(Press-News.org) Bacterial imbalance contributes to intestinal inflammation and carcinogenesis
Instability in the composition of gut bacterial communities (dysbiosis) has been linked to common human intestinal disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer; however, it is unclear if dysbiosis can instigate disease or if it is a consequence of the underlying disorder. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Mathias Chamaillard at the University Lille Nord de France in Lille, France, examined intestinal inflammation and tumorigenesis in a mouse model of dysbiosis. Dysbiosis enhanced intestinal inflammation and increased the risk for inflammation-associated colon cancer. Treatment with antibiotics or transplantation of fecal material from normal mice reduced disease risk and instigated long-term, beneficial alterations in intestinal bacteria. Conversely, transplantation of normal mice with dysbiotic fecal material increased intestinal inflammation and enhanced the risk of inflammation-associated colon cancer. These results demonstrate that gut bacterial communities play an integral role in protecting against intestinal inflammation and associated tumorigenesis.
TITLE:
NOD2-mediated dysbiosis predisposes mice to transmissible colitis and colorectal cancer
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Mathias Chamaillard
Inserm, Lille, , FRA
Phone: +33359317427; Fax: +33359317480; E-mail: mathias.chamaillard@inserm.fr
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/62236?key=555e9b1899800b97fd0b
AUTOIMMUNITY
Identifying the molecular causes of vision loss in demyelinating disease
Demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), are frequently associated with the progressive loss of vision. The retinal nerve damage is thought to be caused by immune system-mediated inflammation; however, other demyelinating disorders, such as Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, do not involve the immune system, suggesting that there are other causes of retinal nerve damage. Deimination is a protein modification that is altered in patients with MS and PMD. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Sanjoy Bhattacharya at the University of Miami investigated the role of deimination in retinal nerve damage in a mouse model of demyelinating disease (ND4 mice). They found that deimination was reduced in patients with demyelinating diseases and in ND4 mice that exhibited vision loss. Decreases in deamination could be detected in the mice prior to the onset of other symptoms. Bhattacharya and colleagues found that they could improve visual function in ND4 mice by restoring deimination. These results demonstrate that loss of deimination underlies nerve damage in demyelinating diseases and may be a suitable target for therapeutic intervention.
TITLE:
Deimination restores inner retinal visual function in murine demyelinating disease
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Sanjoy Bhattacharya
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA
Phone: 3054824103; Fax: 3053266547; E-mail: sbhattacharya@med.miami.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/64811?key=1cb7e7315edf5b9d1258
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
TITLE:
Acylated and unacylated ghrelin impair skeletal muscle atrophy in mice
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Nicoletta Filigheddu
University of Piemonte Orientale "A. vogadro", Novara, ITA
Phone: +390321660529; E-mail: nicoletta.filigheddu@med.unipmn.it
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/39920?key=7f092a50dd972f0c715c
TITLE:
An obligate cell-intrinsic function for CD28 in regulatory T cells
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Laurence A. Turka
Beth-Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
Phone: 617.735.2919; Fax: 617.735.2902; E-mail: lturka@bidmc.harvard.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65013?key=630d9a4611663eb4a7da
TITLE:
CXCR5+ T helper cells mediate protective immunity against tuberculosis
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Shabaana Khader
Children's Hopsital Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Phone: 412-692-7767; Fax: ; E-mail: Shabaana.Khader@chp.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65728?key=60dce6e4ce9ae64833e6
TITLE:
Oligodendrocyte precursors induce early blood-brain-barrier opening after white matter injury
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Ken Arai
MGH, Charlestown, MA, USA
Phone: 617-724-9503; E-mail: karai@partners.org
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65863?key=9c438cec347734578a1a
TITLE:
Superior T memory stem cell persistence supports long-lived T cell memory
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Mario Roederer
Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA
Phone: 301 594-8491; Fax: 301 480-2788; E-mail: roederer@nih.gov
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/66327?key=3ec7275bf89c124b5d89
TITLE:
EWS/ATF1 expression induces sarcomas from neural crest-derived cells in mice
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Yasuhiro Yamada
Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University, Kyoto, JPN
Phone: 0753667034; E-mail: y-yamada@cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/63572?key=17816fd8927b745083a6
### END
JCI early table of contents for Jan. 2, 2013
2013-01-02
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Bacterial imbalance contributes to intestinal inflammation and carcinogenesis
2013-01-02
Instability in the composition of gut bacterial communities (dysbiosis) has been linked to common human intestinal disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer; however, it is unclear if dysbiosis can instigate disease or if it is a consequence of the underlying disorder. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Mathias Chamaillard at the University Lille Nord de France in Lille, France, examined intestinal inflammation and tumorigenesis in a mouse model of dysbiosis. Dysbiosis enhanced intestinal inflammation and ...
Pitt-led team finds molecule that polices TB lung infection, could lead to vaccine
2013-01-02
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 2, 2013 – The presence of a certain molecule allows the immune system to effectively police tuberculosis (TB) of the lungs and prevent it from turning into an active and deadly infection, according to a new study led by researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings appear today in the online version of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
More than 2 billion people or one-third of the world's population are infected with mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes ...
'Protecting' psychiatric medical records puts patients at risk of hospitalization
2013-01-02
Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.
In a survey of psychiatry departments at 18 of the top American hospitals as ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals in 2007, a Johns Hopkins team learned that fewer than half of the hospitals had all inpatient psychiatric records in their electronic medical record systems and that fewer than 25 percent gave non-psychiatrists full access to those records.
Strikingly, ...
Dance of water molecules turns fire-colored beetles into antifreeze artists
2013-01-02
Certain plants and animals protect themselves against temperatures below freezing with antifreeze proteins. How the larva of the beetle Dendroides canadensis manages to withstand temperatures down to -30 degrees Celsius is reported by an international team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Martina Havenith from the Department of Physical Chemistry II at the Ruhr-Universität in the journal PNAS. Together with American colleagues, the RUB-researchers showed that interactions between the antifreeze proteins and water molecules contribute significantly to protection against the ...
Magnetic fields created before the first stars
2013-01-02
Magnets have practically become everyday objects. Earlier on, however, the universe consisted only of nonmagnetic elements and particles. Just how the magnetic forces came into existence has been researched by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schlickeiser at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In the journal Physical Review Letters, he describes a new mechanism for the magnetisation of the universe even before the emergence of the first stars.
No permanent magnets in the early universe
Before the formation of the first stars, the luminous matter consisted ...
Scientists join forces to bring plant movement to light
2013-01-02
Elementary school students often learn that plants grow toward the light. This seems straightforward, but in reality, the genes and pathways that allow plants to grow and move in response to their environment are not fully understood. Leading plant scientists explore one of the most fundamental processes in plant biology—plant movement in response to light, water, and gravity—in a January Special Issue of the American Journal of Botany.
Plant movements, known as tropisms, are crucial for plant survival from the second a plant germinates to how a plant positions its flowers ...
Scientists discover that for Australia the long-beaked echidna may not be a thing of the past
2013-01-02
The western long-beaked echidna, one of the world's five egg-laying species of mammal, became extinct in Australia thousands of years ago…or did it? Smithsonian scientists and colleagues have found evidence suggesting that not only did these animals survive in Australia far longer than previously thought, but that they may very well still exist in parts of the country today. The team's findings are published in the Dec. 28, 2012 issue of the journal ZooKeys.
With a small and declining population confined to the Indonesian portion of the island of New Guinea, the western ...
A new fish species from Lake Victoria named in honor of the author of Darwin's Dreampond
2013-01-02
Two new species of cichlid fish from Lake Victoria are described by biologists from Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Research Department Marine Zoology) and the Institute of Biology Leiden (Section Integrative Zoology), the Netherlands. One of these species is named in honour of Tijs Goldschmidt, author of Darwin's Dreampond. This book, published in nine languages, describes the dramatic extinction of hundreds of cichlid species in Lake Victoria in the 1980s due to the introduced Nile perch and other human induced environmental changes.
In 1985, Leiden biologists made a ...
Researchers develop tool to evaluate genome sequencing method
2013-01-02
Advances in bio-technologies and computer software have helped make genome sequencing much more common than in the past. But still in question are both the accuracy of different sequencing methods and the best ways to evaluate these efforts. Now, computer scientists have devised a tool to better measure the validity of genome sequencing.
The method, which is described in the journal PLOS ONE, allows for the evaluation of a wide range of genome sequencing procedures by tracking a small group of key statistical features in the basic structure of the assembled genome. Such ...
Electric stimulation of brain releases powerful, opiate-like painkiller
2013-01-02
ANN ARBOR—Researchers used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain to release an opiate-like substance that's considered one of the body's most powerful painkillers.
The findings expand on previous work done at the University of Michigan, Harvard University and the City University of New York where researchers delivered electricity through sensors on the skulls of chronic migraine patients, and found a decrease in the intensity and pain of their headache attacks. However, the researchers then couldn't completely explain ...