AUDIO: Editor Karen Carniol interviews Dr. Alla Karpova on her latest Cell paper. Click here for more information. Past experience is usually a reliable guide for making decisions, but in unpredictable and challenging situations, it might make more sense to take risks. A study published by Cell Press September 25th in the journal Cell shows that, in competitive situations, rats abandon their normal tactic of using past experience to make decisions and instead make random choices ...

Tourette syndrome is a developmental disorder characterized by involuntary, repetitive, and stereotyped movements or utterances. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 25 have new evidence to explain how those with Tourette syndrome in childhood often manage to gain control over those tics. In individuals with the condition, a portion of the brain involved in planning and executing movements shows an unusual increase compared to the average brain in the production of a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter known as GABA. The paradoxical ...

VIDEO: Salk scientists find that a vitamin D-derivative makes tumors vulnerable to chemotherapy. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA—A synthetic derivative of vitamin D was found by Salk Institute researchers to collapse the barrier of cells shielding pancreatic tumors, making this seemingly impenetrable cancer much more susceptible to therapeutic drugs. The discovery has led to human trials for pancreatic cancer, even in advance of its publication today in the journal ...

Physical exercise has many beneficial effects on human health, including the protection from stress-induced depression. However, until now the mechanisms that mediate this protective effect have been unknown. In a new study in mice, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show that exercise training induces changes in skeletal muscle that can purge the blood of a substance that accumulates during stress, and is harmful to the brain. The study is being published in the prestigious journal Cell. "In neurobiological terms, we actually still don't know what depression ...

A chemical in the brain plays a vital role in controlling the involuntary movements and vocal tics associated with Tourette Syndrome (TS), a new study has shown. The research by psychologists at The University of Nottingham, published in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology, could offer a potential new target for the development of more effective treatments to suppress these unwanted symptoms. The study, led by PhD student Amelia Draper under the supervision of Professor Stephen Jackson, found that higher levels of a neurochemical called GABA in a part ...

Boston, MA – Normally, the lining of blood vessels, or endothelium, when at rest, acts like Teflon, ignoring the many cells and other factors rushing by in the bloodstream. In response to inflammatory signals, as well as other stimuli, endothelial cells change suddenly and dramatically—sending out beacons to attract inflammatory cells, changing their surface so those cells can stick and enter tissues, and initiating a complex cascade of responses essential to fighting infection and dealing with injury. Unfortunately, these same endothelial responses also promote atherosclerosis, ...

BOSTON –– In an advance against the problem of cancer metastasis, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have shown that a specially developed compound can impede multiple myeloma from spreading to the bones in mice. The findings, published in the Sept. 25 issue of Cell Reports, suggest the technique can protect human patients, as well, from one of the most deadly aspects of cancer. The research involves a new approach to the challenge of cancer metastasis, the process by which tumors spread to and colonize distant parts of the body. Whereas research has traditionally ...

The most comprehensive family tree of meat-eating dinosaurs ever created is enabling scientists to discover key details of how birds evolved from them. The study has shown that the familiar anatomical features of birds – such as feathers, wings and wishbones – all first evolved piecemeal in their dinosaur ancestors over tens of millions of years. However, once a fully functioning bird body shape was complete, an evolutionary explosion began, causing a rapid increase in the rate at which birds evolved. This led eventually to the thousands of avian species that we know ...

Many of the choices we make are informed by experiences we've had in the past. But occasionally we're better off abandoning those lessons and exploring a new situation unfettered by past experiences. Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have shown that the brain can temporarily disconnect information about past experience from decision-making circuits, thereby triggering random behavior. In the study, rats playing a game for a food reward usually acted strategically, but switched to random behavior when they confronted a particularly ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (September 25, 2014) – To coordinate their size and growth with current environmental conditions, cells rely on the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway, which senses cellular stresses, growth factors, and the availability of nutrients, such as amino acids and glucose. For years, Whitehead Institute Member David Sabatini and his lab have been teasing apart the numerous proteins involved in this vital metabolic pathway, in part because mTORC1 function is known to be deregulated in a variety of diseases, including diabetes, epilepsy, ...

An international research team has identified gene mutations causing severe, difficult-to-treat forms of childhood epilepsy. Many of the mutations disrupt functioning in the synapse, the highly dynamic junction at which nerve cells communicate with one another. "This research represents a paradigm shift in epilepsy research, giving us a new target on which to focus treatment strategies," said pediatric neurologist Dennis Dlugos, M.D., director of the Pediatric Regional Epilepsy Program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a study co-author. "There is tremendous ...

Scientists have identified a protein in the human intestine that helps to protect against attack from opportunistic bacteria that strike when our defences are down. The protein receptor is activated during illness, producing a force field on the gut's surface made of a sugary substance that encourages the growth of protective bacteria. Scientists deleted the IL-22RA1 gene that produces the receptor protein from the mouse genome. In the absence of this gene, which is associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in humans, the mice were found to be more susceptible ...

NEW YORK, September 25, 2014— A protein implicated in several cancers appears to play a pivotal role in keeping stem cells in an immature "pluripotent" state, according to a new study by NYU Langone Medical Center scientists. The study is published online today in Cell Reports. Stem cells are the perpetual adolescents of the cellular world, uncommitted to any cell fate. In principle, they can be programmed to differentiate into any mature cell type, holding the promise of regenerating tissues and organs. A fuller understanding of their biology, however, is needed. ...

LA JOLLA, CA—September 25, 2014—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have described how a single family of antibodies that broadly neutralizes different strains of HIV has evolved remarkably diverse structures to attack a vulnerable site on the virus. The findings provide clues for the design of a future HIV vaccine. "In a sense, this antibody family takes more than one shot on goal in order to hit divergent forms of HIV," said Ian A. Wilson, the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. "The ...

In the largest collaborative study so far, an international team of researchers, including scientists from VIB and Antwerp University identified novel causes for severe childhood epilepsies. The researchers analyzed the genetic information of 356 patients and their parents. In their analysis, the research teams looked for genes that had acquired new mutations in the children with severe epilepsies when compared to the DNA of the parents. In total, they identified 429 new mutations and in 12% of children, these mutations were considered unequivocally causative for the patient's ...

VIDEO: The perpetual proliferation of cancer cells requires a means to maintain telomere length. Alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) is a poorly understood mechanism of telomere maintenance that is utilized by... Click here for more information. PHILADELPHIA – Maintaining the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, is a requisite feature of cells that are able to continuously divide and also a hallmark of human cancer. "Telomeres are much like the plastic cap on the ends ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC scientists have discovered new clues about a drug instrumental in treating a certain blood cancer that may provide important targets for researchers searching for cures. The team investigated whether demethylation of gene bodies induced by the drug 5-Aza-CdR (decitabine), which is used to treat pre-leukemia, could alter gene expression and possibly be a therapeutic target in cancer. "When we put the drug in cancer cells, we found it not only reactivated some tumor suppressor genes, but it down-regulated the overexpressed oncogene ...

When NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kammuri the VIIRS instrument aboard took a visible picture of the storm that showed bands of thunderstorms wrapped around its center. The storm appears to be coming together as circulation improves and bands of thunderstorms have been wrapping into the low-level center of circulation. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kammuri on Sept. 25 at 03:13 UTC (Sept. 24 at 11:13 p.m. EDT) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard captured a visible picture of ...

Cambridge, MA, September 25, 2014 — Researchers from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a new mouse model to simplify application of the CRISPR-Cas9 system for in vivo genome editing experiments. The researchers successfully used the new "Cas9 mouse" model to edit multiple genes in a variety of cell types, and to model lung adenocarcinoma, one of the most lethal human cancers. The mouse has already been made available to the scientific community and is being used by researchers at more than a dozen institutions. A paper describing ...

NOAA's GOES-West satellite spotted the eighteenth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific grow into a tropical storm that was renamed Rachel today, Sept. 25, 2014. Wind shear is affecting the tropical storm, however, so it doesn't have a rounded appearance on satellite imagery. Tropical Depression 18-E formed on Wednesday, Sept. 24 around 11 a.m. EDT about 285 miles (460 km) south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Manzanillo is a city in the Manzanillo municipality of the Mexican state of Colima on the country's west coast. In an infrared image from NOAA's GOES-West ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 25, 2014—The staggering growth rate of the global population demands innovative and sustainable solutions to increase food production by as much as 70-100% in the next few decades. In light of environmental changes, more drought-tolerant food crops are essential. The latest technological advances and future directions in regulating genes involved in stress tolerance in crops is presented in a Review article in OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Herbivores, not herbicides, may be the most effective way to combat the spread of one of the most invasive plants now threatening East Coast salt marshes, a new Duke University-led study finds. Phragmites australis, or the common reed, is a rapid colonizer that has overrun many coastal wetlands from New England to the Southeast. A non-native perennial, it can form dense stands of grass up to 10 feet high that block valuable shoreline views of the water, kill off native grasses, and alter marsh function. Land managers traditionally have used chemical ...

Washington, D.C.— A team including Carnegie's Malcolm Guthrie and George Cody has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymer fibers. Such exceedingly strong, stiff, and light materials have an array of potential applications, everything from more-fuel efficient vehicles or even the science fictional-sounding proposal for a "space elevator." Their work is published in Nature Materials. The team—led by ...

(Edmonton, AB) Every year in Canada about 50,000 people suffer from a stroke, caused either by the interruption of blood flow or uncontrolled bleeding in the brain. While many environmental risk factors exist, including high blood pressure and smoking, stroke risk is also frequently inherited. Unfortunately, remarkably little is known regarding stroke's genetic basis. A study from the University of Alberta, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, extends knowledge of stroke's genetic underpinnings and demonstrates that in some cases it originates in infancy. The ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Along with copying and splitting DNA during division, cells must have a way to break safely into two viable daughter cells, a process called cytokinesis. But the molecular basis of how plant cells accomplish this without mistakes has been unclear for many years. In a new paper by cell biologist Magdalena Bezanilla of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she and her doctoral student Shu-Zon Wu present a detailed new model that for the first time proposes how plant cells precisely position a "dynamic and complex" structure called a phragmoplast at the ...