WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node control heart rate, but what controls the ticking of these pacemaker cells? New research by Angelo Torrente and his colleagues of the M.E. Mangoni group's, reveals, for the first time, a critical functional interaction between Cav1.3 calcium ion (Ca2+) channels and ryanodine-receptor (RyR) mediated Ca2+ signaling. The study also sheds light on a long-standing debate regarding the relative contributions of the 'funny current' generated by ion channels and the RyR dependent spontaneous diastolic ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Ten years ago, scientists seeking to understand how a certain type of feature on a cell called an L-type calcium channel worked created a knockout mouse missing both copies of the CACNA1D gene. The CACNA1D gene makes a protein that lets calcium flow into a cell, transmitting important instructions from other cells. The knockout mice lived a normal life span, but their hearts beat slowly and arrhythmically. They were also completely deaf. Today at the 55th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Baltimore, an international team lead ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 9, 2011) -- Spider venom toxins are useful tools for exploring how ion channels operate in the body. These channels control the flow of ions across cell membranes, and are key components in a wide variety of biological processes and human diseases. A newly identified toxin from the American Funnel Web spider acts on T-type and N-type calcium channels, researchers from the University of California at Riverside have discovered. The toxin offers a new target for studying T-type channels, which play a role in congestive heart failure, hypertension, ...

March 10, 2011 – A detailed analysis of gene fusions present at high frequency in the most common pediatric brain tumors has been performed for the first time in a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), shedding new light on how these genomic rearrangements form in the early stages of cancer. Genomic rearrangements, genetic changes that alter the structure of chromosomes, have a positive role in evolution by creating genetic diversity and new genes; however, rearrangements can also predispose to or potentially initiate diseases such as cancer. ...

VIDEO: Researchers have created a three-dimensional nanoscale model of a neural circuit using electron microscopy. As a result, the researchers can crawl these vast neural networks much as Google crawls Web... Click here for more information. BOSTON, Mass. (March 9, 2011) — The brain is a black box. A complex circuitry of neurons fires information through channels, much like the inner workings of a computer chip. But while computer processors are regimented with the deft economy ...

Los Angeles, CA (March 10th, 2011) – A review of research carried out over 20 years suggests that UK doctors appear to consistently oppose euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). The findings - which appear in the latest issue of the journal Palliative Medicine, published by SAGE - highlight a gap between doctors' attitudes and those of the UK public. The study, carried out by Dr Ruaidhrí McCormack and colleagues Dr M Clifford and Dr M Conroy at the Department of Palliative Medicine, Milford Care Centre, Limerick, Eire, searched through literature from 1990 to ...

BOULDER, Colo.—Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an electromechanical circuit in which microwaves communicate with a vibrating mechanical component 1,000 times more vigorously than ever achieved before in similar experiments. The microscopic apparatus is a new tool for processing information and potentially could control the motion of a relatively large object at the smallest possible, or quantum, scale. Described in the March 10 issue of Nature,* the NIST experiments created strong interactions between ...

Boston, MA – A team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that approximately one out of every twelve adult smokers have abnormal lung densities present on chest computed tomography (CT) images suggestive of interstitial lung disease which is associated with substantial reductions in lung volumes. In addition, despite being positively associated with smoking, these lung densities were inversely not associated with emphysema. This research is published online on March 10th in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is increasingly acknowledged ...

Chemotherapy drug resistance contributes to treatment failure in more than 90 percent of metastatic cancers. Overcoming this hurdle would significantly improve cancer survival rates. Dean Ho, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, believes a tiny carbon particle called a nanodiamond may offer an effective drug delivery solution for hard-to-treat cancers. In studies of liver and breast cancer models in vivo, Ho and a multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and clinicians found that a normally lethal ...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the fluid found in and around the brain and spinal cord, may play a larger role in the developing brain than previously thought, according to researchers at Children's Hospital Boston. A paper published online March 10th by the journal Neuron sheds light on how signals from the CSF help drive neural development. The paper also identifies a CSF protein whose levels are elevated in patients with glioblastoma, a common malignant brain tumor, suggesting a potential link between CSF signaling and brain tumor growth and regulation. The study, led ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Stimulation of a distinct brain circuit that lies within a brain structure typically associated with fearfulness produces the opposite effect: Its activity, instead of triggering or increasing anxiety, counters it. That's the finding in a paper by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers to be published online March 9 in Nature. In the study, Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, and his colleagues employed a mouse model to show that stimulating activity exclusively in this circuit enhances animals' willingness to take risks, while inhibiting its activity ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Humans are clearly different from chimpanzees. The question is, why? According to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, it may boil down in part to what we don't have, rather than what we do. The loss of snippets of regulatory DNA, the scientists found, could be the reason why, for example, humans lack the penile spines found in many other mammals, and also why specific regions of our brains are larger than those of our closest relatives. Understanding these and other differences may help us learn what it means to be human. But ...

Adolescence is often described as a tumultuous time, where heightened reactivity and impulsivity lead to negative behaviors like substance abuse and unsafe sexual activity. Previous research has pointed to the immature adolescent brain as a major liability, but now, a unique study reveals that some brain changes associated with adolescence may not be driving teens towards risky behavior but may actually reflect a decrease in susceptibility to peer pressure. The findings, published by Cell Press in the March 10 issue of the journal Neuron, provide a more complete perspective ...

Although it is quite common for a brief, unique experience to become part of our long-term memory, the underlying brain mechanisms associated with this type of learning are not well understood. Now, a new brain-imaging study looks at the neural activity associated with a specific type of rapid learning, insight. The research, published by Cell Press in the March 10 issue of the journal Neuron, reveals specific brain activity that occurs during an "A-ha!" moment that may help encode the new information in long-term memory. "In daily life, information that results from ...

Just when children are faced with intensifying peer pressure to misbehave, regions of the brain are actually blossoming in a way that heighten the ability to resist risky behavior, report researchers at three West Coast institutions. The findings -- detailed in the March 10 issue of the journal Neuron -- may give parents a sigh of relief regarding their kids as they enter adolescence and pay more attention to their friends. However, the research provides scientists with basic insight about the brain's wiring, rather than direct clinical relevance for now. In the study, ...

Illicit drug users are at increased risk of being exposed to microbial pathogens and are more susceptible to serious infections say physicians writing in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The review, which aims to improve the microbiological diagnosis of drug use-related infections, assesses the role of drug related practices in the spread of a range of bacterial, viral, fungal and protozoal infections. The review by collaborators from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India highlights convincing evidence that unsterile injection practices, contaminated needles, ...

PHILADELPHIA – Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania explain how a class of RNA molecules is able to target the genetic building blocks that guide the functioning of a specific part of the nerve cell. Abnormalities at this site are in involved in epilepsy, neurodegenerative disease, and cognitive disorders. Their results are published this week in the journal Neuron. A team of researchers, led by James Eberwine, PhD, the Elmer Bobst Professor of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine, and Junhyong Kim, PhD, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of Biology ...

University Park, Pa. -- Chimpanzees and humans are minimally different genetically, but the small differences are what make us human, according to a team of researchers who identified segments of non-coding DNA missing in humans that exist in chimpanzees and other animals. "The technology now lets us look at the genomes of humans and other mammals and find sites where humans are unique," said Philip Reno, assistant professor of anthropology, Penn State. "We can now correlate that information with specific human physical characteristics." DNA is composed of gene segments ...

A strong international collaboration and a single patient with mild muscle disease and severe cognitive impairment have allowed University of Iowa researchers to identify a new gene mutation that causes muscular dystrophy. Furthermore, by engineering the human gene mutation into a mouse, the researchers, led by Kevin Campbell, Ph.D., professor and head of molecular physiology and biophysics at the UI Carver College of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, have created a new mouse model that could help screen potential drugs to treat this type of ...

What happened to being "quiet as a mouse"? Researchers have recently shown that, rather than being the silent creatures of popular belief, mice emit ultrasonic calls in a variety of social contexts, and these calls have song-like characteristics. So if mice sing, where do they get their music? Are they born with the songs fully formed in their heads, or do they learn them from their peers? This question is of great interest to scientists as, while many organisms produce genetically regulated vocalizations, only a select few species (such as ourselves) can actually learn ...

Neena Singh, MD, PhD and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified the first disease-specific biomarker for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), a universally fatal, degenerative brain disease for which there is no cure. sCJD is one of the causes of dementia and typically leads to death within a year of disease onset. The finding, published in the March 9th issue of PLoS ONE, a scientific journal produced by the Public Library of Science, provides a basis for developing a test to diagnosis sCJD while patients are still alive. ...

A new study demonstrates that specific traits that distinguish humans from their closest living relatives – chimpanzees, with whom we share 96 percent of our DNA – can be attributed to the loss of chunks of DNA that control when and where certain genes are turned on. The finding mirrors accumulating evidence from other species that changes to regulatory regions of DNA – rather than to the genes themselves – underlie many of the new features that organisms acquire through evolution. Seeking specific genetic changes that might be responsible for the evolution of uniquely ...

Cerebrospinal fluid—the clear and watery substance that bathes the brain and spinal cord—is much more important to brain development than previously realized. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Christopher Walsh, his postdoctoral fellow Maria Lehtinen, former student Mauro Zappaterra, and their colleagues have discovered that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) contains a complex mix of proteins that changes dramatically with age. In the lab, CSF by itself is enough to support the growth of neural stem cells, and this effect is particularly robust in young brains. What's ...

Scientists have shed light on why some people are apple-shaped and others are pear-shaped. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have pinpointed a protein that plays a part in how fat is stored in the body. The latest findings give greater understanding of how the protein works, which could help development of medicines to treat obesity. Levels of the protein – known as 11BetaHSD1 – tend to be higher in the presence of an unhealthy type of body fat which tends to be stored around the torso – typical of "apple-shapes". Healthier fat, linked to lower levels ...

Movement disorders such as Parkinson's diseases and dystonia are caused by abnormal neural activity of the basal ganglia located deep in the brain. The basal ganglia are connected to the cerebral cortex in the brain surface through complex neural circuits. Their basic structure and connections, as well as the dysfunctions in movement disorders, have been examined extensively by using experimental animals. On the other hand, little is known about the human brain that is much more complex in either normal or diseased states. An international joint research team led by ...