TORONTO, ON – Many plants are self-fertilizing, meaning they act as both mother and father to their own seeds. This strategy – known as selfing – guarantees reproduction but, over time, leads to reduced diversity and the accumulation of harmful mutations. A new study published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics shows that these negative consequences are apparent across a selfing plant's genome, and can arise more rapidly than previously thought. In the study, an international consortium led by Stephen Wright in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology ...

Columbia Psychiatry researchers have identified what they think may be a mechanism underlying the development of compulsive behaviors. The finding suggests possible approaches to treating or preventing certain characteristics of OCD. OCD consists of obsessions, which are recurrent intrusive thoughts, and compulsions, which are repetitive behaviors that patients perform to reduce the severe anxiety associated with the obsessions. The disorder affects 2 percent of people worldwide and is an important cause of illness-related disability, according to the World Health Organization. Using ...

DNA altering enzyme is essential for blood cell development The expression of specific genes is partially dictated by the way the DNA is packed into chromatin, a tightly packed combination of DNA and proteins known as histones. HDAC3 is a chromatin-modifying enzyme that regulates gene expression, chromatin structure, and genome instability and it has previously been shown to associate with the oncoproteins that drive leukemia and lymphoma. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Scott Hiebert and colleagues at Vanderbilt University examined the role of ...

The expression of specific genes is partially dictated by the way the DNA is packed into chromatin, a tightly packed combination of DNA and proteins known as histones. HDAC3 is a chromatin-modifying enzyme that regulates gene expression, chromatin structure, and genome instability and it has previously been shown to associate with the oncoproteins that drive leukemia and lymphoma. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Scott Hiebert and colleagues at Vanderbilt University examined the role of HDAC3 in the development of blood cells (hematopoiesis) by disrupting ...

The accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients is known to be associated with memory loss and neuronal degeneration, but the mechanism of Aβ pathogenesis is not fully understood. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Yong-Keun Jung at Seoul National University demonstrate that Aβ binds to a cellular protein known as FCγRIIb. Greater levels of FCγRIIb were detected in the brains of AD patients. Binding of Aβ to FCγRIIb activated cell stress and death pathways. ...

Agri-environment schemes aimed to promote biodiversity on farmland have positive effects on wild bees, hoverflies and butterflies. Effects on diversity and abundance were strongest when agri-environment schemes prescribed sowing wild-flowers, the more flowering species the better. Organic farms, set-aside land or fields receiving reduced amounts of fertilizer and pesticides generally hosted more wild pollinators than conventionally farmed land. Jeroen Scheper of Alterra Research Institute and colleagues demonstrated this by analysing the results of 71 studies that had looked ...

Lone people standing in a ballroom don't tend to move a lot. It's only when they find a suitable dance partner that rapid motion sets in. Atoms on iron-oxide surfaces behave in a similar way: Only with the right molecular partner do they dance across the surface. Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have now filmed the atoms, proving that carbon monoxide is the partner responsible for the quick motion. Their movies show that the motion leads directly to clustering – an effect that can do great harm in catalysts. The findings have now been published in the journal ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In India most people who are HIV positive don't know it, yet testing and treatment are relatively cheap and available. It would therefore meet international standards of cost-effectiveness — and save millions of lives for decades — to test every person in the billion-plus population every five years according to a new study published in the journal PLoS One. The findings are based on a careful analysis of India's HIV epidemic using the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) International model, a sophisticated ...

African medicinal plants contain chemicals that may be able to stop the spread of cancer cells. This is the conclusion of researchers following laboratory experiments conducted at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The plant materials will now undergo further analysis in order to evaluate their therapeutic potential. "The active substances present in African medicinal plants may be capable of killing off tumor cells that are resistant to more than one drug. They thus represent an excellent starting point for the development of new therapeutic treatments for cancers ...

Butterflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and new research has revealed that when summer weather turns bad the silver-spotted skipper battles for survival. The butterfly, which previously faced extinction from habitat loss, is recovering following conservation efforts but the recent cool wet summers in England have almost stalled its progress. A 27 year study by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Liverpool, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the charity Butterfly ...

The research team demonstrated a novel method to epitaxially synthesize structurally and compositionally homogeneous and spatially uniform ternary InAsyP1-y nanowire on Si at wafer-scale using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The high quality of the nanowires is reflected in the remarkably narrow PL and X-ray peak width and extremely low ideality factor in the InAsyP1-y nanowire/Si diode. A nanowire is a nanostructure with a diameter of the order of a nanometer (10-9 meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or ...

A landmark study of the Swedish population has given a clearer picture of important risk factors for suicide. The study, a collaboration between Lund University in Sweden and Stanford University, showed that the rate of suicide among men is almost three times that of women. Being young, single and having a low level of education were stronger risk factors for suicide among men, while mental illness was a stronger risk factor among women. Unemployment was the strongest social risk factor among women, whereas being single was the strongest among men. Because the study ...

A single cell in our body is composed of thousands of millions of different biomolecules that work together in an extremely well-coordinated way. Likewise, many biological and biochemical reactions occur only if molecules are present at very high concentrations. Understanding how all these molecules interact with each other is key to advancing our knowledge in molecular and cell biology. This knowledge is of central and fundamental importance in the quest for the detection of the earliest stages of many human diseases. As such, one of ultimate goals in Life Sciences and ...

When carbon is emitted by human activities into the atmosphere it is generally thought that about half remains in the atmosphere and the remainder is stored in the oceans and on land. New research suggests that human activity could be increasing the movement of carbon from land to rivers, estuaries and the coastal zone indicating that large quantities of anthropogenic carbon may be hidden in regions not previously considered. The research, published in Nature Geoscience and led by researchers from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Exeter, Laboratoire ...

Nanotechnologies require a detailed knowledge of the molecular state. For instance, it is useful to know when and how a generic polymer, a long chain of polymers (chain of beads), knots. The study of molecular entanglement is an important field of study as the presence of knots affects its physical properties, for instance the resistence to traction. Previous studies had mainly obtained "static" data on the knotting probability of such molecules. In other words, they focused on the likelihood that a polymer may knot. The novelty of the study carried out by Micheletti ...

The predominant cause of death in cancer patients is metastasis, the formation of secondary tumors in other organs like the brain, liver, and lungs. Cancer cells detach from the original primary tumor and reach a single cell or group of cells in another organ. The cells of the body normally remain in place through adhering to an extracellular substance. However, cancer cells learn how to release themselves from these bonds and invade surrounding tissues, blood, and the lymphatic system. The transformation of sedentary, specialized cells into wandering, invasive, and ...

An interesting new report of animal research published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that common antidepressant medications may impair a form of learning that is important clinically. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly called SSRIs, are a class of antidepressant widely used to treat depression, as well as a range of anxiety disorders, but the effects of these drugs on learning and memory are poorly understood. In a previous study, Nesha Burghardt, then a graduate student at New York University, and her colleagues demonstrated that long-term SSRI treatment ...

Research from North Carolina State University, the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and the University of South Florida shows that outpatient treatment of mental illness significantly reduces arrest rates for people with mental health problems and saves taxpayers money. "This study shows that providing mental health care is not only in the best interest of people with mental illness, but in the best interests of society," says Dr. Sarah Desmarais, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. The researchers wanted ...

The microorganism Methanosarcina acetivorans lives off everything it can metabolize into methane. How it finds its sources of energy, is not yet clear. Scientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum together with colleagues from Dresden, Frankfurt, Muelheim and the USA have identified a protein that might act as a "food sensor". They characterized the molecule in detail and found both similarities and differences to the system that is responsible for the search for food in bacteria. The team reports in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. MsmS has a different function to that ...

VIDEO: A study by Michigan State University researchers found that only 5 percent of people who used the bathroom washed their hands long enough to kill the germs that can cause... Click here for more information. EAST LANSING, Mich. — Remember Mom's advice about washing your hands thoroughly after using the restroom? Apparently not. A new study by Michigan State University researchers found that only 5 percent of people who used the bathroom washed their hands long ...

Boston, Mass.— A new study shows that when a liver from a deceased adult or adolescent donor is split into two separate portions for transplantation—with the smaller portion going to a young child and the larger to an adult—the smaller portion used for the child will last just as long as if the child had received a whole organ from a donor close to his size. The data, collected and analyzed by a team led by Boston Children's Hospital researchers Heung Bae Kim, MD, and Ryan Cauley, MD, MPH, was published online in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association ...

Comparing dredged and undredged sections of the Allegheny River, reduced populations of fish and less variety of aquatic life occurred in areas where gravel extraction took place, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences,. The researchers investigated navigation pools 7 and 8 near Kittanning and Templeton and published their results in the journal Freshwater Biology. "Understanding and untangling the complex effects of human activities on aquatic ecosystems present a challenge to ecologists and resource managers," said lead investigator ...

The shores of the Sea of Galilee, located in the North of Israel, are home to a number of significant archaeological sites. Now researchers from Tel Aviv University have found an ancient structure deep beneath the waves as well. Researchers stumbled upon a cone-shaped monument, approximately 230 feet in diameter, 39 feet high, and weighing an estimated 60,000 tons, while conducting a geophysical survey on the southern Sea of Galilee, reports Prof. Shmulik Marco of TAU's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences. The team also included TAU Profs. Zvi Ben-Avraham ...

Overprecision — excessive confidence in the accuracy of our beliefs — can have profound consequences, inflating investors' valuation of their investments, leading physicians to gravitate too quickly to a diagnosis, even making people intolerant of dissenting views. Now, new research confirms that overprecision is a common and robust form of overconfidence driven, at least in part, by excessive certainty in the accuracy of our judgments. The research, conducted by researchers Albert Mannes of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Don Moore of the Haas ...

The mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet clearly understood. Now, Jean-François Joanny from the Physico Chemistry Curie Unit at the Curie Institute in Paris and colleagues have found that a well-defined layer beneath the cell outer membrane forms beyond a certain critical level of stress generated by motor proteins within the cellular system. These findings, which offer a new understanding of the formation of this so-called cortical layer, have just been published in EPJ E. Active gels are ideal ...