Researchers Learn How Nature Produces Cholesterol-Lowering Lovastatin
...three carbonbuilding blocks to produce a series of biochemical reactions leading ultimatelyto a complex molecule, a structure that makes a colored pigment. Otherscientists at Cambridge University and Abbott Laboratories in Chicago laterfound a second way microbes make polyketides, utilizing three enzymes and fou......etermine the effects ofdietary fat on performance, biochemical and nutritional status, and plasmalipids and lipoprotein profiles in distance runners being conducted by a studygroup composed of -- in addition to Venkatraman and Pendergast -- Peter Horvath,Ph.D., associate professor in the UB Department of Physic...Researchers Discover Fast Efficient, Controllable Way To Study Molecular Interactions
...t-triggered process, it doesn't corrupt concurrent biochemical processes.Using light as the activator also allows control over exactly when the bondingtakes place. Eventually, the scientists believe that this will aid in drug creation. "Right now this is core technology for studying protein inter...Researchers Find Protein Abnormality Associated With Alzheimer's Disease
...brain and that theprotein's distribution and biochemical properties are altered in the brains ofAlzheimer's disease patients. The researchers demonstrate that agrin abnormalities are linked withplaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. Such plaques are local brain lesions charac...Newly discovered gene family may regulate important biological processes
...s in the nucleus. This will giveus clues as to its biochemical function." The scientists are investigating when Morc is expressed in the mouse embryo.This will give them further clues to its function. They already know that micewith the gene mutation are normal at birth and attempt to begin production ofmature g...Gene that causes familial British dementia may yield clues to Alzheimer's disease
... remained unknown. The present report details the biochemical analysis ofthe isolated amyloid fibrils revealing a unique protein fragment named ABri andleading to the identification and analysis of the BRI gene. Examples ofmutations that lead to a shorter protein are common in the literature, but it isunusual ...Computing device to serve as basis for biological computer
...or example, such a computer could sense anomalous biochemical changes in thetissue and decide, based on its pro...ay operate in the human body, interacting with its biochemical environment in a program- controlled manner. Inparticular, given a biomolecular implementation of t...Researchers call for doubling of RDA on vitamin C
...immune function and overall health. And forvarious biochemical reasons, vitamin C is still the king of antioxidants. Antioxidants readily scavenge many reactive oxygen and nitrogen speciessuch as superoxide and hydroperoxyl radicals, hydroxyl radicals, peroxynitrite,nitrogen dioxide, and hypochlorous aci...Change your diet and it may make you brighter
...ist at Harvard University warns that othersupposed biochemical indicators of intelligence have proved unreliable. And headds that performance in IQ tests can be affected by many factors, such as thesubject's health and their motivation. He suggests that Brooks's images may infact be tracking one of these other f...Lab on a chip? Cheap, disposable UD biosensor uses gold-on-plastic design
...r foreign particles, to detectantibodies through a biochemical "clumping" process called agglutination, Velevsays. While the agglutination approach is "fast and robust," Velev says, it alsorequires a relatively large sample. Moreover, he says, "The resulting opticalreadout may be complex, and it is subject to in......hosts either expel or digest them." The underlying biochemical causes for the reef bleaching have remainedobscure, however. In field tests conducted in the Caribbean and replicatedin the laboratory, however, the UGA researchers pioneered the use on coralsymbionts of a technique known as pulse-amplitude modulati...Mice show function of gene that causes two types of blindness
... "Our research revealed, among other things, the biochemical change inpatients with Stargardt's that makes vision more difficult when coming fromsunshine into a dimly lit room," said Dr. Gabriel Travis, associate professor ofpsychiatry and an investigator in the Center for Basic Neuroscience at UTSouthwestern.......aulty communication between neurons. Using biochemical and imaging techniques, Hanson will visualize howproteins called SNAREs tether a storage sac to the inner face of the membranethat forms a neuron's surface. During this process, one type of SNARE juttingfrom a sac's surface interacts with similar tet...Researchers develop novel mouse model of Alzheimer's disease
...1 (PS-1), aprotein that has been implicated in the biochemical processing of APP. The researchers found that mice carrying the mutant form of APP developed amyloid deposits similar to those found in patientswith Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, mice with two copies of the APP gene, or with both mutant genes, devel...Cellular espionage at play in post-menopausal osteoporosis
...biomedical community over what cell, molecular and biochemical processesare involved in bone loss associated with declining estrogen levels. Now a group of biologists at Washington University in St. Louis has shown thatlower estrogen levels in post-menopausal women allow a class of inflammatorymolecules called c...Transformation of normal human cells into cancer cells
...will give scientists an important new windowon the biochemical and physiologic changes involved in the development of humancancer, Dr. Weinberg says. They promise to be particularly useful for exploringthe later changes in tumor development including the genetic changes that leadto metastatic disease, a problem...U-M scientists identify genes that make blood "thicker" and more likely to clot as we get older
... near the gene for Factor IX -- a keyenzyme in the biochemical chain reaction that produces blood clots. The discovery is significant because it is the first identification of themolecular basis for age-related changes in Factor IX and blood coagulation. Itexplains why coagulation capacity is almost twice as hig......"orexis," meaning "appetite." Yanagisawa said the biochemical link between orexin and narcolepsy is still amystery. "But if you just think about it philosophically, it makes sense," headded. "When an animal gets hungry, it had better be alert. It would be bad froman evolutionary standpoint to be sleepy when it'...Jefferson scientist hopes to answer the question, 'Why is it so hard to quit smoking?'
.... "Once you have the gene, you can get the biochemical pathway and thebrain process of nicotine addiction," Dr. Leone says. "When you understand that,you can talk about intervention. Ultimately, we'd like to find a drug to inhibita neural pathway."......nel or other tissues, there are localizedminiature biochemical factories with raw material, intermediate material and endproducts. "With an infrared microspectrometer, we could begin to see how eachfactory is working, and analyze it on the spot," he explained. Infrared microspectroscopy combines a special infrar...