A Johns Hopkins team has discovered in young adult mice that a lone brain stem cell is capable not only of replacing itself and giving rise to specialized neurons and glia – important types of brain cells – but also of taking a wholly unexpected path: generating two new brain stem cells.
A team of North Carolina State University researchers has discovered more about how a gene connected to the production of new brain cells in adults does its job. Their findings could pave the way to new therapies for brain injury or disease.
Columbia engineers develop new bioengineering approach to study stem cell function and factors that could lead to birth defects and disease.
There will be some very interesting passengers on the final mission of the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis scheduled to launch July 8, 2011: thousands of bacteria.
By accounting for the floppy, fickle nature of RNA, researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine have developed a new way to search for drugs that target this important molecule. Their work appears in the June 26 issue of Nature Chemical Biology.
A new model of the single-celled marine cyanobacterium Cyanothece could help researchers use blue-green algae to make renewable energy by predicting which of its genes are central to capturing energy from sunlight.
Biologists worldwide subscribe to the healthy herds hypothesis, but could it be that predators can also make prey populations more susceptible to other predators or even parasites? Biologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered at least one animal whose defenses against a predator make it a good target for one opportunistic parasite.
In an effort to unravel the tangled biology of autism, Johns Hopkins scientists have created a mouse model that mimics a human mutation of a gene known to be associated with autism spectrum disorders.
The first roadmap to mathematical modeling of a powerful basic "decision circuit" in breast cancer has been developed and published in Nature Reviews Cancer.
A sugar-binding protein called galectin-9 traps an enzyme that influences how T-cells behave onto their surface, making them more susceptible to HIV infection.
In a study at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, researchers found that when a common type of prostate cancer was treated with conventional hormone ablation therapy blocking androgen production or androgen receptor (AR) function– which drives growth of the tumor – the cancer was able to adapt and compensate by activating a survival cell signaling pathway, effectively circumventing the roadblock put up by this treatment.
A new study from Mount Sinai School of Medicine has found that a cellular signaling pathway governs the differentiation of cells into fat tissue or smooth muscle, which lines the vascular system. Engaging this signaling pathway and its capacity to govern cell differentiation has important implications in preventing obesity and cardiovascular disease. The study is published in the June issue of Developmental Cell.
Communication Between Hair Follicles and Melanocyte Stem Cells Key to Mystery. Findings Also Offer Insight into Human Tissue Regeneration.
Birds do it, bees do it, and for most things biological, even plants do it. But not necessarily like their animal counterparts. A study led by Salk Institute scientists shows that a plant receptor does one of the most fundamental cellular “its”—the delivery of a hormonal signal from outside the cell to the nucleus—in a radically different way than its animal cousins. Knowing that could aid creation of techniques to speed plant growth and enhance agricultural production.
Among science’s “final frontiers,” one of the most difficult to cross has been looking into the workings of living cells. Now, a UMass Amherst physicist has built an instrument that sees and photographs single molecules in real time, to uncover such secrets as how enzymes regulate cell functions.
A biological sensor is a critical part of a human cell's control system that is able to trigger a number of cell activities. A type of sensor known as the "gating ring" can open a channel that allows a flow of potassium ions through the cell's wall or membrane — similar to the way a subway turnstile allows people into a station. This flow of ions, in turn, is involved in the regulation of crucial bodily activities like blood pressure, insulin secretion and brain signaling. But the biophysical functioning of the gating ring sensor has not been clearly understood. Now, UCLA researchers have uncovered for the first time the sensor's molecular mechanism, shedding new light on the complexity of cells' control systems.
Revealing another part of the story of muscle development, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown how the cytoskeleton from one muscle cell builds finger-like projections that invade into another muscle cell’s territory, eventually forcing the cells to combine.
It’s long been known that cancer cells eat a lot of sugar to stay alive. In fact, where normal, noncancerous cells generate energy from using some sugar and a lot of oxygen, cancerous cells use virtually no oxygen and a lot of sugar. Many genes have been implicated in this process and now, reporting in the May 27 issue of Cell, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that this so-called Warburg effect is controlled.
In his new book, 'First Life,' biochemist David Deamer presents an engaging and accessible overview of research into life's beginnings and a personal history of his work in this field.
The NSF has awarded a three-year, $1.12 million grant to three Virginia Tech researchers with expertise in systems biology and tissue engineering to determine how different cell types communicate.
Using a tiny bloodless worm, University of Maryland Associate Professor Iqbal Hamza and his team have discovered a large piece in the puzzle of how humans, and other organisms, safely move iron around in the body. The findings, published in the journal Cell, could lead to new methods for treating age-old scourges - parasitic worm infections, which affect more than a quarter of the world's population, and iron deficiency, the world's number one nutritional disorder.
Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson show that a simple sugar, lactate, is like “candy for cancer cells.”
Scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research discovered a molecule called c-Abl that has a known role in leukemia also has a hand in Alzheimer’s disease.
Brenda Schulman, Ph.D., of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is a joint winner of The Protein Society’s 2011 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award. The award recognizes exceptional contributions in protein science, which profoundly influence the understanding of biology.
Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have discovered a new drug target for squamous cell carcinoma – the second most common form of skin cancer. Scientists in the laboratory of Valeri Vasioukhin, Ph.D., have found that a protein called alpha-catenin acts as a tumor suppressor and they also have unlocked the mechanism by which this protein controls cell proliferation.
A recently discovered enzyme drives the production of a potent form of estrogen in human breast cancer tissue, according to researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.
A new comparison of proteins shared across species finds that complex organisms, including humans, have accumulated structural weaknesses that may have actually launched the long journey from microbe to man. The study, published in Nature, suggests that the random introduction of errors into proteins, rather than traditional natural selection, may have boosted the evolution of biological complexity.
In basic research with far-reaching impact, cell biologists Wei-Lih Lee and Steven Markus report in Developmental Cell that they have solved one of the fundamental questions in stem cell division: How dynein, the cell’s nano-scale “mitotic motor,” positions itself to direct the dividing process.
The seeds sprouting in your spring garden may still be struggling to reach the sun. If so, they are consuming a finite energy pack contained within each seed. Once those resources are depleted, the plant cell nucleus must be ready to switch on a “green” photosynthetic program. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies recently showed a new way that those signals are relayed.
What does it take to regenerate a limb? Biologists have long thought that organ regeneration in animals like zebrafish and salamanders involved stem cells that can generate any tissue in the body. But new research suggests that cells capable of regenerating a zebrafish fin do not revert to stem cells that can form any tissue. Instead, the individual cells retain their original identities and only give rise to more of their own kind.
Whitehead Institute researchers have found that depriving human melanoma cells of the amino acid leucine can be lethal to the cells, suggesting a possible strategy for therapeutic intervention. The cells studied have a mutated RAS/MEK pathway—the most common mutation found in the deadliest form of skin cancer.
An international research team led by Dr. Tak Mak, Director, The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), has discovered a new aspect of “metabolic transformation”, the process whereby tumour cells adapt and survive under conditions that would kill normal cells.
A little-studied gene known as notum plays a key role in the planarian’s regeneration decision-making process, according to Whitehead Institute scientists. At head-facing wounds, the gene acts as a dimmer switch to dampen the Wnt pathway—an signaling circuit that operates in all animals—and promote head regeneration.
Whitehead Institute researchers have found that the planarian flatworm regenerates missing tissues using pluripotent adult stem cells. Until now, scientists could not determine if the dividing cells in planarians are a mix of specialized stem cells that regenerates specific tissues, or if individual neoblasts are pluripotent and able to regenerate all tissues.
A collaborative effort by investigators at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies recently revealed just how similarly mammals and insects make critical metabolic adjustments when food availability changes, either due to environmental catastrophe or everyday changes in sleep/wake cycles. Those findings may suggest novel ways to treat metabolic conditions such as obesity and type II diabetes.
Johns Hopkins researchers have demonstrated that human liver cells derived from adult cells coaxed into an embryonic state can engraft and begin regenerating liver tissue in mice with chronic liver damage.
Shelly Peyton, a chemical engineer at UMass Amherst, is building working models of human bone, breast, liver and artery tissues to see how cells behave when they are affected by a disease such as cancer. The goal is to develop new drug therapies to fight diseases that may not require animal testing.
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a protein that guides blood vessel development and eventually might lead to a treatment to keep cancer cells from spreading.
This research shows for the first time the role of a specific protein – MAN2C1 – in prostate cancer development. The finding is significant because prostate cancer patients with increased levels of MAN2C1 appear to face more aggressive forms of the disease. This research could serve a diagnostic purpose in terms of likelihood of whether prostate cancers at early stages will progress into metastatic tumours.
Researchers with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered a way to amp up the power of killer T-cells, called CD8 cells, making them more functional for longer periods of time and boosting their ability to multiply and expand within the body to fight melanoma, a new study has found.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have uncovered new clues about how the intestine maintains friendly relations with the 100 trillion symbiotic bacteria that normally live in the digestive tract.
Discovery of a new class of insect repellant raises the possibility of formulations that are thousands of times more effective than current repellants.
Researchers develop fruit fly model to study fat production gene
Cancer researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center are helping unlock the cellular-level function of the telomerase enzyme, which is linked to the disease’s growth.
A UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher has identified the most comprehensive measurement to date of estrogen’s effect on breast cancer cells, showing for the first time how immediate and extensive the effect is.
A protein that helps the brain develop early in life can fight the mental fuzziness induced by sleep deprivation, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded Virginia Tech researchers a $2.13 million grant to develop new systems biology approaches to study cells, one of the most basic units of life.
A protein known as WWP2 appears to play a key role in tumor survival, a research team headed by a scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in an advance online publication of Nature Cell Biology.
A study by researchers in Austria and the US finds evidence that the different cell types that make up organs have arisen only once during the course of evolution. The programs to develop these cells have been passed on ever since. The study which is published online by Nature Genetics has been supported by the GEN-AU Programme of the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research.
Researchers may have discovered the underlying mechanism that could convert other cell types into insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells.
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