Scientists at The University of Manchester have identified a protein that appears to hold the key to creating more effective drug treatments for melanoma, one of the deadliest cancers. Researchers funded by Cancer Research UK have been looking at why new drugs called "MEK inhibitors", which are currently being tested in clinical trials, aren't as effective at killing cancer cells as they should be. They discovered that MITF - a protein that helps cells to produce pigment but also helps melanoma cells to grow and survive - is able to provide cancer cells with a resistance ...

Researchers at the RUB and from the MPI Dortmund have uncovered the mechanism that switches off the cell transport regulating proteins. They were able to resolve in detail how the central switch protein Rab is down-regulated with two "protein fingers" by its interaction partners. The structural and dynamic data is reported by the researchers led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert (Chair of Biophysics, RUB) and Prof. Dr. Roger S. Goody (Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany) in the Online Early Edition of the journal PNAS. "Unlike in the cell growth protein ...

Scientists found that badgers which strayed away from the family burrow in favour of sleeping in outlying dens were more likely to carry TB. The 12-month study of 40 wild badgers was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and could have implications for the management of bovine TB in parts of the UK. The behaviour of individual animals is thought to be a key factor in how the disease is spread among animals and livestock. The new findings could help to understand and develop measures to manage TB in badgers. The study is published ...

The researchers reveal the role of the innate immune cells, especially the dendritic cells, that cause the activation of the killer T-lymphocytes whose action is directed against the p pancreatic cells. The results obtained in mice make it possible to consider new ways of regulating the auto-immune reaction generated by the innate immune cells. Type 1 diabetes, or insulin-dependent diabetes, is an auto-immune disease characterised by the destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic β cells that are present in the Islets of Langerhans which are themselves in the pancreas. ...

Apart from the common European cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha), the European forest cockchafer (Melolontha hippocastani) is the most common species of the Melolontha genus. These insects can damage huge areas of broadleaf trees and conifers in woodlands and on heaths. Cockchafers house microbes in their guts that help them to digest their woody food, such as lignocelluloses and xylans. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now performed comprehensive RNA analyses and identified the microbiota of cockchafer larvae feeding on ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 19, 2012—Acute liver failure is usually fatal without a liver transplant, but the liver can regenerate and recover if given time to heal. A bioartificial liver machine that can provide temporary support while organ regeneration takes place has been scaled up for testing in a large animal model and is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the BioResearch Open Access website . A team of researchers from University College ...

In 1991, it was a disaster for the villages nearby the erupting Philippine volcano Pinatubo. But the effects were felt even as far away as Europe. The volcano threw up many tons of ash and other particles into the atmosphere causing less sunlight than usual to reach the Earth's surface. For the first few years after the eruption, global temperatures dropped by half a degree. In general, volcanic eruptions can have a strong short-term impact on climate. Conversely, the idea that climate may also affect volcanic eruptions on a global scale and over long periods of time is ...

Researchers at the University of Jaen (Spain) have mixed waste from the paper industry with ceramic material used in the construction industry. The result is a brick that has low thermal conductivity meaning it acts as a good insulator. However, its mechanical resistance still requires improvement. "The use of paper industry waste could bring about economic and environmental benefits as it means that material considered as waste can be reused as raw material." – This is one of the conclusions of the study developed by researchers at the Upper Polytechnic School of Linares ...

Optical fibers –the backbone of the Internet–carry movies, messages, and music at the speed of light. But for all their efficiency, these ultrathin strands of pristine glass must connect to sluggish signal switches, routers, and buffers in order to transmit data. Hoping to do away with these information speed bumps, researchers have developed a new, dual-core optical fiber that can perform the same functions just by applying a miniscule amount of mechanical pressure. These new nanomechanical fibers, which have their light-carrying cores suspended less than 1 micrometer ...

Cholesterol plays a key role in regulating proteins involved in cell signaling and may be important to many other cell processes, an international team of researchers has found. The results of their study are reported in the journal Nature Communications. Cholesterol's role in heart disease has given it a bad reputation. But inside the thin membrane of a cell, the tight regulation of cholesterol at high levels (30 to 40 percent) suggests that it plays an important role in cellular processes, says Wonhwa Cho, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago ...

Scientists from Aalto University, Finland, have succeeded in organising virus particles, protein cages and nanoparticles into crystalline materials. These nanomaterials studied by the Finnish research group are important for applications in sensing, optics, electronics and drug delivery. Layer structures, or superlattices, of crystalline nanoparticles have been extensively studied in recent years. The research develops hierarchically structured nanomaterials with tuneable optical, magnetic, electronic and catalytic properties. Such biohybrid superlattices of nanoparticles ...

Community solidarity and support have remarkable benefits for people coping with traumatic mass shootings, according to an American-Finnish research study recently published by the University of Turku. James Hawdon and John Ryan, both professors of sociology at Virginia Tech, with Finnish researchers Atte Oksanen and Pekka Räsänen, investigated the responses of four communities that suffered from similar tragedies in the United States and Finland. People in all four communities expressed their need for belonging after the shootings, and this solidarity appeared to ...

After a cautious and rigorous analysis of national malpractice claims, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient's body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week. The researchers, reporting online in the journal Surgery, say they estimate that 80,000 of these so-called "never events" occurred in American hospitals between 1990 and 2010 — and believe their ...

More than a century after it was first identified, Harvard scientists are shedding new light on a little-understood neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. As described in a December 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, researchers have, for the first time, described how that feedback mechanism works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them. Three scientists from the Murthy lab were involved in the work: Foivos Markopoulos, Dan ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Fibromyalgia is a complex illness to diagnose and to treat. There is not yet a diagnostic test to establish that someone has it, there is no cure and many fibromyalgia symptoms -- pain, fatigue, problems sleeping and memory and mood issues -- can overlap with or get mistaken for other conditions. A new Mayo Clinic study suggests that many people who have fibromyalgia, especially men, are going undiagnosed. The findings appear in the online edition of the journal Arthritis Care & Research. More research is needed, particularly on why men who reported ...

Genomic technology has revolutionized gene discovery and disease understanding in autism, according to an article published in the December 20 issue of the journal Neuron. The paper highlights the impact of a genomic technology called high-throughput sequencing (HTS) in discovering numerous new genes that are associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). "These new discoveries using HTS confirm that the genetic origins of autism are far more complex than previously believed," said Joseph D. Buxbaum, PhD, Director of the Seaver Autism Center at the Icahn School of ...

Why would our immune system turn against our own cells? This is the question that the combined Inserm/CNRS/ Pierre and Marie Curie University/Association Institut de Myologie have strived to answer in their "Therapies for diseases of striated muscle", concentrating in particular on the auto-immune disease known as myasthenia gravis. Through the project known as FIGHT-MG (Fight Myasthenia Gravis), financed by the European Commission and coordinated by Inserm, Sonia Berrih-Aknin and Rozen Le Panse have contributed proof of the concept that a molecule imitating a virus may ...

Scientists are reporting an advance toward development of a pill that could become celiac disease's counterpart to the lactase pills that people with lactose intolerance can take to eat dairy products without risking digestive upsets. They describe the approach, which involves an enzyme that breaks down the gluten that causes celiac symptoms, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Justin Siegel, Ingrid Swanson Pultz and colleagues explain that celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which the gluten in wheat, rye or barley products causes inflammation in ...

A new process for blowing up grains of rice produces a super-nutritious form of puffed rice, with three times more protein and a rich endowment of other nutrients that make it ideal for breakfast cereals, snack foods and nutrient bars for school lunch programs, scientists are reporting. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Syed S.H. Rizvi and colleagues explain that commercial puffed rice is made by steam extrusion. An extruder squeezes rice flour mixed with water through a narrow opening at high temperature and pressure. On exiting ...

Large amounts of a substitute for one of the world's most treasured fragrance ingredients — a substance that also has potential anti-cancer activity — could be produced with a sustainable new technology, scientists are reporting. Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the advance enables cultures of bacteria to produce a substitute for natural ambergris, which sells for hundreds of dollars an ounce. Laurent Daviet, Michel Schalk and colleagues explain that ambergris, a waxy substance excreted by sperm whales, has been prized as a fragrance ingredient ...

The South African government is investing in scientific research to foster production of agricultural products like pinotage (the country's signature red wine) and honeybush (source of a tea so fragrant that a potful can perfume an entire house) to create jobs and boost the economy. That effort and others aimed at developing a globally competitive research enterprise are the topics of cover stories in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Britt E. Erickson, ...

Growth of new materials is the cornerstone of materials science - a highly inter-disciplinary field of science that touches every aspect of our lives from computers and cell phones to the clothes we wear. At the same time, the energy crisis has brought the spotlight on synthesis and growth of materials for clean energy technologies, such as solar cells and batteries. However, researchers in these areas do not simply grow materials —they assemble the atoms and molecules that form so-called thin films on various substrates. It is a process that is highly complex, time-consuming ...

Researchers at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have described a new selective target in muscle regeneration. This is the association of alpha-enolase protein and plasmin. The finding could be used to develop new treatments to regenerate muscular injuries or dystrophies. The study has been published in PLOS ONE journal. Skeletal muscle has a great regeneration capacity after injury or genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common neuromuscular disorder in children. This condition is due to a defect in the gene of dystrophin, ...

Experiencing rejection not only affects how we think and feel — over the long-term it can also influence our physical and mental health. New research suggests that when rejection comes in the form of discrimination, people respond with a pattern of thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses that may contribute to overall health disparities. "Psychological factors, like discrimination, have been suggested as part of the causal mechanisms that explain how discrimination gets 'under the skin' to affect health," says psychological scientist and senior researcher Wendy ...

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 19, 2012 — Most people are impressed by how a toad jumps. UC Irvine biologist Emanuel Azizi is more impressed by how one lands. An assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology who specializes in muscle physiology and biomechanics, Azizi found that nature's favorite leapers possess a neuromuscular response that's specific to the intensity of a landing – a mechanism that protects muscles from injury upon impact. The research is helping reveal how the nervous system modulates motor control patterns involved with jumping and landing. Azizi's ...