Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease
2013-06-10
(Press-News.org) The accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients is known to be associated with memory loss and neuronal degeneration, but the mechanism of Aβ pathogenesis is not fully understood. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Yong-Keun Jung at Seoul National University demonstrate that Aβ binds to a cellular protein known as FCγRIIb. Greater levels of FCγRIIb were detected in the brains of AD patients. Binding of Aβ to FCγRIIb activated cell stress and death pathways. In a mouse model of AD, depletion of FCγRIIb ameliorated memory impairment. This study demonstrates that FCγRIIb plays a critical role in AD pathogenesis.
INFORMATION:
TITLE: FcγRIIb mediates amyloid-β neurotoxicity and memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease
AUTHOR CONTACT: Yong-Keun Jung
Seoul National University, Seoul, KOR
Phone: +82-2-880-4401; E-mail: ykjung@snu.ac.kr
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/66827?key=09875f41f10ff79d5f1e
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2013-06-10
Agri-environment schemes aimed to promote biodiversity on farmland have positive effects on wild bees, hoverflies and butterflies. Effects on diversity and abundance were strongest when agri-environment schemes prescribed sowing wild-flowers, the more flowering species the better. Organic farms, set-aside land or fields receiving reduced amounts of fertilizer and pesticides generally hosted more wild pollinators than conventionally farmed land. Jeroen Scheper of Alterra Research Institute and colleagues demonstrated this by analysing the results of 71 studies that had looked ...
2013-06-10
Lone people standing in a ballroom don't tend to move a lot. It's only when they find a suitable dance partner that rapid motion sets in. Atoms on iron-oxide surfaces behave in a similar way: Only with the right molecular partner do they dance across the surface. Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have now filmed the atoms, proving that carbon monoxide is the partner responsible for the quick motion. Their movies show that the motion leads directly to clustering – an effect that can do great harm in catalysts. The findings have now been published in the journal ...
2013-06-10
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In India most people who are HIV positive don't know it, yet testing and treatment are relatively cheap and available. It would therefore meet international standards of cost-effectiveness — and save millions of lives for decades — to test every person in the billion-plus population every five years according to a new study published in the journal PLoS One.
The findings are based on a careful analysis of India's HIV epidemic using the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) International model, a sophisticated ...
2013-06-10
African medicinal plants contain chemicals that may be able to stop the spread of cancer cells. This is the conclusion of researchers following laboratory experiments conducted at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The plant materials will now undergo further analysis in order to evaluate their therapeutic potential. "The active substances present in African medicinal plants may be capable of killing off tumor cells that are resistant to more than one drug. They thus represent an excellent starting point for the development of new therapeutic treatments for cancers ...
2013-06-10
Butterflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and new research has revealed that when summer weather turns bad the silver-spotted skipper battles for survival. The butterfly, which previously faced extinction from habitat loss, is recovering following conservation efforts but the recent cool wet summers in England have almost stalled its progress.
A 27 year study by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Liverpool, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the charity Butterfly ...
2013-06-10
The research team demonstrated a novel method to epitaxially synthesize structurally and compositionally homogeneous and spatially uniform ternary InAsyP1-y nanowire on Si at wafer-scale using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The high quality of the nanowires is reflected in the remarkably narrow PL and X-ray peak width and extremely low ideality factor in the InAsyP1-y nanowire/Si diode.
A nanowire is a nanostructure with a diameter of the order of a nanometer (10-9 meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or ...
2013-06-10
A landmark study of the Swedish population has given a clearer picture of important risk factors for suicide.
The study, a collaboration between Lund University in Sweden and Stanford University, showed that the rate of suicide among men is almost three times that of women. Being young, single and having a low level of education were stronger risk factors for suicide among men, while mental illness was a stronger risk factor among women. Unemployment was the strongest social risk factor among women, whereas being single was the strongest among men.
Because the study ...
2013-06-10
A single cell in our body is composed of thousands of millions of different biomolecules that work together in an extremely well-coordinated way. Likewise, many biological and biochemical reactions occur only if molecules are present at very high concentrations. Understanding how all these molecules interact with each other is key to advancing our knowledge in molecular and cell biology. This knowledge is of central and fundamental importance in the quest for the detection of the earliest stages of many human diseases. As such, one of ultimate goals in Life Sciences and ...
2013-06-10
When carbon is emitted by human activities into the atmosphere it is generally thought that about half remains in the atmosphere and the remainder is stored in the oceans and on land. New research suggests that human activity could be increasing the movement of carbon from land to rivers, estuaries and the coastal zone indicating that large quantities of anthropogenic carbon may be hidden in regions not previously considered.
The research, published in Nature Geoscience and led by researchers from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Exeter, Laboratoire ...
2013-06-10
Nanotechnologies require a detailed knowledge of the molecular state. For instance, it is useful to know when and how a generic polymer, a long chain of polymers (chain of beads), knots. The study of molecular entanglement is an important field of study as the presence of knots affects its physical properties, for instance the resistence to traction. Previous studies had mainly obtained "static" data on the knotting probability of such molecules. In other words, they focused on the likelihood that a polymer may knot. The novelty of the study carried out by Micheletti ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease