One of the first chemical reactions children learn is the recipe for photosynthesis, combining carbon dioxide, water and solar energy to produce organic compounds. Many of the world's most important photosynthetic eukaryotes such as plants did not develop the ability to combine these ingredients themselves. Rather, they got their light-harnessing organelles -- chloroplasts -- indirectly by stealing them from other organisms. In some instances, this has resulted in algae with multiple, distinct genomes, the evolutionary equivalent of a "turducken*." Chloroplasts originally ...

Judgments made after a moral evaluation are quicker and more extreme than the same judgment based on practical considerations, but morality-based evaluations can be more easily shifted and made with other considerations in mind, according to research published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jay Van Bavel and colleagues from New York University. Previous research has suggested that moral reasoning usually occurs after a person makes a decision, as a post hoc justification of their choice, rather than the basis for the decision itself. This new study ...

When seasonal changes affect food availability, omnivores like blue monkeys adapt by changing their diets, but such nutritional changes may impact female reproduction, according to research published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Steffen Foerster from Barnard College, and colleagues from Columbia University and the Smithsonian Institution. The authors found that levels of fecal glucocorticoids (fGC), a stress marker, increased when female monkeys shifted their diet towards lower quality fallback foods, whereas the levels decreased when the monkeys ...

Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial ...

Scientists have discovered a cognitive biomarker – a biological indicator of a disease – for young adolescents who are at high risk of developing depression and anxiety. Their findings were published today, 28 November, in the journal PLOS ONE. The test for the unique cognitive biomarker, which can be done on a computer, could be used as an inexpensive tool to screen adolescents for common emotional mental illnesses. As the cognitive biomarker may appear prior to the symptoms of depression and anxiety, early intervention (which has proven to be one of the most effective ...

LA JOLLA, CA – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented a set of chemical tools that is radically simplifying the creation of potential new drug compounds. Pharmaceutical chemists frequently seek to generate dozens or even hundreds of variations of a given compound to see which works best. The new toolkit—described in the November 28, 2012 issue of the journal Nature—makes this process easier and cheaper, enabling previously time- and cost-prohibitive chemical modifications. This fundamental innovation is already being adopted by drug companies ...

Judgments we make with a moral underpinning are made more quickly and are more extreme than those same judgments based on practical considerations, a new set of studies finds. However, the findings, which appear in the journal PLOS ONE, also show that judgments based on morality can be readily shifted and made with other considerations in mind. "Little work has been done on how attaching morality to a particular judgment or decision may affect that outcome," explains Jay Van Bavel, an assistant professor in New York University's Department of Psychology and one of the ...

Researchers report that screening for KRAS and BRAF mutations can reduce the cost of anti-EGFR treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer but with a very small reduction in overall survival according to a new study published on November 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Metastatic colorectal cancer patients whose tumors harbor mutations in KRAS (and to a lesser extent, in BRAF) are unlikely to respond to costly anti-EGFR therapies. Screening of patients who are candidates for these therapies for mutations in one of these genes (KRAS) has been recommended, ...

Researchers found that aspirin use is associated with a decreased risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma and death from chronic liver disease (CLD), according to a study published November 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of primary liver cancer, occurs mainly among patients with CLD. Previous reports have linked chronic inflammation due to CLD to cellular processes that could promote carcinogenesis. Because of their anti-inflammatory properties and widespread use to prevent cardiovascular and ...

The combined loss of two tumor suppressor genes, retinoblastoma (RB) and phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) was shown to be strongly associated with progression of DCIS to invasive breast cancer, according to a study published November 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a breast cancer precursor lesion for which there are no established markers defining risk of progression to invasive breast cancer. As a result, the majority of women are treated uniformly with surgery and radiation therapy potentially with additional ...

HOUSTON – (Nov. 29, 2012) – Prostate cancer presents a dilemma for patients and the physicians who treat them. Which cancers are essentially indolent and present no risk and which are life threatening? Which can be watched and which need aggressive treatment? Drs. Ming-Jer and Sophia Tsai, both professors in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, think a receptor called COUP-TFII that they have long studied may point the way to an answer. In a study that appears online in the journal Nature, they show that high levels (overexpression) ...

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 29, 2012) – Nearly three-quarters of mutations in genes that code for proteins – the workhorses of the cell – occurred within the past 5,000 to 10,000 years, fairly recently in evolutionary terms, said a national consortium of genomic and genetic experts, including those at Baylor College of Medicine. "One of the most interesting points is that Europeans have more new deleterious (potentially disease-causing) mutations than Africans," said Dr. Suzanne Leal, professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM and an author of the report. She is also director ...

Intent on developing wheat varieties with higher yields and enhanced nutritional content, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have teamed up with scientists at nine other institutions in an attempt to sequence the wheat genome. Results from that endeavor, led by researchers at the U.K.-based Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, will be reported Nov. 29 in the journal Nature. "This work moves us one step closer to a comprehensive and highly detailed genome sequence for bread wheat, which along with rice and maize is one of the three ...

A combination of anti-HIV drugs has been found to also reduce the risk of recurrent malaria by nearly half among HIV-positive children, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The combination of protease inhibitors lopinavir and ritonavir contributed to an overall reduction of 40 percent in the rate of malaria among a group of HIV-positive infants and children up to 6 years old in Uganda who were also being treated with anti-malarial drugs. This reduction was in comparison to malaria incidence among children receiving a drug treatment ...

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have combined the ability to detect cancer DNA in the blood with genome sequencing technology in a test that could be used to screen for cancers, monitor cancer patients for recurrence and find residual cancer left after surgery. "This approach uses the power of genome sequencing to detect circulating tumor DNA in the blood, providing a sensitive method that can be used to detect and monitor cancers," says Victor Velculescu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncology and co-director of the Cancer Biology Program at Johns Hopkins. A ...

A simple formula can predict at birth a baby's likelihood of becoming obese in childhood, according to a study published today in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The formula, which is available as an online calculator, estimates the child's obesity risk based on its birth weight, the body mass index of the parents, the number of people in the household, the mother's professional status and whether she smoked during pregnancy. The researchers behind the study hope their prediction method will be used to identify infants at high risk and help families take steps to ...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have deciphered the genetic code of wheat to help crop breeders increase yield and produce varieties that are better suited to a changing environment. Wheat is one of the world's most important food crops, accounting for 20% of the world's calorific intake. Global wheat production, however, is under threat from climate change and an increase in demand from a growing human population. The Liverpool team, at the University's Centre for Genomic Research, used new methods of sequencing DNA to decode the large wheat genome, ...

Boys whose testes have not descended at birth—a condition known as cryptorchidism—are almost three times as likely to develop testicular cancer in later life, finds an analysis of the available evidence published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The findings prompt the authors to ask whether boys with the condition should be regularly monitored to lessen the potential risk Cryptorchidsim, where testes fail to descend into the scrotum and are retained within the abdomen, is the most common birth defect in boys, affecting around 6% of newborns. The authors ...

Fort Davis, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion Suns — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy's mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories of how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29. NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. ...

HOUSTON – A previously invincible mutation in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) has been thwarted by an investigational drug in a phase I clinical trial reported in the current edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. All 12 patients in the trial with chronic phase CML and the T315I mutation had a complete hematologic response (absence of CML cells in the blood) after treatment with ponatinib. Eleven had a major reduction in CML cells in the bone marrow and nine achieved a complete cytogenetic response – no cells in the marrow. T315I is present in up to 20 percent ...

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 28, 2012) – Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found in an initial clinical trial that a drug typically prescribed for erectile dysfunction or pulmonary hypertension restores blood flow to oxygen-starved muscles in patients with a type of muscular dystrophy that affects males, typically starting in childhood or adolescence. Tadalafil, commonly known by brand names Cialis and Adcirca, reversed the effects of a biochemical chain of events that in Becker muscular dystrophy deprives muscles of an important chemical, nitric oxide, which normally ...

LOS ANGELES — EMBARGOED UNTIL 1 P.M. EST ON WEDS. NOV. 28, 2012 – Surgical teams at Cedars-Sinai have reduced surgical site infections by more than 60 percent for patients who undergo colorectal procedures by introducing evidence-based protocols that are easy to follow and relatively low in cost. Surgeons, nurses, operating room staff and patients all collaborated in a quality improvement project that measured surgical site infection rates from March 2011 to March 2012. Several new steps were introduced to guard against infections, and these have now been expanded and ...

Microscopic animals held algae captive and stole their genes for energy production, thereby evolving into a new and more powerful species many millions of years ago reveals a new study published today in the journal Nature. The results reveal a 'missing link' in evolution because the tiny animal thieves (protozoa) couldn't completely hide all evidence of the captive algae, and have been effectively frozen in time and caught in the act by genetic sequencing. The protozoa captured genes for photosynthesis- the process of harnessing light to produce energy which is used ...

Thanks to NASA's Cassini spacecraft which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, scientists have been able to observe for the first time ever the seasonal atmospheric circulation direction change on Titan – an event which only happens once every 15 years and is never observable from Earth. Their findings are published today in Nature. Titan, while technically only a moon, is bigger than the planet Mercury, and is often considered a planet in its own right. It is the only known moon to have a significant atmosphere and is one of only four terrestrial atmospheres in our ...

Scientists have developed a new approach for evaluating past climate sensitivity data to help improve comparison with estimates of long-term climate projections developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The sensitivity of global temperature to changes in the Earth's radiation balance (climate sensitivity) is a key factor for understanding past natural climate changes as well as potential future climate change. Many palaeoclimate studies have measured natural climate changes to calculate climate sensitivity, but a lack of consistent methodologies ...