Indiana University researchers have discovered a hormonal mechanism in hamsters that connects short winter days with increased aggression in females, and it differs from the mechanism that controls the same response in males.
Researchers at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center have shown that the microRNA, miR-124, reduced tumor growth and increased cell death in castration-resistant prostate cancer. This small RNA fragment hit multiple targets, reducing androgen receptor signaling and reviving the potency of enzalutamide, a treatment for advanced prostate cancer. In addition, miR-124 impeded EZH2 and Src, proteins that contribute to treatment resistance. The research was published online Monday in Cancer Research.
Codiak BioSciences, Inc. announced today the closing of the first portion of a planned $80-plus million Series A and B financing. The company also executed license and sponsored research agreements with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Researchers have identified a mechanism that allows cancer cells to respond and grow rapidly when levels of sugar in the blood rise. This may help to explain why people who develop conditions in which they have chronically high sugar levels in their blood, such as obesity, also have an increased risk of developing certain types of cancer.
Using large-scale computer modeling, researchers have shown the effects of confinement on macromolecules inside cells – and taken the first steps toward simulating a living cell, a capability that could allow them to ask “what-if” questions impossible to ask in real organisms.
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Ludwig Cancer Research and Isis Pharmaceuticals demonstrate a commercially feasible way to use RNA to turn the CRISPR-Cas9 system on and off as desired — permanently editing a gene, but only temporarily activating CRISPR-Cas9. The study is published November 16 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Taking genetic engineering to the next level, Colorado State University researchers are creating modular, programmable genetic circuits that control specific plant functions.
Scientists have identified two chemical scents in the urine of female mice that arouse sexual behavior in males, a discovery that shines a spotlight on how mouse pheromones control behavior. The research, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is available online in the journal Cell.
University of Oregon scientists have found that strength in numbers doesn't hold true for microbes in the intestines. A minority population of the right type might hold the key to regulating good health.
New research from Argonne, Scripps Research Institute and Rice University now allows researchers to manipulate nature’s biosynthetic machinery to produce more effective antibiotics and cancer-fighting drugs.
Since the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the enzyme telomerase in 1984, identifying other biological molecules that lengthen or shorten the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes has been slow going. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins report uncovering the role of an enzyme crucial to telomere length and say the new method they used to find it should speed discovery of other proteins and processes that determine telomere length.
Johns Hopkins researchers report that a new study of mouse cells has revealed reasons why attempts to grow stem cells to maturity in the laboratory often fail, and provided a possible way to overcome such “developmental arrest.”
Deep within your DNA, a tiny parasite lurks, waiting to pounce from its perch and land in the middle of an unsuspecting healthy gene. If it succeeds, it can make you sick. Like a jungle cat, this parasite sports a long tail. But until now little was known about the role that tail plays in this dangerous jumping.
Researchers exploring the complex structure in which our DNA is stored inside our body’s cells have demonstrated that this structure depends crucially on a protein called ‘Hira’.
New research from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is shedding important light on the DNA repair process and a protein newly discovered to have an essential role in preventing errors and mutations from occurring.
Two University of Notre Dame anthropologists looked beyond the nuclear family for effects on testosterone levels in men and found that not only spouses, but also other relatives, good friends, colleagues, neighbors and fellow church members can play a role.
On Nov. 10 in the journal Science Signaling, University at Buffalo researchers will report that the mutant worms they were studying had altered dopamine signaling because the animals were missing the gene for an enzyme that facilitates an important cellular process.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have successfully used dead bacteria to kill colorectal cancer cells.
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers combed through more than two dozen studies and did surface measurements for 27 mammals and insects to better understand how animals are able to clean themselves. The findings could have implications for keeping manmade structures – such as sensors, robots and unmanned aerial vehicles – free from pollutants, pollen and dirt.
Using a high-tech imaging method, a team of biomedical engineers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis was able to see early-developing cancer cells deeper in tissue than ever before with the help of a novel protein from a bacterium.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina and UC-San Francisco created a general tool to probe the activity of orphan receptors, illuminating their roles in behavior and making them accessible for drug discovery for the first time.
The team found that the main calcium influx pathway involved in the mineralization of enamel [called the CRAC (Ca2+ release-activated Ca2+) channel -- the main type of SOCE (Store-operated Ca2+ entry) channel -- is critical for controlling calcium uptake, which is necessary for the development of tooth enamel.
Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and other institutions today announced the launch of the Human Dark Proteome Initiative (HDPI). The initiative aims to accelerate research into biology’s “invisible mass” to provide novel insights into cell function and a new frontier in drug discovery.
Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have discovered that movement of protein within hair cells of the inner ear shows signs of renewal mechanism. The investigator’s findings will be the cover paper in the Nov. 17 edition of Cell Reports and are now available online
When peripheral nerves are damaged and their vital synaptic paths are disrupted, they have the ability to regenerate and reestablish lost connections. Using zebrafish, which are transparent at larval stages, the researchers identified key components that allows the nervous system to heal itself and literally obtain a whole new window into how axons regenerate.
Berkeley Lab scientists have uncovered new clues to how a molecular machine inside the cell acts as a gatekeeper, allowing some molecules to enter and exit the nucleus while keeping other molecules out.
Salmon migrating from the open ocean to inland waters do more than swim upstream. To navigate the murkier freshwater streams and reach a spot to spawn, the fish have evolved a means to enhance their ability to see infrared light.
CytomX Therapeutics (Nasdaq: CTMX), a biopharmaceutical company developing investigational Probody™ therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, today entered into a collaboration with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to research Probody-enabled chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cell therapies, to be known as ProCAR-NK cell therapies.
Scientists at Mount Sinai create immune cells that visibly kill cancer and pathogen infected cells
The gene SPOP is mutated in up to 15 percent of all cases of prostate cancer, making it one of the most mutated genes in the disease. However, when the gene is functioning properly, it acts as a tumor suppressor. Despite what’s known about SPOP, scientists have not been able to determine exactly how the gene is able to halt the progression of disease. Now, new research from The Wistar Institute has found how SPOP is able to halt tumors by inducing senescence, a state of stable cell cycle arrest, which means that the cells have stopped dividing and growing. With this new information, scientists may be able to design therapeutic strategies that can halt cancers caused by these mutated genes that are able to bypass senescence.
Now that researchers have successfully sequenced the human genome, understanding how those genes operate is one of the next great challenges. To that end, Albert Einstein College of Medicine is taking the lead role in a five-year, $4.25 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop tools that can image genes and the proteins for which they code.
Patients with unexplained low blood counts and abnormally mutated cells who do not fit the diagnostic criteria for recognized blood cancers should be described as having clonal cytopenias of undetermined significance (CCUS), suggest University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers in a recent paper published in the journal Blood. The researchers found the condition surprisingly common in older patients with low blood counts.
A team led by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the University of Pittsburgh has shown for the first time how one set of specialized cells survives under stress by manipulating the behavior of key immune system cells.
Multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease, is triggered by self-reactive T cells that successfully infiltrate the brain and spinal cord where they launch an aggressive autoimmune attack against myelin, the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates nerve fibers. In their latest study, published in the Nov. 2, 2015, advance online issue of Nature Immunology, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology report that these disease-causing autoimmune T cells are lured into the nervous system by monocytes and macrophages, a subset of immune cells better known as the immune system’s cleanup crew.
The first-ever images of the protein complex that unwinds, splits, and copies double-stranded DNA reveal something rather different from the standard textbook view. The electron microscope images, created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory with partners from Stony Brook University and Rockefeller University, offer new insight into how this molecular machinery functions.
Researchers from the University of Southampton have established that eggs have a protective ‘checkpoint’ that helps to prevent DNA damaged eggs being fertilised.
As Halloween approaches, we turned up some spectral images that highlight some spooky-sounding—but really important—biological topics that researchers are actively investigating to spur advances in medicine.
A new class of DNA repair enzyme has been discovered which demonstrates that a much broader range of damage can be removed from the double helix in ways that biologists did not think were possible.
A key protein controls stem cell properties that could make them more useful in regenerative medicine, according to a study led by Mount Sinai researchers and published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
Researchers in the Workman Lab at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a link between cellular metabolism and gene expression, one with potentially far-reaching implications for cancer risk prediction and treatment.
The study has implications for cancer research, as scientists try to understand how cells avoid errors that promote cancer development. It could also be useful in synthetic biology, where scientists work to make robust mechanisms for synthetic life.
Autophagy, the degradation of unwanted cellular bits and pieces by the cell itself, has been shown for the first time to also work in the cell nucleus. In this setting it plays a role in guarding against the start of cancer.
Proteins called cytokines are known to influence immune cell fate, but the process is complex. Researchers examined how a specific cytokine, interleukin-15, influences gene expression patterns in T helper cells.
Prof. Avihai Danon has discovered plants’ “off” switch for producing starch, 50 years after the “on” switch was found. Further, his team at the Weizmann Institute learned that the on and off switches are active at the same time, which is like driving while pressing both the gas and the brakes – but why?
Most cancer drugs are designed to target dividing cells, but a new study by Stony Brook University researchers suggests that targeting invasive cells may be a new strategy to treat metastatic cancer.
Researchers discover way to bypass faculty cell signaling that leads to muscle damage in Duchene muscular dystrophy.
New research shows that an ancient protein that protects bacteria from bursting also helps pollen survive the dangerous transition from desiccated to hydrated once it lands on the female flower. But in pollen’s case, the protein has evolved to provide just the right amount of internal pressure: enough to power cell growth but not so much that the pollen bursts and dies.
Inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state restores hair growth, a new study from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center has found.
A banana a day may not keep the doctor away, but a substance originally found in bananas and carefully edited by scientists could someday fight off a wide range of viruses. And the process used to create it may help scientists harness the “sugar code” that our cells use to communicate.
A study led by the University of Utah School of Medicine has identified molecular mechanisms that control an immune cell’s ability to remember. They found that in helper T cells, the proteins Oct1 and OCA-B work together to put immune response genes on standby so that they are easily activated when the body is re-exposed to a pathogen. The research, which could inform strategies for developing better vaccines, was performed in collaboration with scientists from The Broad Institute and University of Michigan, and published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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