Curated News: Nature (journal)

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Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found how even brief exposure to sudden sounds or mild trauma can form permanent, long-term brain connections, or memories, in a specific region of the brain. Moreover, the research team, working with rats, says it was able to chemically stimulate those biological pathways in the locus coeruleus — the area of the brain best known for releasing the “fight or flight” hormone noradrenaline — to heighten and improve the animals’ hearing.

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A collaborative study led by scientists at the Mechanobiology Instituteat the National University of Singapore has described a universal mechanism that regulates forces during epithelial tissue repair.

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Edward H. Egelman, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, has used the Titan Krios microscope to determine the structure of the bamboo mosaic virus, a flexible filamentous virus that has eluded researchers for decades.

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Results of a trio of studies done on human cancer tissue biopsies have added to growing evidence that a so-called jumping gene called LINE-1 is active during the development of many gastrointestinal cancers.

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For some, TOR may bring to mind a Celtic mountain or perhaps an Internet privacy group. In the world of molecular biology it’s a cellular pathway that’s found in everything from yeast to mammals.

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Scientists have revealed never-before-seen details of how our brain sends rapid-fire messages between its cells. They mapped the 3-D atomic structure of a two-part protein complex that controls the release of signaling chemicals, called neurotransmitters, from brain cells. Understanding how cells release those signals in less than one-thousandth of a second could help launch a new wave of research on drugs for treating brain disorders.

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Scientists know that activation of growth factor receptors like epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) promote tumor progression in many types of cancer.

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Using physical chemistry methods to look at biology at the nanoscale, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher has invented a new technology to image single molecules with unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution, thus leading to the first “true-color” super-resolution microscope.

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Researchers have shown that the greenhouse gas appears in streams by way of two different sources — either as a direct pipeline for groundwater and carbon-rich soils, or from aquatic organisms releasing the gas through respiration and natural decay.

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Researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have developed a manufacturing technique that could double the electricity output of inexpensive solar cells by using a microscopic rake when applying light-harvesting polymers.

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The first whole genome analysis of an octopus reveals unique genomic features that likely played a role in the evolution of traits such as large complex nervous systems and adaptive camouflage. The findings are published in Nature on Aug 12, 2015.

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Researchers have shown that MRI can detect the earliest signs of breast cancer recurrence and fast-growing tumors. Their approach detects micrometastases, breakaway tumor cells with the potential to develop into dangerous secondary breast cancer tumors elsewhere in the body. The approach may offer an improved way to detect early recurrence of breast cancer in women and men. The work was completed at Case Western Reserve University and was funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of NIH.

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Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have identified a new vitamin B3 pathway that regulates liver metabolism. The discovery provides a new opportunity to purse development of novel drug therapies to address obesity, type 2 diabetes and related metabolic diseases.

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Scientists devised a new way of assembling ordered crystals made of nanoparticles. In this process, nanoparticles in the shape of cubes, octahedrons, and spheres coordinate with each other to build structures. The shapes are bound together by complementary DNA molecules on each type of particle.

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Aerobic exercise can help alleviate excessive daytime sleepiness among depressed individuals, researchers with UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care have found.

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An international team of scientists, including Dr Luca Sapienza from the University of Southampton, have developed a new technique for finding quantum dots.

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Scientists have identified a pathway that leads to the formation of atypical blood vessels that can cause blindness in people with age-related macular degeneration. The research, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, sheds light on one of the leading causes of blindness in industrialized countries and offers potential targets for treating the disease.

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Drugs called ion channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat cardiac, neurological, and psychiatric disorders, might prove useful in cancer therapy, according to research findings in fruit flies and mice by UC San Francisco scientists that led to unconventional treatment of a case of metastatic brain cancer.

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The time since the introduction of a non-native marine species best explains its global range, according to new research by an international team of scientists led by University of Georgia ecologist James E. Byers. The study also contains a warning: The vast majority of marine invaders have not yet finished spreading.

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A microscope that will allow scientists studying biological and synthetic materials to simultaneously observe chemical and physical properties on and beneath the surface.

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A new computational method developed by scientists from the University of Chicago improves the detection of genes that are likely to be causal for complex diseases and biological traits. The method, PrediXcan, has the potential to identify gene targets for therapeutic applications faster and with greater accuracy than traditional methods.

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A world-first underwater study of fish in their natural environment by University of Adelaide marine ecologists has shown how predicted ocean acidification from climate change will devastate temperate marine habitats and biodiversity.

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While most of us worry about the fat cells building up on the fleshy parts of our bodies, scientists are paying serious attention to another kind of fat cell deep inside our bones, in the marrow. Today, they’ve published new important clues about it, including a discovery that there are two types.

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Utilizing a pharmaceutical treatment for systolic heart failure, that is being tested in clinical trials, new research at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School determined the precise interaction between the drug and the cardiac myosin protein or the cardiac “motor,” forming a structure that regulates the contraction of cardiac muscle and allows the heart to efficiently pump oxygen-rich blood throughout the body.

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Researchers from North Carolina State University show that magnetic nanoparticles encased in oily liquid shells can bind together in water, much like sand particles mixed with the right amount of water can form sandcastles.

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have identified stem cells in the liver that give rise to functional liver cells. The work solves a long-standing mystery about the origin of new cells in the liver, which must constantly be replenished as cells die off, even in a healthy organ.

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have identified stem cells in the liver that give rise to functional liver cells. The work solves a long-standing mystery about the origin of new cells in the liver, which must constantly be replenished as cells die off, even in a healthy organ.

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In a collaborative study between Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) and the Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have used a highly specialized X-ray crystallography technique to solve the protein structure of hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), important regulators of a tumor’s response to low oxygen (hyopoxia).

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Researchers walk a fine line in stressing algae just enough to produce lipids that can be converted into biofuel without killing them. In Nature Plants, a team led by U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) scientists analyzed the genes that are being activated during algal lipid production.

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A team of scientists believe they have shown that memories are more robust than we thought and have identified the process in the brain, which could help rescue lost memories or bury bad memories, and pave the way for new drugs and treatment for people with memory problems.

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Physicists have directly observed, for the first time, how highly charged dust-sized particles attract and capture others to build up clusters particle by particle. This process can lead to the formation of “granular molecules” whose configurations resemble those of simple chemical molecules.

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Researchers at McGill University have discovered that to learn new motor skills, neurons within the cerebellum engage in elegant, virtually mathematical, computations to quickly compare expected and actual sensory feedback. They then quickly readjust, changing the strength of connections between other neurons to form new patterns in the brain in order to accomplish the task at hand.

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Researchers at UC San Francisco have discovered a neurological mechanism that could explain how songbirds’ neural creativity-generator lets them refine and alter their songs as adults.

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Study shows that cell plasticity program resulting from kidney damage can be targeted to reverse disease and fibrosis.

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Salk scientists unveil how a critical molecule turns on T cells.

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DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are the worst possible form of genetic malfunction that can cause cancer and resistance to therapy.

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High-grade serous ovarian cancer often responds well to the chemotherapy drug carboplatin, but why it so frequently comes back after treatment has been a medical mystery. Now a team of UCLA researchers has discovered that a subset of tumor cells that don’t produce the protein CA125, a biomarker used to test for ovarian cancer, has an enhanced ability to repair their DNA and resist programmed cell death — which allows the cells to evade the drug and live long enough to regrow the original tumor.

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Patients with higher levels of a key protein are at greater risk for severe kidney disease

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University have engineered a tethered ribosome that works nearly as well as the authentic cellular component, or organelle, that produces all the proteins and enzymes within the cell.

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Researchers from Berkeley Lab and Columbia University have created the world’s highest-performance single-molecule diode. Development of a functional single-molecule diode is a major pursuit of the electronics industry.

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Rice is the staple food for more than half of the world’s population, but the paddies it’s grown in contributes up to 17 percent of global methane emissions -- about 100 million tons a year. Now, with the addition of a single gene, rice can be cultivated to emit virtually no methane, more starch for a richer food source and biomass for energy production, as announced in the July 30 edition of Nature and online.

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University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that, despite not having a nervous system, plants use signals normally associated with animals when they encounter stress.

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The research explains the complex mechanisms of interaction and dynamics between the gut microbiota and its host. Data show that relatively minor changes in microbiota profiles or its metabolic activity induced by neonatal stress can have profound effects on host behaviour in adulthood.

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A new technology, improving the efficiency of the studies in epigenomics, is the subject of a Nature Methods journal article by Chang Lu and Zhenning Cao of Virginia Tech and Kai Tan, Changya Chen and Bing He of the University of Iowa. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, following a seed grant from Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

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Researchers at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital have created a polymer gel that could allow for the development of long-acting devices that reside in the stomach, including orally delivered capsules that can release drugs over a number of days, weeks, or potentially months following a single administration.

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Measurements of iron speciation in ancient rocks were used to construct the chemistry of ancient oceans. Analysis suggests that it took less oxygen than previously thought to trigger the appearance of complicated life forms.

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New research by Australian scientists and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) published today in Nature warns governments against using biodiversity offsetting to meet existing conservation commitments.

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New research by Australian scientists and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) published today in Nature warns governments against using biodiversity offsetting to meet existing conservation commitments.

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A biomedical breakthrough in the journal Nature reveals never-before-seen details of the human body’s cellular switchboard that regulates sensory and hormonal responses. The work is based on an X-ray laser experiment at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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In studying how cells recycle the building blocks of DNA, Ludwig Cancer Research scientists have discovered a potential therapeutic strategy for cancer. They found that normal cells have highly selective mechanisms to ensure that nucleosides—the chemical blocks used to make new strands of DNA—don’t carry extra, unwanted chemical changes. But the scientists also found that some types of cancer cells aren’t so selective. These cells incorporate chemically modified nucleosides into their DNA, which is toxic to them. The findings, published today in the journal Nature, indicate that it might be possible to use modified nucleotides for specific killing of cancer cells.