NIH awards new $14.5 million, five-year grant to the Scripps Research Institute
...ter tools for producing certain types of proteins, particularly for membrane proteins," says Scripps Research Professor Raymond Stevens, Ph.D., who is the principal investigator on the new grant. Stevens has spent the better part of the last decade developing high-throughput structural biology tools. He has fo...Penn receives grant for initiative to help understand genes' effects on medications
... deliverable benefits to patients. This problem is particularly relevant in our understanding of the influence that genes have on the response to medications. This award will expand the range of study into an exceedingly important biomedical problem and that also raises the prospects of improving the public's hea...Fungus knocks a frog down but not out, raising questions about amphibian declines
...merging diseases as major causes. Among these, one particularly mysterious new pathogen, the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis appears to be especially lethal, having been implicated in massive declines and waves of extinction in Central America and Eastern Australia. A report published today in th...New genetic tools provide clues to the effects of exercise and diet on obesity, diabetes
...nzyme in regulation of cellular energy metabolism, particularly skeletal muscle, was highly expressed in obese and morbidly obese women relative to lean control subjects. Total muscle AK1 activity also increased 1.9-fold in obese and 2-fold in morbidly obese women. "Surprisingly," Hittel noted, "total activity of...New method identifies chromosome changes in malignant cells
...cations very accurately." The new method could be particularly important for cancer research because it gives scientists a clearer idea of what is really going wrong in tumors and thus points to possible treatments. The researchers already used their system to identify previously unrecognized immune system genes...Acoustics meeting in San Diego
... They will review the biology of marine mammals, particularly their production, reception, and use of sound in monitoring their environment, social interactions, and natural sonar systems ("echolocation"). D'Spain and Wartzok will also discuss the extensive gaps in existing knowledge and will discuss areas of n...Study in Royal Society journals presents evidence for inherited factors in homosexuality
...er-present danger of being evicted from the group, particularly when helpers and breeders are of similar size. We show in a controlled laboratory experiment that helpers reduce this risk of eviction by maintaining a 'safe size difference' with the breeders: they grow slowly when helping small-sized breeders and g...UNC scientists identify sticky protein in sickle cell red blood cells
... "Even though sickle cell patients are particularly vulnerable to blocked blood vessels, the signaling mechanisms identified in sickle reticulocytes seem to be present in reticulocytes found in other anemic patients as well," said Brittain. "Our current thinking is that these results may benefit patie...Channel protein converts vibrations to electrical signal
...t the unidentified hair cell channel. TRPA1 was a particularly good candidate within this family, Corey said, because it has an architecture similar to a TRP channel that is mechanosensory in the fruit fly a molecule known as NOMPC, identified by HHMI investigator Charles S. Zuker. In other parts of the nervous...Laboratory test of evolutionary theory confirms importance of links between populations
...fluences evolutionary change in those populations, particularly with respect to coevolutionary interactions between species. This is an important issue in understanding the long-term effects of the increasing fragmentation of natural habitats due to human activities. Many ecologists believe that fragmentation of...Experimental drug prevents vaginal simian HIV transmission in monkeys Science study says
...revention strategy that women can control. This is particularly important in settings where men won't necessarily use condoms," Lederman said. Moving from a candidate molecule to a topical agent that effectively prevents sexual transmission of HIV will require resolving many difficult issues. The required drug do...Muscling in on a deadly cancer
...ntists took early but significant steps to fight a particularly deadly childhood muscle cancer by identifying some of the genetic events that cause the disease and then engineering mice that develop the tumors. The genetic events might be targets for new drugs that could be tested on the mice. The disease, name...Identifying genes that contribute to a low level of response to alcohol
... contribute to the risk of developing alcoholism, particularly disinhibition, alcohol metabolizing patterns, and ... (LR) to alcohol. A low LR to alcohol seems to be particularly relevant, with data indicating that LR relates to risk status, predicts future alcoholism, and has a...Hepatitis C virus linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
... risk group for developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, particularly diffuse b-cell lymphoma," said John Spinelli, a cancer researcher from the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, and principal investigator of the research study. The spread of hepatitis C in the United States has dropped significantly si...Excess dietary fat accelerates breast cancer by altering the activity of a group of genes
...l factors may be involved. Nutritional factors are particularly important, given people's continual exposure through dietary habits. Among them, dietary fats are the main element involved in breast cancer. Fats do not cause cancer, however some of them, such as animal fats or certain vegetable fats, accelerate th...Rutgers is on the 'NIH Roadmap'
...rocesses. The study of these molecular machines is particularly relevant to understanding many diseases, such as cancer and metabolic disorders. The virtual Computational Center for Biomolecular Complexes, a multicenter research initiative, is receiving a $1.85 million NIH Roadmap in funding to support this work....Combination hormone therapy doubles breast density and quadruples risk of abnormal mammograms
...ar across ethnic and racial groups. The impact was particularly pronounced among women in the highest age bracket; those between 70 and 79 experienced a nearly threefold increase in breast density as compared to younger women, presumably because their breast tissue was less dense to begin with, McTiernan said. "T...Consuming fruits and vegetables lowers risk of developing NHL
...less than one serving per day. The findings were particularly strong for one or more servings per day of green leafy vegetables and one half or more servings per day of vegetables from the broccoli and cabbage family (including cauliflower and Brussels sprouts). Lower risks were also found, although not sig...Mice thrive despite massive genetic makeover
...disposable? "In these studies, we were looking particularly for sequences that might not be essential," said Eddy Rubin, Director of the JGI, where the work was conducted. "Nonetheless we were surprised, given the magnitude of the information being deleted from the genome, by the complete lack of impact note...Large-scale forces shape local ocean life, global study shows
...more areas must be identified. "This is particularly true in the marine environment," he said. "We don't know much about source pools. We need a lot more research in this area." The project focused on invertebrate species found in shallow water, such as sponges, corals, mollusks, worms, barn...