HOUSTON – (August 14, 2014) -- Researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new computational method to study the function of disease-causing genes, starting with an important new discovery about a gene associated with malaria – one of the biggest global health burdens. The work published today in the current issue of the journal Cell includes collaborators comprised of computational and evolutionary biologists and leading malaria experts from Baylor, Columbia University Medical Center, Princeton University, Pennsylvania State University and the National ...

VIDEO: Michael Halassa, M.D., Ph.D. discusses his work with the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) and it's importance in identifying new targets for treating various psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, autism and post-traumatic... Click here for more information. New York City, August 14, 2014 - Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere, using a mouse model, have recorded the activity of individual nerve cells in a small part of the brain that works as a "switchboard," ...

LA JOLLA—When faced with pathogens, the immune system summons a swarm of cells made up of soldiers and peacekeepers. The peacekeeping cells tell the soldier cells to halt fighting when invaders are cleared. Without this cease-fire signal, the soldiers, known as killer T cells, continue their frenzied attack and turn on the body, causing inflammation and autoimmune disorders such as allergies, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a key control mechanism on the peacekeeping cells that ...

JUPITER, FL, August 14, 2014 – An international team led by scientists from the Florida campuses of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Mayo Clinic have for the first time successfully designed a therapeutic strategy targeting a specific genetic mutation that causes a common form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, as well a type of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The scientists developed small-molecule drug candidates and showed they interfere with the synthesis of an abnormal protein that plays a key role in causing ...

VIDEO: Scientists studied how just a few nerve cell in the mouse brain may control the switch between internal thoughts and external distractions. Using optogenetics, a technique that uses light-sensitive molecules... Click here for more information. Ever wonder why it's hard to focus after a bad night's sleep? Using mice and flashes of light, scientists show that just a few nerve cells in the brain may control the switch between internal thoughts and external distractions. The ...

Whether pneumonia or sepsis – infectious diseases are becoming increasingly difficult to treat. One reason for this is the growing antibiotic resistance. But even non-resistant bacteria can survive antibiotics for some time, and that's why treatments need to be continued for several days or weeks. Scientists at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel showed that bacteria with vastly different antibiotic sensitivity coexist within the same tissue. In the scientific journal Cell they report that, in particular, slowly growing pathogens hamper treatment. Many bacteria ...

In a boon to stem cell research and regenerative medicine, scientists at Boston Children's Hospital, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Boston University have created a computer algorithm called CellNet as a "roadmap" for cell and tissue engineering, to ensure that cells engineered in the lab have the same favorable properties as cells in our own bodies. CellNet and its application to stem cell engineering are described in two back-to-back papers in the August 14 issue of the journal Cell. Scientists around the world are ...

Although HIV can now be effectively suppressed using anti-retroviral drugs, it still comes surging back the moment the flow of drugs is stopped. Latent reservoirs of HIV-infected cells, invisible to the body's immune system and unreachable by pharmaceuticals, ensure that the infection will rebound after therapy is terminated. But a new strategy devised by researchers at Rockefeller University harnesses the power of broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, along with a combination of compounds that induce viral transcription, in order to attack these latent reservoirs ...

(Boston)-- Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) report that a tumor suppressor pathway, called the Hippo pathway, is responsible for sensing abnormal chromosome numbers in cells and triggering cell cycle arrest, thus preventing progression into cancer. Although the link between abnormal cells and tumor suppressor pathways—like that mediated by the well known p53 gene—has been firmly established, the critical steps in between are not well understood. According to the authors, whose work appears in Cell, this work completes at least one of the ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A team of researchers at Mayo Clinic and The Scripps Research Institute in Florida have developed a new therapeutic strategy to combat the most common genetic risk factor for the neurodegenerative disorders amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). In the Aug. 14 issue of Neuron, they also report discovery of a potential biomarker to track disease progression and the efficacy of therapies. The scientists developed a small-molecule drug compound to prevent abnormal cellular processes caused by a ...

Cambridge, Mass. – August 14, 2014 – Conventional wisdom holds that the cytoplasm of mammalian cells is a viscous fluid, with organelles and proteins suspended within it, jiggling against one another and drifting at random. However, a new biophysical study led by researchers at Harvard University challenges this model and reveals that those drifting objects are subject to a very different type of environment. The cytoplasm is actually an elastic gel, it turns out, so it puts up some resistance to simple diffusion. But energetic processes elsewhere in the cell—in the cytoskeleton, ...

Scientists have altered key biological events in red blood cells, causing the cells to produce a form of hemoglobin normally absent after the newborn period. Because this hemoglobin is not affected by the inherited gene mutation that causes sickle cell disease, the cell culture findings may give rise to a new therapy for the debilitating blood disorder. The novel approach uses protein-engineering techniques to force chromatin fiber, the substance of chromosomes, into looped structures that contact DNA at specific sites to preferentially activate genes that regulate hemoglobin. ...

Hurricane Julio moved past the Hawaiian Islands like a car on a highway in the distance, and NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the storm, now downgraded to a tropical storm located more than 700 miles away. Julio is far enough away from Hawaii so that there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect. On August 13 at 21:10 UTC (5:10 p.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer of MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Julio moving through the Central Pacific Ocean. The visible image shows that powerful ...

Alexandria, Va. — Tokyo, a city of more than 13 million people, has been devastated by earthquakes in the past and likely will be again. But when? And what role do ongoing slow-slip earthquakes — the kind that generally can't be felt at the surface — play in relieving or building up stress? New research examining plate movements under Tokyo has found that since the massive magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, recurrence intervals for nondamaging slow-slip quakes beneath Japan's capital have shortened. That has left seismologists wondering if this aseismic ...

PRINCETON, N.J.—The death of a spouse undoubtedly brings with it stress, anxiety and uncertainty. Now, a report by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs quantifies this stress, showing how a husband's declining health could put Taiwanese women at risk for health issues. Using data from a longitudinal sample of Taiwanese older adults, the researchers found that the more a husband suffered, the more his wife's glucose levels increased. Yet, when a wife's health was declining, her husband's levels remained the same. Being widowed, ...

August 14, 2014 – More than 40 percent of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) recipients take opioid pain relievers, while the prevalence of chronic opioid use is over 20 percent and rising, reports a study in the September issue of Medical Care. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The high proportion of SSDI recipients who are chronic opioid users—in many, at high and very high daily doses—"is worrisome in light of established and growing evidence that intense opioid use to treat non-malignant [non-cancer] ...

Socorro Island in the Eastern Pacific received an unwelcome tropical visitor on the morning of August 13 when satellite data confirmed the formation of Tropical Storm Karina. Karina strengthened from the eleventh tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific. Tropical Depression 11-E formed at 11 p.m. EDT on August 12. Just twelve hours later at 11 a.m. EDT, the depression had become better organized and winds increased to tropical storm strength. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an infrared image of newborn Tropical Storm Karina approaching Socorro Island in the Eastern ...

Although Tropical Storm Karina is still strengthening in the Eastern Pacific Ocean NASA's Aqua satellite revealed a large band of fragmented thunderstorms wrapping into its center from the north. On August 13 at 21:00 UTC (5 p.m. EDT), the MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Karina off the west coast of Mexico. The image showed a concentration of strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation while the band of thunderstorms to the north appeared broken. The strongest ...

An enzyme therapy may prevent skeletal abnormalities associated with the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis type-1, Vanderbilt investigators have discovered. The researchers demonstrated in a mouse model of the disorder that the enzyme asfotase-alpha improves bone growth, mineralization and strength. The findings, reported in the August issue of Nature Medicine, "suggest that we can make bone stronger and better by injecting this drug, and possibly prevent fractures in patients with neurofibromatosis," said Florent Elefteriou, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for ...

A research team led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) scientists have made a key finding which is expected to open up improved treatment possibilities for children suffering from leukaemia. They found that two in three cases of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a type of cancer of the white blood cells, may be caused by mutations in one of the two key genes found in children. These genes are however more prevalent in those with Down syndrome. This means that scientists can design better tailored treatment protocols, depending on which mutating gene is carried ...

Researchers from the Copenhagen Center for Glycomics at the University of Copenhagen have studied an important receptor protein called LDLR using new, groundbreaking techniques. The protein plays an important role in the absorption of the bad cholesterol, LDL. The findings have just been published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The key to major discoveries within the fields of health and diseases is not just hidden in the human DNA code. The proteins encoded by the genes also play an important role, not least the attached sugar chains which give the proteins ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 14, 2014 – Although replicating important findings is essential for helping education research improve its usefulness to policymakers and practitioners, less than one percent of the articles published in the top education research journals are replication studies, according to new research published today in Educational Researcher (ER), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. "Facts Are More Important Than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences," by Matthew C. Makel of Duke University and Jonathan A. ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 14, 2014 – There are many forms of memory and only some of these may be critical for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reports a new study by researchers at the University at Albany and the University of California Los Angeles. Their findings, published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, suggest that even with no explicit memory of an early childhood trauma, symptoms of PTSD can still develop in adulthood. There are case reports of people who have experienced terrible life events that resulted in brain damage, ...

Researchers have discovered that women who had been prescribed aspirin regularly before being diagnosed with breast cancer are less likely to have cancer that spread to the lymph-nodes than women who were not on prescription aspirin. These women are also less likely to die from their breast cancer. The study of Irish patients funded by the Irish Health Research Board and Irish Cancer Society and published by the American Association for Cancer Research in the Journal, Cancer Research, analyses records from the National Cancer Registry Ireland (NCRI), and prescription ...

New York, NY—August 14, 2014—A new technique developed by Elisa Konofagou, associate professor of biomedical engineering and radiology at Columbia Engineering, has demonstrated for the first time that the size of molecules penetrating the blood-brain barrier (BBB) can be controlled using acoustic pressure—the pressure of an ultrasound beam—to let specific molecules through. The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism. "This is an important breakthrough in getting drugs delivered to specific parts of the brain precisely, ...