Researchers at the University of Notre Dame discovered that the activation of a specific enzyme may help suppress the spread of tumors.
Researchers have shown for the first time that a key protein called KMT2D involved in the epigenetic regulation of gene expression guides this renewal.
In an effort to create a power source for future implantable technologies, a team of researchers developed an electric eel-inspired device that produced 110 volts from gels filled with water, called hydrogels. Their results show potential for a soft power source to draw on a biological system’s chemical energy. Anirvan Guha will present the research during the 62nd Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, Feb. 17-21.
Protein systems make up the complex signaling pathways that control whether a cell divides or, in some cases, metastasizes. Ras proteins have long been the focus of cancer research because of their role as “on/off switch” signaling pathways that control cell division and failure to die like healthy cells do. Now, a team of researchers has been able to study precisely how Ras proteins interact with cell membrane surfaces.
Cell division is an intricately choreographed ballet of proteins and molecules that divide the cell. During mitosis, microtubule-organizing centers assemble the spindle fibers that separate the copying chromosomes of DNA. While scientists are familiar with MTOCs’ existence and the role they play in cell division, their actual physical structure remains poorly understood. Researchers are now trying to decipher their molecular architecture, and they will present their work during the 62nd Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, held Feb. 17-21.
Circadian clocks arose as an adaptation to dramatic swings in daylight hours and temperature caused by the Earth’s rotation, but we still don’t fully understand how they work. During the 62nd Biophysical Society Meeting, held Feb. 17-21, Andy LiWang, University of California, Merced, will present his lab’s work studying the circadian clock of blue-green colored cyanobacteria. LiWang’s group discovered that how the proteins move hour by hour is central to cyanobacteria’s circadian clock function.
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Imaging of biomolecules is taking a leap forward at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. UAB installed a $600,000 direct electron detector on its cryo-electron microscope in January, and validation tests to fine-tune the resolution are underway.
New research in mice has found that a father’s stress affects the brain development of his offspring. This stress changes the father’s sperm, which can then alter the brain development of the child. This new research provides a much better understanding of the key role that fathers play in the brain development of offspring.
• Three new research articles compare human and mouse kidney development to identify shared and novel features. • The studies provide new detailed molecular data to guide future research. • The studies revealed deep conservation of certain processes, but also significant differences in gene expression during kidney development, as well as in the timing, scale, organization, and molecular profile of key cell types and cell structures.
Jakub Famulski, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Kentucky, has received an R01 grant for over $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health to study the early formation of the anterior segment of the eye, which includes the cornea, iris, ciliary muscle, drainage canals and pupil.
New research from Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah illuminates aspects of how an early embryo, the product of fertilization of a female egg cell by a male sperm cell, can give rise to all the many cell types of the adult animal.
A tool that has already revolutionized disease research may soon get even better, thanks to an accidental discovery in the bacteria that cause many of the worst cases of meningitis.
In a new study, published this week in the journal Current Biology, scientists from UChicago show that some neurons in bird brains form the same kind of circuitry and have the same molecular signature as cells that enable connectivity between different areas of the mammalian neocortex.
University of Delaware researchers have produced a new and freely available computer program that predicts cancer cell motion and spread with high accuracy. The system gives researchers a faster way of examining rapidly spreading brain cancer tumors and predicting the likely impact of treatments.
A team of researchers at the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center and ArunA Biomedical, a UGA startup company, have developed a new treatment for stroke that reduces brain damage and accelerates the brain's natural healing tendencies in animal models.
Dr. Woodring Wright, a UT Southwestern Professor of Cell Biology who studies the end caps of chromosomal DNA, called telomeres, hoping to find ways to fight aging and cancer, had multiple myeloma.
Job loss following early-stage breast cancer diagnosis is associated with race and insurance status, but not with any clinical or treatment-related factors, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.Not only were an African-American patient or an uninsured patient four times more likely to leave the workforce despite fighting a cancer with high survival rates, but they also were more likely to return in a lesser job within the first two years cancer-free.
UT Southwestern Medical Center is one of nine exclusive sites in the country enrolling multiple myeloma patients for a clinical trial of the CAR-T “living drug” therapy for cancer.
A team of researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute have found that gradually depleting an enzyme called BACE1 completely reverses the formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby improving the animals’ cognitive function. The study, which will be published February 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, raises hopes that drugs targeting this enzyme will be able to successfully treat Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
Researchers have successfully treated a cancerous tumor using a “nano-factory” – a synthetic cell that produces anti-cancer proteins within the tumor tissue. The synthetic cell could one day be an important part in the personalized medicine trend.
Researchers studying half-lives of evolutionarily related proteins in different species uncovered a link between species lifespan and protein lifespan.
People with a mutated ATF6 gene have a malformed or missing fovea, severely limiting vision. UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers first linked ATF6 to this type of vision impairment. Now the team discovered that a chemical that activates ATF6 converts patient stem cells into blood vessels.
A kinase inhibitor called cabozantinib could be a viable therapy option for patients with metastatic, radioactive iodine-resistant thyroid cancer. In a trial initiated and led by the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, tumors shrunk in 34 out of 35 patients who took the drug, and more than half of those patients saw the tumor size decrease by more than 30 percent.
In this study, published in Cell Reports, two labs at UNC and a group at Princeton University reprogrammed ordinary cells called fibroblasts into new and healthy heart muscle cells, and recorded changes that appear to be necessary for this reprogramming.
Vanderbilt biologist Nicole Creanza takes an interdisciplinary approach to human evolution--both biological and cultural--as editor of special themed issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Little hints of immortality are lurking in the stem cells of fruit flies
Replenishing a naturally occurring heart protein could improve stem cell therapy after a heart attack
Models for extinction risk are necessarily simple. Most reduce complex ecological systems to a linear relationship between resource density and population growth—something that can be broadly applied to infer how much resource loss a species can survive.
Results of a new phase II clinical trial indicate that cabozantinib offers an active therapy option for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) that has progressed following surgery and treatment with radioactive iodine (RAI). Thirty-four of 35 patients in the trial experienced a reduction in tumor size following treatment with the targeted kinase inhibitor, and more than half experienced reductions in excess of 30 percent.
A team of researchers from ORNL’s Energy and Transportation Science Division is using neutron imaging to study particulate filters that collect harmful emissions in vehicles. A better understanding of how heat treatments and oxidation methods can remove layers of soot and ash from these filters could lead to improved fuel-efficiency.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive, relapse-prone cancer that accounts for one-fourth of all breast cancers, could be the focus of a new area of study for immune checkpoint blockade therapy. A team of researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center revealed that in TNBC a cell process called glycosylation is required for PD-L1/PD1 molecules to interact and identified exactly how and why glycosylation is so crucial.
Genomic profiling of mostly untreatable and deadly nerve sheath tumors led scientists to test a possible therapeutic strategy that inhibited tumor growth in lab tests on human tumor cells and mouse models, according to research in the journal Cancer Cell.
In one of the first successes of its kind, researchers have inhibited the spreading of cancer cells from one part of the body to another. In doing so, they relied on a new model of how cancer metastasizes that emphasizes epigenetics, which examines how genes are turned on and off.
When the body attacks its own healthy tissues in an autoimmune disease, peripheral nerve damage handicaps people and causes persistent neuropathic pain when insulation on healing nerves doesn’t fully regenerate. Unfortunately, there are no effective ways to treat the condition. Now scientists describe in Nature Medicine an experimental molecular therapy that restores insulation on peripheral nerves in mice, improves limb function, and results in less observable discomfort.
Johns Hopkins researchers report successful use of heart imaging to predict the benefit or futility of catheter ablation, an increasingly popular way to treat atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder.
Combining an anti-angiogenesis agent, which blocks blood vessel formation, with an immunotherapy agent, was found to have promising anti-tumor activity and no unexpected side effects in an early-phase clinical trial in patients with advanced kidney cancer.
Researchers at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute (CRI) at UT Southwestern have discovered that cells in the liver with whole genome duplications, known as polyploid cells, can protect the liver against cancer.
Understanding how the dynein-dynactin complex is assembled and organized provides a critical foundation to explain the underlying causes of several dynein-related neurodegenerative diseases.
— Jamie Shuda, EdD, a prominent K-12 educator and researcher at Penn Medicine, has been named co-recipient of the 2018 Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for “extraordinary contributions to genetics education.”
Scientists have found that DNA executes an unexpected architectural role in shaping the cells of bacteria. Studying bacteria, the researchers used an array of experiments and technologies to reveal that DNA, beyond serving to encode genetic information, also “pumps up” bacterial cells.
UNC School of Medicine researchers discovered a structure on viruses that makes them better at crossing from the bloodstream into the brain – a key factor for administering gene therapies at lower doses for treating brain and spinal disorders. Experiments also showed decreased liver toxicity.
Cleveland Clinic researchers have published findings in Nature Communications on a new stem cell pathway that allows a highly aggressive form of breast cancer - triple-negative breast cancer - to thrive.
Ever wonder why obese bodies burn less calories or why dieting often leads to a plateau in weight loss? In both cases the body is trying to defend its weight by regulating energy expenditure. In a paper publishing in Cell on February 8, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers identify the enzyme TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) as a key player in the control of energy expenditure during both obesity and fasting.
Before medical science can bioengineer human organs in a lab for therapeutic use, two remaining hurdles are ensuring genetic stability—so the organs are free from the risk of tumor growth—and producing organ tissues of sufficient volume and size for viable transplant into people. Scientists report in Stem Cell Reports achieving both goals with a new production method for bioengineered human gut and liver tissues.
University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered the first known molecular evidence of obligate symbiosis in lichens, a distinctive co-evolutionary relationship that could shed new light on how and why some multicellular organisms consolidate their genomes in order to co-exist.
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center-led research teams have identified a direct association between physical inactivity and two different types of cancer: lung cancer and head/neck cancer — adding to a growing list of cancers linked to sedentary lifestyles.
The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has published a new white paper, “The Science Behind Biosimilars – Entering a New Era of Biologic Therapy." The paper encourages providers to incorporate these drugs into treatment plans of patients with rheumatic diseases where appropriate.
Johns Hopkins researchers report they have developed two new endoscopic probes that significantly sharpen the technology’s imaging resolution and permit direct observation of fine tissue structures and cell activity in small organs in sheep, rats and mice.
A study led by PhD candidate Mr K. S. Seshadri from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Science has revealed that male white-spotted bush frogs (Raochestes chalazodes) dedicatedly guard their fertilised eggs from other cannibalistic male frogs and predators. The study confirmed that the adult male white-spotted bush frogs are the sole caregivers of their offspring, predominantly by attending to and guarding the eggs.
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