drive Enceladus’s long-lived eruptions.

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Working with human breast cancer cells and mice, scientists say new experiments explain how certain cancer stem cells thrive in low oxygen conditions. Proliferation of such cells, which tend to resist chemotherapy and help tumors spread, are considered a major roadblock to successful cancer treatment.

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Think your DNA is all human? Think again. And a new discovery suggests it’s even less human than scientists previously thought. Nineteen new pieces of non-human DNA -- left by viruses that first infected our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago -- have just been found, lurking between our own genes.

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A new study shows the economic and ecological impact of invasive species in the Great Lakes has been dramatically underestimated. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a single non-native species in a single inland lake has racked up $80 million to $163 million in damage.

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Unraveling the structure and function of the enzyme aurone synthase.

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University of Washington oceanographers track 2,000 years of El Niño history, showing that it can shift in strength for centuries at a time.

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For humans to understand speech and for other animals to know each other’s calls, the brain must distinguish short sounds from longer sounds. By studying frogs, University of Utah researchers figured out how certain brain cells compute the length of sounds and detect short ones.

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Teens being classified as overweight in school fitness reports does not appear to have any impact on short-term changes in body mass index, finds a new study by NYU, Syracuse, and Columbia.

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Making the most of the low light in the muddy rivers where it swims, the elephant nose fish survives by being able to spot predators amongst the muck with a uniquely shaped retina, the part of the eye that captures light. In a new study, researchers looked to the fish’s retinal structure to inform the design of a contact lens that can adjust its focus.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have revealed new details about how a promising class of anti-influenza drugs blocks the virus from replicating.

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How do ocean gardens get nitrogen, which is critical to producing life, and will they get it differently in the future? It’s a critical set of questions that has been stumping oceanographers and leading them on a quest for answers.

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Building upon earlier research, investigators at UT Southwestern Medical Center and their collaborators have identified a new innate immunity pathway that protects mammals from viral oncogenesis, the process by which viruses cause normal cells to become cancerous.

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Bacterially speaking, it gets very crowded in the human gut, with trillions of cells jostling for a position to carry out a host of specialized and often crucial tasks. A new Yale study, published the week of March 7 in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests these “friendly” bacteria aggressively stake out their territory, injecting lethal toxins into any other cells that dare bump into them.

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From beach shallows to the ocean depths, vast numbers of chemical compounds work together to reduce and store atmospheric carbon in the world’s oceans. Now, a team of scientists are working with new analytical tools needed to understand these molecular-level relationships

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A computer program that learns and can categorize leaves into large evolutionary categories such as plant families will lead to greatly improved fossil identification and a better understanding of flowering plant evolution, according to an international team of researchers.

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Scientists find how nematodes use key hormones to take over root cells.

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Scientists find how nematodes use key hormones to take over root cells.

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In a first-of-its-kind-study, researchers at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center discovered and applied a new screening technique capable of testing thousands of potential drug compounds to see if those compounds can reverse abnormal DNA unwinding in Ewing sarcoma, a bone and soft tissue cancer that’s most common in teens and young adults.

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In a first-of-its-kind-study, researchers at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center discovered and applied a new screening technique capable of testing thousands of potential drug compounds to see if those compounds can reverse abnormal DNA unwinding in Ewing sarcoma, a bone and soft tissue cancer that’s most common in teens and young adults.

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The substance that provides energy to all the cells in our bodies, Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), may also be able to power the next generation of supercomputers.

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UCLA geochemist finds striking similarities between climate change patterns today and millions of years ago.

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Researchers discover how a bat’s brain screens out sounds not worth paying attention to..

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Immune cells that normally help us fight off bacterial and viral infections may play a far greater role in Alzheimer’s disease than originally thought, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists with the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center and the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders.

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Cognitive and functional recovery after a stroke or traumatic injury requires intense rehabilitative therapy to help the brain repair and restructure itself. New findings by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that not only is rehabilitation vital but that a longer, even more intense period of rehabilitation may produce even greater benefit.

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A novel Yale study answers age-old questions about how cancers spread by applying tools from evolutionary biology. The new insights will help scientists better understand the genetic origins of tumor metastases, and lead to more effective targets for treatment, said the researchers.

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Researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory fabricated model blood vessel systems that include artificial blood vessels with diameters as narrow as the smallest capillaries in the body. The systems were used to study the activity of white blood cells as they were affected by drugs that tend to make them softer, which facilitates their entry into blood circulation.

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In bloodhounds and neutrophils, getting the scent is not enough. Dogs and immune cells have to remember the chemoattractant they are pursuing, even when it momentarily fades out or threatens to overwhelm.

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A hormone implicated in monogamy and aggression in animals also promotes trust and cooperation in humans in risky situations, Caltech researchers say.

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Implantable device delivers first-line treatment for pancreatic cancer directly to tumors, bypassing bloodstream and limiting widespread side effects.

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Implantable device delivers first-line treatment for pancreatic cancer directly to tumors, bypassing bloodstream and limiting widespread side effects.

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Sleep-deprived people are much more likely to sign false confessions than rested individuals, according to a groundbreaking study that has important implications for police interrogation practices.

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The most dangerous times of year for children with asthma are soon after their schools reopen after a break, and a new study finds that cold viruses are largely to blame.

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Microorganisms in the gut could play a role in reducing the severity of malaria, according to a new study co-authored by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Louisville.

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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.

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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.

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Research from Indiana University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has identified a genetic mechanism that is likely to drive mutations that can lead to cancer.

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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.

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Using a new methodology that measures how closely words’ meanings are related within and between languages, an international team of researchers has revealed that for many universal concepts, the world’s languages feature a common structure of semantic relatedness.

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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.

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Why do humans and dolphins evolve large brains relative to the size of their bodies while blue whales and hippos have brains that are relatively puny? While there has been much speculation regarding brain size and intelligence, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms that species with brains that are large relative to their body are more intelligent.

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Researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University President Subra Suresh and collaborators Tony Jun Huang from the Pennsylvania State University and Ming Dao from MIT, have demonstrated that acoustic tweezers can be used to non-invasively move and manipulate single cells along three dimensions, providing a promising new method for 3-D bioprinting.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center chemists have successfully used synthetic nanoparticles to deliver tumor-suppressing therapies to diseased livers with cancer, an important hurdle scientists have been struggling to conquer.

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Whitehead Institute researchers have created a new mouse-human modeling system that could be used to study neural crest development as well as the modeling of a variety of neural crest related diseases, including such cancers as melanoma and neurofibromatosis. Mouse-human chimeras would fill an important gap in disease research, as existing models do not accurately mimic key disease processes, including solid tumor initiation and progression, and are of little value for studying diseases with long latencies, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

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A new study suggests that current ‘hotspots’ of shark activity are at risk of overfishing, and that the introduction of catch quotas might be necessary to protect oceanic sharks.

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Latest research reveals why geckos are the largest animals able to scale smooth vertical walls - even larger climbers would require unmanageably large sticky footpads.

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Working with mice, researchers have contributed significant new evidence to support the idea that high doses of cocaine kill brain cells by triggering overactive autophagy, a process in which cells literally digest their own insides. Their results, moreover, bring with them a possible antidote.

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Biophysicists have discovered why the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) are naturally somewhat resistant to antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Their findings also suggest how drug developers can make fluoroquinolones more efficacious against mutations that make the lung disease drug resistant.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that a lipid (fat molecule) in brain cells may act as a “switch” to increase or decrease the motivation to consume nicotine.