(Press-News.org) BETHESDA, MD – August 9, 2012 -- Through novel experiments involving small nematode worms, scientists from Wyoming have discovered several genes that may be potential targets for drug development in the ongoing war against cancer. Specifically, researchers hypothesize that inhibiting these genes could reverse certain key traits associated with cancer cells. This discovery is published in the August 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal GENETICS (www.genetics.org).
"Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide," said David S. Fay, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Molecular Biology Department at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. "We hope that by carrying out basic genetic research on one of the most widely implicated human cancer genes, that we can contribute to the arsenal of diverse therapeutic approaches used to treat and cure many types of cancer."
To make this discovery, Dr. Fay and his colleagues used a strain of nematode worms that carried a mutation in a gene similar to one that is inactivated in many human cancers. This gene, called "LIN-35" in worms and "pRb" in humans, is thought to control at least several aspects of tumor progression including cancer cell growth and survival. The researchers systematically inactivated other individual genes in the genome of the mutant LIN-35 worms. As they deactivated various genes, scientists identified those that led to a reversal of defects caused by the loss of LIN-35, suggesting that they could be used as targets for anti-cancer therapies.
"This research is important because it offers possible new ways to shut down the genetic machinery that contributes to cancer growth and progression," said Mark Johnston, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of the journal GENETICS. "The causes of cancer are complex and varied, so we must approach this disease from many angles. Using simple 'model organisms,' such as nematode worms to find new drug targets, is becoming an increasingly important and effective strategy."
As a companion piece to this article, the journal GENETICS debuts a new educational resource called a Primer. The Primer article, written by Elizabeth A. De Stasio, Ph.D., of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, provides guidelines for genetics instructors who want to use this contemporary research on nematode worms to teach their students about genetics concepts. The Primer includes background biological information on the worms, explanations of concepts used, and a sample approach to using the article in the classroom with questions for discussion. Additional Primers for instructional use will follow in future issues of GENETICS.
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CITATION:
S. R. G. Polley and D. S. Fay. A Network of Genes Antagonistic to the LIN-35 Retinoblastoma Protein of Caenorhabditis elegans
Genetics August 2012 Volume 191, Issue 4.
GRANT SUPPORT:
This work was supported by grant GM066868 from the NIH.
ABOUT GENETICS:
Since 1916, GENETICS (http://www.genetics.org/) has covered high quality, original research on a range of topics bearing on inheritance, including population and evolutionary genetics, complex traits, developmental and behavioral genetics, cellular genetics, gene expression, genome integrity and transmission, and genome and systems biology. GENETICS, a peer-reviewed, peer-edited journal of the Genetics Society of America is one of the world's most cited journals in genetics and heredity.
ABOUT GSA:
Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional membership organization for scientific researchers, educators, bioengineers, bioinformaticians and others interested in the field of genetics. Its nearly 5,000 members work to advance knowledge in the basic mechanisms of inheritance, from the molecular to the population level. GSA is dedicated to promoting research in genetics and to facilitating communication among geneticists worldwide through its conferences, including the biennial conference on Model Organisms to Human Biology, an interdisciplinary meeting on current and cutting edge topics in genetics research, as well as annual and biennial meetings that focus on the genetics of particular organisms, including C. elegans, Drosophila, fungi, mice, yeast, and zebrafish. GSA publishes GENETICS, a leading journal in the field and an online, open-access journal, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. For more information about GSA, please visit www.genetics-gsa.org. Also follow GSA on Facebook at facebook.com/GeneticsGSA and on Twitter @GeneticsGSA.
BETHESDA, MD – August 9, 2012 -- As upper level undergraduate genetics instructors plan their syllabi for the fall semester, the Genetics Society of America's GENETICS journal offers a new educational resource, articles called "Primers." These articles are designed to bring cutting-edge scientific research into the classroom by making scientific papers accessible to students.
The principal learning goal of the Primer is to "make research and genetics accessible to a much broader audience, not just researchers, their postdocs and grad students, but also to undergraduates ...
Bethesda, MD—August 9, 2012 – Listed below are the selected highlights for the August 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS. The August issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit GENETICS, Vol. 191, AUGUST 2012, Copyright © 2012.
Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles.
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS
New negative feedback regulators of Egfr signaling in Drosophila, pp. 1213
Jonathan P. Butchar, Donna Cain, Sathiya N. Manivannan, Andrea D. McCue, Liana Bonanno, Sarah Halula, ...
HIGH LEVELS of iron could raise the risk of bowel cancer by switching on a key pathway in people with faults in a critical anti-cancer gene, according to a study published in Cell Reports* today (Thursday).
Cancer Research UK scientists, based at the University of Birmingham and the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, found bowel cancers were two to three times more likely to develop in mice with a faulty APC gene that were fed high amounts of iron compared to mice who still had a working APC gene.
In contrast, mice with a faulty APC gene fed a diet low ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Most of America's urban cores were designed for walking but offer little in the way of supermarkets, healthy restaurants and other amenities for residents to walk to, according to a study led by a Michigan State University scholar.
The study is one of the first to show that poor residents living in declining urban neighborhoods want healthy food choices – evidenced by their willingness to travel long distances to find them. Past research has generally assumed that poor people will shop at whatever store is closest.
But compared with suburban residents, ...
Dark matter was first proposed by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s. He found that clusters of galaxies were filled with a mysterious dark matter that kept them from flying apart. At nearly the same time, Jan Oort in the Netherlands discovered that the density of matter near the Sun was nearly twice what could be explained by the presence of stars and gas alone. In the intervening decades, astronomers developed a theory of dark matter and structure formation that explains the properties of clusters and galaxies in the Universe, but the amount of dark matter ...
SHREWSBURY, MA – A new study published in Nutrition Journal shows that people can lose weight while consuming typical amounts of sugar or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) if their overall caloric intake is reduced.
"Our research debunks the vilification of high fructose corn syrup in the diet," said James M. Rippe, M.D., one of the study authors. "The results show that equally reduced-calorie diets caused similar weight loss regardless of the type or amount of added sugars. This lends further support to findings by our research group and others that table sugar and HFCS ...
Eighty-nine million Americans were without health insurance for at least one month during the period from 2004 to 2007, and 23 million lost coverage more than once during that time, according to researchers at Penn State and Harvard University.
"These findings call attention to the continuing instability and insecurity of health insurance in our country," said Pamela Farley Short, professor of health policy and administration, Penn State. "With more than a third of all Americans under age 65 being uninsured at some point in a four-year period, it's easy to see that the ...
Language use in books mirrors trends in gender equality over the generations in the US, according to a new study by Jean Twenge, from San Diego State University, and colleagues. Their work explores how the language in the full text of more than one million books reflects cultural change in U.S. women's status. The study is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.
Twenge and colleagues, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile of the University of Georgia, examined whether the use of gendered pronouns such as 'he' and 'she' mirrored women's status between 1900-2008, ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Various misconceptions surrounding the continued viability of Medicare can be debunked or discredited, making it more important than ever for voters and policymakers to fully understand the program's existing contours and limitations, according to a paper published by a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits.
Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says Medicare has become one of the most controversial federal programs for numerous reasons, but misinformation has played a key role in fostering criticism of it.
"Medicare is an important and complicated ...
According to theoretical physicists João da Cruz and Pedro Lind from Lisbon University, Portugal, imposing minimum capital levels for banks may not prevent the insolvency of a minority of banks from triggering a widespread banking system collapse. In a study recently published in EPJ B1, the researchers explain why this measure could instead lead to larger crises.
The authors created a model of banks' behaviour to assess the conditions needed to avoid "avalanches" of insolvent banks. Their model is based on a physical system of particles representing how banks are attracted ...
