Zebrafish may offer researchers powerful new tool for studying innate immunity
... of innate immunity. By targeting the one gene and knocking it out, researchers may be able to eliminate innate immunity. They hope to use the zebrafish as a tool to better understand how innate immunity may ignite adaptive immune response and to investigate potential therapies for immune deficiencies in huma...Manipulation of epigenome turns off as many genes as it turns on
...ukemia. The researchers also tested the effects of knocking out of the cancer cell line either of two genes th...) that hook methyl groups onto the DNA, as well as knocking out both genes in the same cell. They compared these methyl-based mechanisms of gene regulation to a...Gene-altered mouse is model for rare autoimmune syndrome
DURHAM, N.C. -- By knocking out a single gene in mice, immunologists at Duke University Medical Center have mimicked a little-understood autoimmune disorder in humans. In the puzzling disorder, called Sjgren's syndrome, the person's tear and salivary glands are affected, causin...How receptors govern inflammatory pain
...A, would enhance AMPA permeability to calcium; and knocking out the other, called GluR-B, would reduce its permeability. Normally, the relative fraction of AMPA receptors with GluR-A or GluR-B on the surfaces of nerve cells would determine the cell's permeability to calcium. Importantly, the researchers found...MIT creates new model of cancer syndrome
...ors than do mice completely lacking p53. "By knocking out p53, the mice did not develop as many types of tumors as is typically seen with LFS," said Kenneth Olive, lead author of the paper and a graduate student in biology. "Therefore, it is important that we understand what it is about these sub...Suspect protein found to play protective role in chronic lung disease
...urnal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). Genetically knocking the protein out of a specialized strain of mouse that models chronic lung disease resulted in higher levels of inflammation, mucus, and tissue damage in the lungs as well as early death in the mice lacking the protein, researchers found. A separate ...Research identifies promising route for treating age-related hearing loss
...urther studies, Chen and his colleagues found that knocking out the Rb1 gene in cultured mature inner ear cells from mice triggered the cells to begin proliferating. "This experiment demonstrated that it was a direct effect of the Rb gene and not some indirect effect during development that controlled pro...Joslin scientists show knocking out two key signals will cause diabetes
...lities present in type 2 diabetes can be caused by knocking out two key signals in liver cells. Their findings in mice may someday lead to strategies in humans to boost these two different signals, providing a powerful new way to treat the different metabolic components present in the most common form of diab...Discovery clarifies role of peptide in biological clock
...e their timing. Some researchers had proposed that knocking out VIP or the receptor for it stopped the clock," Herzog said. "We've found that the biological clock is still running, but its internal synchrony is uncoordinated. This causes irregular patterns of sleep and wake, for example." The study ...Scientists discover that three overlapping signals in embryo help get the backbone right
...finding the most dramatic effect by simultaneously knocking out noggin, follistatin, and chordin. Harland noted that the signaling pathway they blocked is one of several developmental pathways proceeding at the same time in the embryo. While BMP antagonists allow the formation of the back and belly, another g...Researcher gets NSF grant to create mutant maize lines
...nly will allow researchers to study the effects of knocking out the function of single genes, one at a time, but also will create seeds for each mutation, or disrupted gene. The seeds will be made widely available to researchers. The new maize lines could one day lead to plants with tailor-made properties, s...Disabling gene defuses rheumatoid arthritis in mice
...ersity School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that knocking the gene out in mice prevented the development of ...to cancer and longevity. Last year Peng found that knocking out Foxj1 produced a lupus-like condition in mice. Foxj1 and Foxo3a are thought to play similar rol...Molecular trigger for Huntington's disease found
...HD protein. And in mice with the abnormal protein, knocking out p53 corrects behavioral abnormalities that the mice otherwise display. These behaviors include abnormal reflexes such as an inhibited startle response to loud noise, which is also present in human HD patients. "In summary, our study establishes a...Researchers identify gene's role in suppressing longevity
...the cells, and not some secondary effect caused by knocking out the gene early in development, the researchers...ffects of switching off SIRT1 in adult mice, since knocking the gene out completely causes abnormal development. Such studies would enable them to determine whe...K-State professors discover enzyme responsible for creation of a beetle's hard shell
...rocess. The K-State researchers have found that by knocking out an enzyme called laccase-2, cuticle tanning, the process of hardening and pigmentation, can be prevented in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. A paper, to be released this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, prese...Understanding Fragile X syndrome with the blink of an eye
...ng and the effects on neurons in the cerebellum of knocking out this gene. They found that mice lacking the gene showed deficits in a particular motor learning task known to be largely controlled by the cerebellum. In this "eyeblink conditioning" task, the mice were taught to associate a stimulus such as a to...Understanding IGF-1: Jefferson researcher sees drug potential in targeting enzyme
...armaceutical companies around the world still come knocking on Renato Baserga, M.D.,'s door. And for good reason. He has labored for years over trying to understand and detail the behavior of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) receptor, a protein which plays an important role in tumor growth. Several years...Sugar helps control cell division
...onto proteins and which enzymes take it off -- and knocking out or blocking these enzymes allowed the researchers to control whether proteins were sugar-laden or sugar-free. "Normally, the enzyme that adds the sugar to proteins is enriched at the hub of activity during cell division," notes Slawson. "When we ......t a protein -- in this case with a drug instead of knocking down the mRNA -- how other genes interact with that inhibition." Knowing the interactions a target gene participates in could also enable clinicians to predict the variability of effects of a drug among different people. Understanding such interacti...