Scientists find impaired chromatin structure formation & imprinted gene involvement in Rett Syndrome
...g the architecture of this slinky is chromatin. In order for genes along the slinky to be expressed they must be accessible to certain enzymes, and therefore that section of the slinky must be stretched out. Tightly compacted sections are silent because the genes cannot be accessed. In normal mice, they fo...Body's biological clock found to affect cardiac rhythm patterns in healthy adults
...d that this self-similar structure in the temporal order of heartbeat fluctuations changes with certain behaviors, such as sleep or wake, rest or exercise," explains Ivanov. "Based on these observations, we hypothesized that these dynamic patterns will also change with circadian rhythm. This provided the...Weizmann Insitute scientists show how proteins beat the evolutionary stakes
Evolution is something of a gamble: in order to stay a step ahead of a shifting environment, organisms must change or risk extinction. Yet the instrument of this change, mutation, carries a serious threat: mutations are hundreds of times more likely to be harmful to the organism than advantageo...Immune system contributes to evolution of a new fluorescent protein
...u then have to grow it up and pull the gene out in order to do any further mutation cycles. So, you're constantly putting the gene in to find out its properties and pulling it out to make more changes. It's extremely tedious and time-consuming, and the size of the library of mutant genes is limited by the ...'Jumping gene' helps explain immune system's abilities
...select sections of certain genetic instructions in order to make instructions for a protein that will recognize a particular antigen. Machinery snips out unwanted genetic sections and reconnects the leftover ones, creating a unique gene (the cellular equivalent of the diner's meal). Snipping out different ...ESA's Huygens begins its final journey into the unknown
...elease, a triply-redundant timer was programmed in order to wake-up the probe's systems shortly before arri...ill reorient its main antenna dish toward Earth in order to play back the data collected by Huygens, which will be received by NASA's 70-m diameter antenna i...JCI table of contents, 3 January 2005
...urvive and for that survival to be long lasting in order to render this approach as a useful therapy in hum...stimulate HIV-1 activation from resting T cells in order to deplete pools of HIV-1infected cells. The authors show that a distinct viral species is activated......stimulate HIV-1 activation from resting T cells in order to deplete pools of HIV-1infected cells. The authors show that a distinct viral species is activated by IL-7, and suggest that different molecules may deplete only a specific proportion of the latent HIV-1 population in individuals on HAART. IL-7 cou...Transplantation of monkey embryonic stem cells reverses Parkinson disease in primates
...urvive and for that survival to be long lasting in order to render this approach as a useful therapy in humans. Langston highlights that "clearly the study reported here will advance research aimed at validating the use of stem cells to treat neurodegenerative disease" and this is most welcome particularl......d this is why the metastasis regenerates. Thus, in order to obtain beneficial effects using IL-2, the gluta...us cells while leaving the healthy cells alone. In order to achieve this target it was essential to find the most suitable dosage for the administering of al...Protein transformation gives new twist to medical research
...protein reshaped itself into a molecular Pacman in order to free new viruses from the inside of a bacterial cell. It's the sort of thing where your graduate student tells you the results of an experiment and you say, 'You must have made a mistake,' said Dr. Ryland Young, Texas Agricultural Experiment St...No blind mice, thanks to UF scientists
...f retina that are not needed for precise vision in order to improve oxygen delivery to the parts of the retina that are needed for detailed vision. Intraocular delivery of agents that block SDF-1 represent an excellent and less destructive alternative." The research sheds light on the mechanisms of diabeti...Don't count on vitamin C to boost your exercise performance
...lowers even older persons' oxidative stress. So in order to set the stage for the greatest possible effect, "we used sedentary older people because we wanted the highest level of oxidative stress as possible. But they were still healthy," Bell noted, and some earlier studies had "suggested that antioxidant...New method simplifies search for genetic changes associated with disease
...in a particular region of the human genome can now order the BAC of that region from the genome project and use Lovett's procedure to modify the BAC with biochemical hooks, making it possible to fish out the corresponding region from a patient's DNA for sequencing. Lovett also developed modifications to th...Researchers tease out one critical role of tumor-suppressor gene
...fore couldn't bind to immature red blood cells. In order to test this idea, the researchers created a mix of embryonic liver cells some had the Rb gene, while others did not. Interestingly, the red blood cells from the embryos that lacked Rb immediately bound themselves to the Rb-containing macrophages. "...FDA approves ABRAXANE(TM) for metastatic breast cancer
... Cremophor-EL to put the compound into solution in order to administer it intravenously to the patient. In patients, Cremophor is known to cause life-threatening allergic reactions despite premedication and lowering of the white blood cell count (neutropenia). In animals, Cremophor has also been shown to...Can plant research lead to new insights in cancer research?
...oning further with a partner in cancer research in order to better understand the factors that underlie cancer....Research turning up the heat on fowl bacteria
...disease: that bacteria regulate their own genes in order to cause whatever disease process they cause," says Dr. Thompson. "Bacteria exploit their hosts to live." And the human body is ripe for picking. "Think about it, inside human cells are tons of goodies, all kinds of sugars and other elements. If bact...Found: Missing sequence of the human Y chromosome
...e culmination of a 13-year effort to elucidate the order and orientation of 2.85 billion basepairs that comprise the human genome. The high-quality sequence spanned more than 99% of the euchromatic (gene-containing) portion of the genome with an accuracy of 99.999%, but despite this accomplishment, substa......utations lead to neurodegeneration and disease, in order to design novel therapeutic and preventive strategies. "From the genetic standpoint, the presence of the same mutation associated with the disease in patients from several different populations is intriguing. This raises the question of whether the m...