Gene's discovery could help prevent a leading cause of blindness in the elderly
...ter understanding of how ARM occurs. An important clue to understanding the cause and mechanism of ARM was revealed through this discovery. PLEKHA1, like CFH, is involved in the cellular processes related to inflammation, which supports the hypothesis that damage caused by ARM is, in part, due to inflamm......s de Montral Draped in silk If a predator left a clue behind every time it went somewhere, prey might start to catch on. Apparently some insects have noticed that spiders frequently leave tell-tale trails of silk behind. Beetles, which could be a mighty hard catch for some spiders, avoid the presence ...Study yields insights into pathogenic fungiand beer
... almost immediately." This provides a significant clue into why fungal infections can often be so deadly. The immune system generally recognizes invaders by certain signatures on their outer coatings, such as protein conformations. However, if these fungal microbes can quickly change the shape of these p...Researchers find potential Celebrex target in lung cancer
...rse of therapy, Reckamp said, giving researchers a clue as to whether the drug will function in humans the way it has in cell and animal models. For more information on the study, call 310-825-5688. Dubinett said the clinical research study being conducted by Reckamp will begin to provide important infor...Deep-sea jelly uses glowing red lures to catch fish
...rved as lures for small deep sea fish. Their first clue lay in the siphonophore's behavior. Jellies that use bioluminescence for self defense tend to have lights distributed all around their body, which flash brightly when disturbed (the "burglar alarm effect"). In contrast, the Erenna siphonophores kept ......nd loss-of-function study of Wnt-7b will give us a clue which Wnt-7b would be an important pathobiological factor in rheumatoid arthritis," added Nakamura. Future studies will investigate the role of Wnt and its signaling partners in arthritic joint destruction. Further delineation of the Wnt signaling ...FSU meteorologists' work may lead to better tracking of hurricanes
... Zou and Wu's research is that ozone levels give a clue that a storm will develop before other methods do. The early spin of a tropical cyclone is weak and sometimes covered by clouds, and not easily detected by satellites that provide pictures of clouds. The ozone data gives scientists a "look beyond the...Difference in talking louder, talking over noise depends on verbal cues, internal targets
...cibels (dB) higher than comfortable (with a visual clue for judging the SPL), and finally with artificial noise piped in but no instructions on how loud to speak. A surprising thing happened. The average comfortable speech level was around 80dB, about the sound level of manual tools or a doorbell ringing...JCI table of contents June 1, 2005
...id=23738 PHYSIOLOGY Gitelman's syndrome gets a clue Thiazide diuretics are used to treat hypertension and they work be enhancing sodium excretion by inhibiting a protein in the kidney called NCC. Mutations in the gene that encodes the NCC protein cause a disease called Gitelman's Syndrome, which is ...Heart failure wall stress drops 38% with moderate thyroid hormone therapy
... modified it in a positive way. This is the first clue on what might be a novel therapeutic approach to heart failure because of the return to a more normal heart cell shape," according to A. Martin Gerdes, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of South Dakota. The study, entitled...New findings support a central role for NMDA receptors in learning and memory
...in the fruit fly, they have uncovered an important clue to the physiological mechanisms at work in learning and memory. The subject of the study was the so-called NMDA receptor--a neurotransmitter receptor possessing special properties that could make it especially useful in learning and memory. In parti...Glowing hearts shine light on heart disease
... with glowing green hearts have yielded the latest clue in the search for molecules involved in structural heart disease. Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators found that blocking the activity of a single protein, called CaM kinase, in the mouse heart protects against the damaging effects of ...Plants defy Mendel's inheritance laws, may prompt textbook changes
...ing should have shown the same mutation. The first clue that the classic inheritance rules didn't always apply was the discovery of normal flowers on some offspring of mutant plants. In the deformed parents, the flowers were fused into tight balls. But in the grandparents and 10 percent of the grandchildr...Newly-discovered class of genes determines and restricts stem cell fate
...pressed in a developing embryo. That was the first clue that we were on to something new." Epstein and colleagues report their findings in the February 24th issue of Nature. The scientists found that Pax3 plays dual and somewhat seemingly contradictory roles in adult stem cells: it directs them to becom...Signaling protein builds bigger, better bones in mice
... formation. Bennett discovered another important clue when she found that Wnt10b expression shuts down activity of a gene called PPAR-gamma, which is required for the development of adipocytes or fat cells. "It suggests that Wnt10b's role may be to block PPAR-gamma, shifting development from the adipocy...Brain region learns to anticipate risk, provides early warnings. suggests new study in Science
...t tell them that the white or blue cue offered any clue about their likelihood of making an error on any particular trial, but by the end of the session, some of them had begun to figure it out, at least on a subconscious level," Brown said. Even among those who remained relatively unaware of the blue cue...When does a mole become a melanoma?
...na-Farber Cancer Institute have found an important clue about the origins of the deadly skin cancer melanoma. Using black-and-white-striped zebrafish to model human melanoma, they showed that a specific mutation in a gene called BRAF is critical to the development of moles, and when combined with a separa...Research may speed development of new oral drugs for fertility treatments
...ceptor -- an insight that could provide a valuable clue to how FSH and other related hormones switch on signaling activity in the target cell. "This paper provides many quite specific hypotheses that we can now test as we work to understand the process of receptor activation," said Hendrickson. Thus, he s...Researchers tease out one critical role of tumor-suppressor gene
...id. Knowing how Rb functions in normal cells could clue scientists in to the gene's behavior as a tumor suppressor and why it mutates. It could also ultimately help scientists understand how other types of cancer progress. "Cancer cells are altered in so many different ways that it's hard to conduct contr...Chimpanzee brains are asymmetrical in key areas and their handedness reflects it
...y right-handed for manual gestures and throwing, a clue to the origins of more general right-hand dominance in both chimps and humans. This second study also confirms that handedness goes way back. Its findings, say the authors, "suggest that the neurobiological basis for handedness evolved as ear...