By Anette Breindl Science Editor Major depression affects more than 15 percent of the population at some point in their lives, and about 7 percent in any given year
Why PARP Inhibitors Kill BRCA Mutants Inhibitors of the enzyme poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) selectively kill cells with BRCA mutations, and researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered one reason that they do so. In their studies, the authors showed that poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) recruits BRCA1, in complex with the protein BARD1, to sites of DNA damage. When PAR polymerization is inhibited, such binding cannot occur, and BRCA1 cannot be recruited to repair DNA damage. Many BRCA1
Eggs: Fresh or Stale? Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have weighed in on the question of whether female mammals have germ-line stem cells that are capable of generating new egg cells. Recent reports have questioned the long-held notion that female mammals are born with all the eggs they will ever possess, suggesting instead that they have stem cells capable of generating new eggs. In their work, the researchers used a sensitive labeling system to see whether they could
Intolerant Hosts Can Damage Themselves One of the major reasons that influenza is dangerous is that it softens the body up for pneumonia, which can deliver a fatal blow to weakened individuals and is, in fact, responsible for the majority of the deaths that start with a flu infection. But why the flu should predispose to pneumonia to the extent that it does has remained unclear. Infected individuals cope in two different ways: by controlling infections via resistance, and via adapting to the
This Nanosystem Taketh Away Numerous nanodevices are being developed to deliver drugs into the body. But researchers from the University of California at San Diego have developed a nanosponge for the opposite purpose, namely, to remove toxins from the bloodstream. Their system consists of the membrane of a red blood cell wrapped around a core made of PLGA, or poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid), nanoparticles, which gives the membrane stability and prolonged circulation in the bloodstream. While
Fat-Free Brains Bare It All Researchers from Stanford University developed a method to render entire brains see-through and accessible to molecular labeling – a technical advance that will allow scientists to study anatomical and molecular interconnections between different brain regions without first slicing the brains and then attempting to reconstruct three-dimensional maps from the two-dimensional images. The team first infused brains with the monomers, or building blocks, of a hydrogel
By Anette Breindl Science Editor WASHINGTON – Several presentations at the American Association for Cancer Research's (AACR) Annual Meeting this week underscored the size of the epigenetic space
Anti-Inflammatory Amyloids... Researchers from Stanford University published new evidence to support the surprising notion that amyloid fibrils, best known as the likely culprits in Alzheimer's disease, can be beneficial in multiple sclerosis and other neuroinflammatory diseases. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 2, 2012.) The team had shown in earlier studies that amyloid beta could affect T cells to ultimately improve the symptoms of mice with the animal equivalent of multiple sclerosis. In their
What White Eyes You Have! A team at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University genetically engineered Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to change their eye color, showing that it is possible to use a set of genome-editing tools known as TALENS to disrupt gene functioning in what the authors called a "non-traditional" species for the technology. The mosquitoes transmit such global scourges as malaria and dengue fever, but few if any mutant strains to study them have been developed, as they are
Another Aging Regulator Researchers from Temple University discovered that glycogen synthase kinase-three alpha (GSK-3 alpha) is an overall regulator of aging in many different cell types. GSK-3 alpha is an enzyme that phosphorylates more than 50 different targets, including proteins that play roles in aging such as WNT, IGF-1, mTOR and p53. While on other studies, the authors noticed that GSK-3 alpha had a shorter life span than wild-type littermates. They discovered many tissue types aged
By Anette Breindl Science Editor By targeting one specific type of inhibitory brain receptor, researchers have been able to improve neural function and memory in a mouse model of Down syndrome
Blood Likes to Butt into Brain's Business Scientists from the Japanese Shiga University of Medical Sciences have discovered that brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, influences appetite. That in itself may not seem counterintuitive, but the production site of the BDNF definitely is. Contrary to what its name might suggest, that particular BDNF is produced by blood stem cells in the bone marrow. In their work, the authors found that such cells can migrate to the hypothalamus, a brain
How Daclatasvir Works Inhibiting hepatitis C's nonstructural 5A, or NS5A, protein causes viral levels to drop by 99 percent within six hours of administration, and in one clinical trial, it led to sustained drops in viral levels in all treated patients – a stunning validation of the possibility of developing an all-oral hepatitis treatment regimen. Why NS5A makes such a good target has been a bit of a puzzle, though, seeing as the protein has no enzymatic activity. Now, researchers from the Los
By Anette Breindl Science Editor Memory T cells, because of the sheer speed with which they can respond to an infection, are "the best thing you can have" to protect against a disease, Mark Davis told BioWorld Today
By Anette Breindl Science Editor Major depression affects more than 15 percent of the population at some point in their lives, and about 7 percent in any given year