Cigarette smoke causes breaks in DNA and defects to a cell's chromosomes, Pitt study finds
... the most mutagenic type of DNA damage because the broken ends can fuse to other chromosomes in the cell. Ch..., these chromosomes either tear apart, leaving two broken pieces, or if they don't break apart, the abnormal, elongated chromosomes may persist after anaphase...'Dead zone' area shrinking, Texas A&M prof says
...low dissolved oxygen concentrations in water - had broken up and appeared to pose little threat to marine li...plains. "In other words, much of the dead zone had broken up, and this very much surprised us." DiMarco believes there are two reasons why the region affected...Chemical derived from vitamin-E shows early promise as cancer drug
...ffective when given orally, probably because it is broken down into an inactive chemical form by intestinal enzymes. Kline will continue analyzing alpha-TEA activity and cellular effects in mice. Meanwhile, the chemical is going through more detailed toxicity evaluations and analyses for its preve...Experimental drug shown to block mutant protein causing blood disease
... inhibited by PKC412. The mutation occurs when two broken pieces of the chromosome that carries the FGFR1 gene join together abnormally. The findings suggest, the authors write, that PKC412 may be effective in treating MPD, as well as other diseases and cancers where mutant FGFR1 is the culprit. These inclu...Prion propagation: Avoiding the toxic oligomer
... fragmentation, and monomers rapidly grow from the broken ends. Weissman and colleagues confirmed that the fibers were growing monomer by monomer by attaching to fragmented fiber ends with fluorescent microscopy, which can detect single molecules. These results show that amyloid growth can occur ...Spontaneous mutation produces new MAO A/B knockout mouse
...mice not only had high levels of neurotransmitters broken down by MAO B, as would be expected in mice lackin... B, but also had high levels of neurotransmitters broken down by MAO A. This indicated that somehow the MAO B knockout mouse had also lost its ability to pro...Disruption of protein-folding causes neurodegeneration, mental retardation
...ters, where proteins, fats and other molecules are broken down into their basic building blocks, which are then reused to make new molecules. Lysosomal storage diseases occur when lysosomes lack the enzymes they need to perform their recycling tasks, leading to abnormal accumulation of the molecules the lys...Broken arms and collateral damage: clues to predator-driven evolution
...rs that inflicted damage upon them, and that their broken arms were simply "collateral damage." Crinoids, Baumiller explained, play host to a variety of other organisms that take up residence on various parts of their bodies, and the predators were probably going after those creatures. One way to test this ...Carnegie Mellon scientists reveal ways of studying, resolving PCB contamination in US rivers
... Engineering, presenting) Finding out how PCBs are broken down over time is difficult if you don't know which of the 209 PCBs (called congeners) were released initially. During manufacturing, companies made different lots of PCB mixtures called Aroclors, but poor record-keeping has confused efforts to track...Rutgers-Newark scientist: Mosquitoes may carry lethal parasite
...ually any kind of human cell, may have entered and broken down the muscle tissue of a Pennsylvania woman when she crushed a mosquito over the site where it had been drawing blood. The woman later died as a type of microsporidia called B. algerae, known to reside in the tissues of mosquitoes, systematically ...JCI table of contents, 2 August, 2004
...involved in the development of atherosclerosis, is broken down, it creates small peptides that are recognized by the two components of the immune system: the natural immune system, which every individual is born with and that responds to a fixed set of conserved pathogenic markers; and the adaptive immune s...Ancient brewery discovered on mountaintop in Peru
...s to make chicha. These fire pits revealed ash and broken shards of the large ceramic preparation vats, which held 10-15 gallons. Boiling fruits or grains is the first step in preparing chicha. Like the mash created in the beer brewing process, the boiling vats contained the sugary mass that would be conver...Research reveals role of gene in infertility
...d not neat chromosome packages but a chaos of many broken sections of chromosomes. "We found that plants in...combine the sections of their chromosomes that are broken during meiosis," Ma says. The researchers additionally tested this finding by introducing into the ...When sun's too strong, plankton make clouds
...then the plankton's cell walls. This chemical gets broken down in the water by bacteria, and it changes into another substance called dimethylsulfide (DMS). DMS then filters from the ocean into the air, where it reacts with oxygen, to form different sulfur compounds. Sulfur in the DMS sticks together in th...Combination of gene therapy and gene silencing prevents neurodegenerative disease
...els of disease has been a barrier. We seem to have broken through that barrier." Davidson and her colleagues used a viral vector (a stripped-down virus) to deliver small fragments of genetic material (RNA) to critical brain cells of mice with a disorder that mimics the human neurodegenerative disease spinoc...JCI table of contents, 1 July 2004
...d. Free fatty acids are generated when glycerol is broken down in the liver or in fat tissue. One gene family thought to be involved in this increasing free fatty acids is the PPAR gene family. Sander Kersten and colleagues, from Wageningen University, now begin to build our understanding of this process wi...Cell growth and death controlled by single pathway in lymphoma cancer model
...me 11 breaks in half and moves over to a similarly broken gene (MALT1) on chromosome 18. The MALT1 protein helps activate NF-kB in immune cells. When this translocation takes place, a new chimeric gene forms, which produces a new fusion protein that has unique functions. This fusion protein offered researc...Could mice hold the secret to longer life?
...an. Metabolism is the means by which nutrients are broken down to smaller building blocks and chemical energy, which are used to make new body materials and to do work. The researchers discovered that the most metabolically active 25% of the mice studied, far from having shorter life-spans, in fact lived 36...Microbes found in Mayan ruins may deteriorate stone from inside out
...nto surface and interior portions, which were then broken down into tiny particles. They extracted DNA from the samples and identified and compared bacterial communities on the inside and outside surfaces of the stone. Photosynthetic microorganisms, mainly proteobacteria, were found to populate the surfac...Combination therapy dramatically improves function after spinal cord injury in rats
...ug called rolipram, which prevents cAMP from being broken down. Treatment with the triple-combination therapy preserved and even elevated cAMP levels in nerve cells after injury. It also preserved many of the myelinated nerve fibers in treated animals, compared to untreated rats and those that did not re...