Researchers from the University of Michigan have found that an extra copy of a gene in Down syndrome patients causes improper development of neurons in mice.   The gene in question, called Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule, or DSCAM, is also implicated in other human neurological conditions, including autism spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder and intractable epilepsy.   The cause of Down syndrome is known to be an extra copy of chromosome 21, or trisomy 21. But because this ...

LA JOLLA (April 20, 2023)—Scientists often act as detectives, piecing together clues that alone may seem meaningless but together crack the case. Professor Reuben Shaw has spent nearly two decades piecing together such clues to understand the cellular response to metabolic stress, which occurs when cellular energy levels dip. Whether energy levels fall because the cell’s powerhouses (mitochondria) are failing or due to a lack of necessary energy-making supplies, the response is the same: get rid of the damaged mitochondria and create new ones. Now, in a study published in Science on April 20, 2023, Shaw and team cracked ...

Human beings have massively changed the Earth system. Greenhouse-gas emissions produced by human activities have caused the global mean temperature to rise by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to the preindustrial era. And every year, there are additional emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, currently amounting to more than 55 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This unprecedented climate crisis has consequences for the entire planet – the distribution of precipitation ...

Economic growth alone may not be enough to deliver the internationally agreed target to end human deaths from dog mediated rabies, according to new research from the University of Surrey. The study identifies that targeting vulnerable populations and improving responsible pet ownership are urgently needed to eradicate the deadly disease, which has strong associations with poverty.  In a landmark study, Surrey researchers investigated whether incidences of rabies are an inevitable consequence of poverty or whether other measures of development, such as healthcare access, can play a role in tackling this preventable disease.   Dr ...

SAN FRANCISCO — PLOS today announced that PLOS Genetics is expanding the scope of its journal with a renamed section called Microbial Genetics. This section will replace the former Prokaryotic Genetics section to emphasize research on microbes more broadly with the aim to publish studies that use genetic approaches to provide insights into how bacteria as well as archaea and their phages/viruses, fungi (including yeasts and filamentous fungi), and protists function and interact with the biotic and abiotic world. PLOS Genetics has an established presence in the fungal genetics community, but this ...

TAMPA, Fla. — MYC proteins are important regulators of cancer cell growth, proliferation and metabolism through their ability to increase the expression of proteins involved in these processes. Deregulation of MYC proteins occurs in more than half of all cancers and is associated with poor patient prognosis and outcomes. Numerous researchers have devoted significant efforts to try to target MYC proteins as a therapeutic approach to treat cancer. However, this has been extremely challenging to date, and other complementary strategies are being investigated. In a new article in Blood Cancer Discovery, which was published simultaneously with a presentation ...

April 20, 2023-- A new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health shows that water arsenic levels are linked to higher urinary arsenic among the U.S. population for users of both private wells and public water systems. The findings are published in the journal Environmental Research. Long-term exposure to arsenic even at low and moderate levels can increase the risk of cancer and other types of chronic disease. While drinking water along with diet is a major source ...

(Toronto, April 20, 2023)       Storing donor lungs for transplant at 10 degrees Celsius markedly increases the length of time the organ can live outside the body according to research led by a team of scientists at the Toronto Lung Transplant Program in the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network (UHN). The prospective multicenter, nonrandomized clinical trial study of 70 patients demonstrated that donor lungs remained healthy and viable for transplant up to four times longer compared ...

Researchers know a lot about Turkey’s next major earthquake. They can pinpoint the probable epicenter, estimate its strength and see the spatial footprint of where damage is most likely to occur. They just can’t say when it will happen. That’s the main takeaway from a new USC-led study that appears today (April 20) in Seismica. Using remote sensing, USC geophysicist Sylvain Barbot and his fellow researchers documented the massive Feb. 6 quake that killed more than 50,000 people in Eastern Turkey and toppled more than 100,000 buildings. Alarmingly, researchers found that a section of the fault remains unbroken and locked – a sign that the plates there ...

People with dementia have protein build-up in astrocytes that may trigger abnormal antiviral activity and memory loss, according to a preclinical study by a team of Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. Dysfunction in cells called neurons, which transmit messages throughout the brain, has long been the prime suspect in dementia-related cognitive deficits. But a new study, published in Science Advances on April 19, suggests that abnormal immune activity in non-neuronal brain cells called astrocytes is sufficient to cause cognitive deficits in dementia. The discovery could lead to new treatments that reduce excess immune activity in astrocytes and their detrimental effects on other brain ...

Irvine, Calif., April 20, 2023 — Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have made a remarkable discovery about cellophane bees – their microbiomes are some of the most fermentative known from the insect world. These bees, which are named for their use of cellophane-like materials to line their subterranean nests, are known for their fascinating behaviors and their important ecological roles as pollinators. Now, researchers have uncovered another aspect of their biology that makes them even more intriguing. According to a study published in Frontiers in Microbiology, cellophane ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—April 18, 2023—The human brain has a sweet tooth, burning through nearly one quarter of the body’s sugar energy, or glucose, each day. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) have shed new light on exactly how neurons—the cells that send electrical signals through the brain—consume and metabolize glucose, as well as how these cells adapt to glucose shortages. Previously, scientists had suspected that much of the glucose used by the brain was metabolized by other brain cells called ...

ST. LOUIS – Research published in Regional Environmental Change has shown that as climate zones shift toward hotter and drier conditions, ecological diversity will decline, posing a major threat to terrestrial ecosystems with far-reaching social and ecological impacts. The study, “Shifting climate zones and expanding tropical and arid climate regions across Kenya (1980-2020),” was published online on April 5.  The research team analyzed Kenya's geographic distribution and arrangement of ...

In the arid regions of the American Southwest, an unseen world lies beneath our feet. Biocrusts, or biological soil crusts, are communities of living organisms. These industrious microbes include cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses, forming a thin layer on the surface of soils in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Biocrusts play a crucial role in maintaining soil health and ecosystem sustainability, but they are currently under assault. Human activities including agriculture, urbanization, and off-road ...

The rate of suspected suicide attempts by poisoning among children and adolescents ages 10-19 reported to U.S. poison centers increased 30% during 2021 – the COVID-19 pandemic’s first full year – compared with 2019, a new UVA Health study found. The rate of suspected suicide attempts by poisoning among children ages 10-12 increased 73% during 2021 compared with 2019. Among adolescents ages 13-15, the rate of suspected suicide attempts by poisoning increased 48.8% in 2021 versus 2019. The rate of suspected suicide attempts by poisoning among females ages 10-19 increased 36.8% in 2021 compared with 2019. The findings ...

A collaborative multi-site randomized controlled trial at the University of Houston and the Medical University of South Carolina is set to prove the effectiveness of treating alcohol use disorder (AUD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) together.  It’s a one-two punch whose time has come. No integrative treatment combining Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for PTSD and relapse prevention (RP) for AUD currently exists.  “A substantial proportion of individuals with AUD also meet criteria for PTSD. The co-occurrence of AUD/PTSD is characterized by more severe symptomatology, greater functional impairment, ...

INDIANAPOLIS—While trying to understand what initiates breast cells to become cancerous, researchers at the Vera Bradley Foundation Center for Breast Cancer Research at Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a new target for breast cancer treatment. “When comparing healthy breast tissue and cancerous cells, we wanted to find out what is the earliest genomic change that happens to initiate the cancer,” said Harikrishna Nakshatri, PhD, the Marian J. Morrison professor of breast cancer research ...

Biologists at the University of Cincinnati discovered that underfed jumping spiders lose light-sensitive cells that are key to their vision. UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Elke Buschbeck and her co-authors studied photoreceptors in the eyes of bold jumping spiders, tiny eight-legged predators found across North America. The little hunters rely on their keen vision to stalk prey. But researchers found that underfed spiders begin to lose photoreceptors that give them such good eyesight. Their findings could improve our understanding of ...

Researchers at Cleveland Clinic have taken an important step in predicting which treatment will work for individual cancer patients. Using a gene signature developed from cell lines and human tissue, the research team demonstrated the ability to predict a patient’s response to the chemotherapy agent cisplatin, without relying on changes in the mutational status of a patient’s cancer. The study was recently published in NPJ Precision Oncology. In recent years, effective new cancer treatments have ...

Search and rescue efforts following disasters like the massive earthquakes in Turkey and Syria are a race against time. Emergency response teams need to quickly identify voids or spaces in building rubble where survivors might be trapped, and before natural gas leaks, water main flooding or shifting concrete slabs take their toll. Advanced technology plays a vital role in these recovery operations. Thermal imaging equipment and sensitive listening devices are deployed to seek out signs of life. Small aerial ...

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announced today that its life sciences preprint server bioRxiv has partnered with PaperPlayer, a service for converting manuscripts into high-quality audio, to provide audio versions of preprint abstracts in the bioRxiv Neuroscience category. This new feature increases content accessibility and offers a way of obtaining information from preprints that’s an alternative to a screen. It is being piloted in the Neuroscience category to assess its value for preprint users. "This ...

MIT researchers are using artificial intelligence to design new proteins that go beyond those found in nature. They developed machine-learning algorithms that can generate proteins with specific structural features, which could be used to make materials that have certain mechanical properties, like stiffness or elasticity. Such biologically inspired materials could potentially replace materials made from petroleum or ceramics, but with a much smaller carbon footprint. The researchers from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and Tufts University employed a generative model, which is the same type of machine-learning model architecture ...

A single species invades an ecosystem causing its collapse. A cyberattack on the power system causes a major breakdown. These type of events are always on our mind, yet they rarely result in such significant consequences. So how is it that these systems are so stable and resilient that they can withstand such external  disruptions? Indeed, these systems lack a central design or blueprint, and still, they exhibit exceptionally reliable functionality. In the early 70s the field of ecology was split on the question of whether biodiversity is a good or a bad thing for an ecosystem. In 1972 Sir Robert May showed, mathematically, that an increase in biodiversity causes less ecological ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of 55,000 adult and pediatric patients hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in Canada suggest that COVID-19 vaccination is important to reduce the burden on the Canadian health care system as well as severe outcomes associated with COVID-19.  Authors: Robyn Mitchell, M.H.Sc., of the Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.9050) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this study of 171 participants who received primary surgery and postoperative radiation for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, lower levels of written health literacy were significantly associated with postoperative radiation delays when controlling for demographic and clinical factors. The addition of health literacy and the community-level area deprivation index improved the model’s prediction of postoperative radiation delay risk.  Authors: Tuleen Sawaf, B.S., of the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2023.0308) Editor’s ...