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Saturday, 15 June 2013 14:52 |
 In current health lore, antioxidants are all the rage, as "everybody knows" that reducing the amount of "reactive oxygen species" -- cell-damaging molecules that are byproducts of cellular metabolism -- is critical to staying healthy. What everyone doesn't know is that our bodies already have a complex set of processes built into our cells that handle these harmful byproducts of living and repair the damage they cause. |
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Sunday, 28 April 2013 21:17 |
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During fetal development of the mammalian brain, the cerebral cortex undergoes a marked expansion in surface area in some species, which is accommodated by folding of the tissue in species with most expanded neuron numbers and surface area. Researchers have now identified a key regulator of this crucial process.
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Saturday, 06 April 2013 16:44 |
A structural biologist at the Florida State University College of Medicine has made discoveries that could lead scientists a step closer to understanding how life first emerged on Earth billions of years ago.Professor Michael Blaber and his team produced data supporting the idea that 10 amino acids believed to exist on Earth around 4 billion years ago were capable of forming foldable proteins in a high-salt (halophile) environment. Such proteins would have been capable of providing metabolic activity for the first living organisms to emerge on the planet between 3.5 and 3.9 billion years ago. |
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Saturday, 19 January 2013 17:01 |
New technique captures division of membrane-less cells  Image and video credit: Ivo Telley - EMBL Click image to play. |
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Wednesday, 26 December 2012 18:21 |
Atomic mechanism of 2-headed molecule derived from Chang Shan, a traditional Chinese herb, is shown in unprecedented detail.
LA JOLLA, CA – December 23, 2012 – The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan—a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria—have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). |
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Monday, 19 November 2012 01:25 |
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Scientists at Stanford University have developed an intracellular remote control: a simple way to activate and track proteins, the busiest of cellular machines, using beams of light.
The new method, described in a paper published Nov. 9 in Science, will let researchers shine light on a specific cell region to quickly activate a protein in that area, producing an unusually fine-grained view of the location and timing of protein activity. In addition, the method may eventually enable physicians to direct the movement and activity of stem cells used to treat injury or illness in light-accessible body parts, such as the eye or skin. Stanford has filed a patent application for the work. |
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Saturday, 13 October 2012 21:41 |
Resubmissions from other scientific journals yield more citations than first-intent submissionsA large-scale survey of the process for submitting research papers to scientific journals has revealed a surprising pattern: manuscripts that were turned down by one journal and published in another received significantly more citations than those that were published by the first journal to receive them. |
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Sunday, 09 September 2012 20:33 |
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An international team of scientists have shown at an unprecedented level of detail how cells prioritise the repair of genes containing potentially dangerous damage. The research, published in the journal Nature and involving academics from the University of Bristol, the Institut Jacques-Monod in France and Rockefeller University in the US, studied the action of individual molecules in order to understand how cellular repair pathways are triggered. |
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Wednesday, 15 August 2012 22:01 |
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BOSTON--The genomic tumult within tumor cells has provided scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard with clues to an entirely new class of genes that may serve as an Achilles' heel for many forms of cancer. |
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Sunday, 01 July 2012 22:48 |
Beyond base pairs: Mapping the functional genome.
Popularly dubbed "the book of life," the human genome is extraordinarily difficult to read. But without full knowledge of its grammar and syntax, the genome's 2.9 billion base-pairs of adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine provide limited insights into humanity's underlying genetics. |
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Saturday, 15 June 2013 14:42 |
The comparison of 1,0 00-year-old and modern bacterial genomes provides insights into the disease history. From skeletons and biopsies, an international team of scientists was successful in reconstructing a dozen medieval and modern genomes of the leprosy-causing bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Under the direction of Professor Johannes Krause, University of Tübingen, and Professor Stewart Cole, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), the research group created a genome from archaeological finds for the first time without having to resort to a reference sequence. Professor Almut Nebel and Dr. Ben Krause-Kyora, both of the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Kiel University, belong to the team, whose findings are to be published this week in Sciencemagazine. |
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Sunday, 21 April 2013 05:53 |
UC San Francisco Study Examines Role of Immune Cell in Triggering Muscle Regrowth.
UC San Francisco scientists have discovered that muscle repair requires the action of two types of cells better known for causing inflammation and forming fat. The finding in mice, published in the April 11 issue of Cell, showed that a well-known immune cell called the eosinophil [ee-oh-SIN-oh-fil] carries out the beneficial role in two ways – by clearing out cellular debris from damaged tissue and teaming up with a type of cell that can make fat to instead trigger muscle regrowth. |
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Sunday, 17 February 2013 12:03 |
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DALLAS – Feb. 15, 2013 – Two studies by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center could lead to new treatments for lupus and other autoimmune diseases and strengthen current therapies for viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections.
The studies identify a new enzyme that acts as a sensor of innate immunity – the body’s first line of defense against invaders – and describe a novel cell signaling pathway. This pathway detects foreign DNA or even host DNA when it appears in a part of the cell where DNA should not be. In addition, the investigations show that the process enlists a naturally occurring compound in a class known to exist in bacteria but never before seen in humans or other multicellular organisms, said Dr. Zhijian “James” Chen. |
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Saturday, 19 January 2013 16:39 |
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Membrane proteins are the "molecular machines" in biological cell envelopes. They control diverse processes, such as the transport of molecules across the lipid membrane, signal transduction, and photosynthesis. Their shape, i.e. folding of the molecules, plays a decisive role in the formation of, e.g., pores in the cell membrane. In the Cellmagazine, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Cagliari are now reporting a novel charge zipper principle used by proteins to form functional units (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.12.017).
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Wednesday, 26 December 2012 18:12 |
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(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In research published online Dec. 23, 2012 in the journal Nature Genetics, scientists have found three new and relatively rare genetic variants that influence insulin production, offering new clues about the genetic factors behind diabetes..
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Monday, 19 November 2012 01:08 |
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STANFORD, Calif. — Whether you are an apple tree or an antelope, survival depends on using your energy efficiently. In a difficult or dangerous situation, the key question is whether exerting effort — sending out roots in search of nutrients in a drought or running at top speed from a predator — will be worth the energy. |
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Saturday, 13 October 2012 20:53 |
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Scientists discover novel diabetes and obesity therapy, and potential cause of major side effects from hedgehog inhibitors used as a cancer treatment. |
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Monday, 03 September 2012 14:23 |
Gene therapy in mice restores sense of smell, may also aid research into other diseases caused by cilia defects, U-M researchers say ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Scientists have restored the sense of smell in mice through gene therapy for the first time -- a hopeful sign for people who can’t smell anything from birth or lose it due to disease. |
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Wednesday, 04 July 2012 00:04 |
Novel mechanism plays major role in inflammationSAN DIEGO – (July 1, 2012) – Like detectives seeking footprints and other clues on a television "whodunit," science can also benefit from analyzing the tracks of important players in the body's molecular landscape. Klaus Ley, M.D., a scientist at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, has done just that and illuminated a key step in the journey of inflammation-producing immune cells. The finding provides powerful, previously unknown information about critical biological mechanisms underlying heart disease and many other disorders. |
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Sunday, 17 June 2012 19:16 |
Network Approach to Drug Design May Yield More Effective and Less Toxic Cancer Drugs, UCSF Study Suggests.
A new approach to drug design, pioneered by a group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Mt. Sinai, New York, promises to help identify future drugs to fight cancer and other diseases that will be more effective and have fewer side effects.
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