Could mice hold the secret to longer life?
...ed to a shortened life-span. The present discovery turns this century old belief on its head and changes dramatically our understanding of the regulation of life-span. Metabolism is the means by which nutrients are broken down to smaller building blocks and chemical energy, which are used to make new body ...Cranberry breeding program may soon bear fruit for growers
... Lear, favored in Wisconsin because its fruit also turns red earlier in the season, and Early Black, which Zeldin calls the classic Massachusetts cranberry - were taken directly from wild cranberry bogs and cultivated. Even the variety Stevens, an easy-to-grow cultivar that constitutes an estimated 60 perc...Penguins ingest mollusk shells to obtain calcium for thicker eggshells
...o find or build a soft spot to lay her eggs. So it turns out that her eggs come with extra-thick shells to withstand being laid on hard surfaces and survive being kicked around during penguin fights. But it takes a lot of extra calcium to produce thicker shells, and a penguin can't just run to the corner d...Taxanes may enhance immunity in breast cancer patients
...similar treatments without taxanes a finding that turns conventional medical wisdom on its head. Researchers in the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute studied 227 women enrolled in a multi-year study examining the rela...New papillomavirus target could lead to specific antiviral drugs for precancerous cervical lesions
...n--the chromosomal tether--remained elusive. As it turns out, E2 is an incredible multitasker. The viral pr...he papillomavirus E2 proteins," said Howley. As it turns out, papillomaviruses are not the only viruses that have the task of maintaining and partitioning th...NCAR aircraft, ground instruments to track carbon dioxide uptake
...ide mountain forests remove from the air as spring turns into summer. NCAR scientists and their university colleagues are developing new methods for assessing carbon uptake over complex terrain on regional scales. Accurate assessments could help show to what extent carbon dioxide storage in Western mountai...Rewriting textbooks on DNA crossover
...and distinct from an early stage, Huntersaid. That turns the textbook account of meiosis on its head, hesaid. While researchers now have a better understanding of the process, howthe decision is made remains a mystery, Hunter said. "We're getting insights, but we're left with big questio...UF researcher: Animals think in their own way, but unlike humans
...tting covered with bat guano," Wynne said. "And it turns out that bats can remember who helped them in the past and are more likely to spit up some blood for a bat who previously helped them." Closer to home, cats and dogs completely differ in how they relate to their environment, particularly when it c...Biosensor-regulated gene therapy reduces heart attack damage in mice
...designed a kind of oxygen-sensitive biosensor that turns on protective genes when signs of oxygen deprivation indicate a heart attack and turns the genes off once blood flow restores adequate oxygen levels to the heart. Dr. Phillips, principal...Can you tell the difference between Quarks and DNA?
...ow many quarks in an atom? Discovery of pentaquark turns existing theory on its head Death by quantum tunnelling? Liverpool team to boost ability of hospital positron emission tomography (PET) scanners Making nuclear power safe through alchemy: the transmutation of nuclear waste products Making the heavies...Fat hormone leptin alters brain architecture and activity, which in turn drives feeding behavior
...as true when it came to feeding behavior. "Feeding turns out to be a really good model to test plasticity because it's much simpler to study than the system that controls learning or memory," said Pinto. For her research, Pinto used a famous mouse strain that resembles obesity in some humans. These mice l...Scientists discover why not enough choline results in fewer brain cells, poorer memory
...ep cells from dividing until a biochemical message turns the genes off, he said. They found exactly what th...y, we've discovered that the diet during pregnancy turns on or turns off division of stem cells that form the memory areas of the brain. Once you have change...'Male-killer' bacterium's genome is deciphered
...ical, but if the host is male, the infection often turns out badly. The reason is the Wolbachia are transmitted through females, and to increase the chances of being passed on from one generation to the next, the bacterium has developed a number of strategies to rid the population of males, or even to con...Memories are harder to forget than currently thought
...eories of memory state that the act of remembering turns a stored memory into something malleable that then needs to be re-encoded," said K. Matthew Lattal, a postdoctoral researcher in Penn's Department of Biology and a co-author of the study. "We show that the act of retrieving an old memory and then pu...New approach limits damage after heart attack and improves survival, say Scripps Research scientists
...to the damaging effects of a heart attack. Src, it turns out, is necessary for breaking the cadherin junctions in response to VEGF. In fact, these mice lacking Src were protected against the edema that followed a heart attack. This led Cheresh and his colleagues to speculate that treating normal mice wit...Study suggests possible way to repair damaged nerve cells
...stead of sending information to the cell body, p75 turns into a receptor that kills the cell but only in the presence of proNGF. proNGF is a precursor to nerve growth factor (NGF), a molecule that stimulates the growth and survival of certain nerve cells. Normally, proNGF produced inside the cell is br...Gene variants may increase susceptibility to type 2 diabetes
... the expression of hundreds of other genes. HNF4A turns genes on and off in many tissues, including the liver and pancreas. In the beta cells of the pancreas, it influences the secretion of insulin in response to glucose. "It's a nice coalescence of findings," said Dr. Francis S. Collins, Director of th...UT Southwestern researchers identify gene as essential for vascular smooth muscle development
...opment, a protein called myocardin. This regulator turns on smooth muscle genes by interacting with serum response factor (SRF), a widely expressed protein that binds DNA. In the Nature study, Dr. Olson and his colleagues showed that the ability of myocardin to turn on smooth muscle genes is counteracted b...Educational program increases some safety behaviors for older drivers
...ather, and seeking out routes in which three right turns could substitute for one left turn. Drivers were encouraged to identify strategies that could realistically be incorporated into their own routine driving. Before the session ended participants set goals in a personal written contract that listed w......he act of making a big step." This big step also turns out to be a new way of making molecular bolts called disulfide bonds, which are of particular interest to the biotechnology industry. Disulfide bonds are stiffening struts in proteins that also help the proteins fold into their proper, functional, th...