An international collaboration of researchers including Felicia Goodrum of the University of Arizona's immunobiology department has studied how a human herpes virus carried by the majority of the population packages its genetic information during infection. The discoveries improve the chances of...
Pyrazinamide (PZA) - a frontline tuberculosis (TB) drug - kills dormant persister bacteria and plays a critical role in shortening TB therapy. PZA is used for treating both drug susceptible and multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) but resistance to PZA occurs frequently and can compromise treatment...
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified key triggers of an important cancer-blocking mechanism in cells. Termed "oncogene-induced senescence," this mechanism can block most cancer types, and is commonly experienced when incipient skin cancers turn instead into...
The feared Legionella pneumophila bacteria is responsible for legionellosis, an infectious disease that can lead to pneumonia. In order to infect us, this pathogen has developed a complex method enabling it to camouflage itself and go unnoticed in our cells, thus avoiding these acting against...
Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the journal...
...often hits with a pitch the next? batter after someone has hit a home run on him. 10 points for correct answer
A- repression B- projection C- regression D- reaction formation E- displacement F- sublimation
It takes a lot to make a memory. New proteins have to be synthesized, neuron structures altered. While some of these memory-building mechanisms are known, many are not. Some recent studies have indicated that a unique group of molecules called microRNAs, known to control production of proteins...
More than a century after it was first identified, Harvard scientists are shedding new light on a little-understood neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. As described in a December 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, Professor of...
Most people are impressed by how a toad jumps. UC Irvine biologist Emanuel Azizi is more impressed by how one lands. An assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology who specializes in muscle physiology and biomechanics, Azizi found that nature's favorite leapers possess a neuromuscular...
Approximately 68 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to the National Cancer Institute, which puts them at greater risk for developing cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and a host of other chronic illnesses. But an international team of scientists led by Virginia...
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have defined for the first time a key underlying process implicated in multiple sclerosis (MS) - a disease that causes progressive and irreversible damage to nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. This discovery offers new hope for the millions who...
New understanding of how drugs called PARP inhibitors, which have already shown promise for the treatment of women with familial breast and ovarian cancers linked to BRCA mutations, exert their anticancer effects has led to the identification of ways in which the patient population that might...
PNAS: Proteins bring tension to the phosphate chain Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists at...
The rare disorder Wolfram syndrome is caused by mutations in a single gene, but its effects on the body are far reaching. The disease leads to diabetes, hearing and vision loss, nerve cell damage that causes motor difficulties, and early death. Now, researchers at Washington University School of...
Yona Goldshmit, Ph.D., is a former physical therapist who worked in rehabilitation centers with spinal cord injury patients for many years before deciding to switch her focus to the underlying science. "After a few years in the clinic, I realized that we don't really know what's going on," she...
Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have gained insight into the mechanism by which a pathological brain protein called tau contributes to the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. This finding, published in the most recent issue of the Journal...
Like a police officer calling for backup while also keeping a strong hold on a suspected criminal, immune cells in the brain take a two-tier approach to fighting off a threat, new research from the University of Michigan Health System finds. For the first time, the scientists managed to capture...
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a molecular pathway that controls the retention and release of the brain's stem cells. The discovery offers new insights into normal and abnormal neurologic development and could eventually lead to regenerative therapies...
As an undergraduate research assistant in the lab of the famous Dr. S. Nameerf, your duties involve measuring water potential in experimental soil-plant-atmosphere systems. Assume you make a series of measurements in a system under normal daylight conditions, with stomata open and photosynthesis...