activation

Viral DNA sequence a possible trigger for breast cancer

...sually found in immune cells and helps trigger the activation and proliferation of the cells. These sequences have also been found in proteins from some other cancer-causing viruses such as Epstein Barr virus and Kaposi's sarcoma virus, but what role this sequence plays in cancer development has remained unexpl...

Man and mouse share genome structures

... for specific developmental programs. This global activation may have implications for understanding mechanisms behind certain cancers, Bernstein believes. For example, proteins that place methyl groups on histones can, when mutated, cause leukemia. Bernstein hopes to apply the new technology to characterize c...

Researchers discover way to make cells in the eye sensitive to light

...authors, comments: "It is quiteremarkable that the activation of a single gene can create a functionalphotoreceptor. It is an important proof of principle that melanopsincan make non-light sensitive cells receptive to light, and although nota cure, could have applications in treating some forms of blindness."Dr...

Bound for destruction: Ubiquitination protects against improper Notch signaling

...n,loosing it into the cytoplasm and triggering the activation oftranscription factors within the cell’s nucleus. In addition to itseffects on wing structure in flies, Notch signaling is known to beimportant in a number of neural cell fate determination anddevelopmental processes, and is conserved in species fro...

An HIV Protein Plays a Surprising Role in Gene Activation

...ncoded in the HIV genome, is required for HIV gene activation and viral replication. It affects these processes, the current model holds, by stimulating transcript elongation and increasing RNA polymerase's processing efficiency. In a new study, Tamal Raha, Grace Cheng, and Michael Green work with human cell li...

Enzyme shown to help protect genomic stability

...s. Enzymatic modifications to histones control DNA activation or silencing through the addition or removal of ac...n histones where ubiquitin is associated with gene activation and to maintain low levels of the ubiquitin molecule at those sites. Interestingly, Ubp10 appears t...

In the sea slug's defense against lobsters, confusion is key

...viors stimulated by the slug's secretions resemble activation of a feeding pathway, the researchers named this novel chemical defense "phagomimicry." The stickiness of the slug's secretions appears to contribute to long-lasting effects on the target despite the aqueous environment, enhancing the effectiveness o...

Researchers identify target for cancer drugs

...ion of cell division and survival. Abnormally high activation of Akt has long been implicated in a variety of ca...t on discovering an important missing piece of the activation process. This missing component, a molecule called mTOR, is a protein that influences a cell's abil...

Nanogen Issued Patent for Electronic Microarray With Memory

...s data management efficiency by tracking test site activation and array usage directly on the electronic microarray cartridge. "This addition to our growing intellectual property portfolio illustrates our ability to develop differentiated advanced diagnostic products that add value to the company and to resear...

Scientists identify genetic pathways essential to RNA interference

...ebsite at http://www.sciencexpress.org. "The gene activation produced by RNAi is exquisitely specific, which gives it enormous potential for therapeutic application," says Gary Ruvkun, PhD, of the MGH Department of Molecular Biology, the study's senior author. "Imagine short, double-stranded RNA molecules that...

New insight into people who 'see' colors in letters and numbers

...ging (fMRI) of their brains reveals that they show activation of color-perception areas. The researchers said t...earchers found that the synesthetes showed greater activation in a color-perception region of the cortex when viewing graphemes, compared to normal control subjec...

How an AIDS-Related Cancer Unleashes Inflammation

... machinery is able to synthesize, said Ganem. The activation of MK2 also increases production of blood-vessel-f...ngiogenic factors, including the protein VEGF. The activation of angiogenesis pathways by kaposin B fits with observations made in patients with KS, Ganem noted. ...

Effective Cancer Treatments Follow The Clock

...ffect might be due to differences in the metabolic activation of the anti-cancer drug, but found essentially none. “This was a real surprise, because some of the enzymes involved in activating CY in the liver show circadian rhythms,?said Takahashi. “We thought that the liver might be activating the drug more st...

Scientists identify molecule that regulates well-known tumor suppressor

...ased PKB/Akt activity, while increased DJ-1 led to activation of PKB/Akt and enhanced cell survival. In cancer cells from breast cancer patients, elevated PKB/Akt activity and reduced PTEN expression were associated with elevated DJ-1levels. DJ-1 levels were increased in cells from lung cancer patients, and DJ-...

Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive

...nts looked at a photo of his/her beloved, specific activation occurred in the right ventral tegmental area (VTA)...covery, Brown said, was that "to our surprise, the activation regions associated with intense romantic love were mostly on the right side of the brain, while the ...

Scientists identify genetic pathways essential to RNA interference

...ebsite at http://www.sciencexpress.org. "The gene activation produced by RNAi is exquisitely specific, which gives it enormous potential for therapeutic application," says Gary Ruvkun, PhD, of the MGH Department of Molecular Biology, the study's senior author. "Imagine short, double-stranded RNA molecules that...

Decoding the logic of olfaction

...mical structures showed highly similar patterns of activation in the cortex. "This finding gives a hint that there is some logic to the way that information is being mapped onto the cortex," said Buck. "We don't know what that logic is, but it seems as if it has something to do with the molecular features of th...

Genpathway and Baylor College of Medicine Identify New Genes in Breast Cancer

...mical structures showed highly similar patterns of activation in the cortex. "This finding gives a hint that there is some logic to the way that information is being mapped onto the cortex," said Buck. "We don't know what that logic is, but it seems as if it has something to do with the molecular features of th...

Mouse gene shows new mechanism behind cardiac infarction in man

...r a protein called OX40L, which is involved in the activation of immunological T cells. These cells, in turn, play an important role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and of a number of chronic inflammatory diseases. The new finding will spur further research into the relationship between the protein and c...

Biochemists report discovery of structure of major piece of telomerase; implications for cancer

...itely. Although it is not known whether telomerase activation is just a marker for cancer cells or involved in causing it, telomerase is an attractive target for development of anti-cancer drugs by pharmaceutical companies. The research, which was federally funded by the National Science Foundation and the Nat...

Migratory songbirds have a specialized night-vision brain area

...rmore, non-migratory songbirds did not show strong activation in the Cluster N even under moonlight conditions. To determine whether the brain cluster is really specialized for night-vision, the researchers performed the same gene expression analysis on the night-migratory songbird species with the birds' eyes...

NSAID drug protects against intestinal tumors in mice, despite poor diet and gene losses

...ow in calcium and vitamin D. "It appears that p21 activation through sulindac offers protection against both a lack of tumor suppressor genes as well as poor diet," says the lead author, WanCai Yang, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine. While the drug is a NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) and ...

Activation of thermoreceptors mediates raw garlic's burning pungency

...rushed garlic, as the chemical responsible for the activation of TRPV1 and TRPA1 and as the likely key chemical component responsible for garlic's pungency. Allicin is converted to a variety of more stable sulfide compounds over time or with heating, in correspondence with the significantly milder taste of roas...

Gladstone investigators discover how resting T cells avoid HIV infection

... additional T cells. The new study shows that this activation process dismantles the highly effective A3G antiviral shield, making these cells highly susceptible to HIV infection. Greene's group is now looking at ways to use this new knowledge therapeutically. One approach would involve converting the ineffect...

Mouse with designer liver has enhanced glucose tolerance, insulin response

...nd elevated activity of IRS proteins. There was no activation of another enzyme, Erk, which is elevated in normal liver in reaction to insulin stimulation. Dr. Feng concluded that the function of Gab1 in normal liver cells is to promote signaling in the Erk pathway, which reduces insulin response signals flowin...

Structure-building cell signals also may influence learning and memory

...e balance has to be optimal, since too much memory activation can also be a problem," said Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi's team, which worked on this project for more than two years, had suspected that ephrins played some important part in nerve cell synapse function. Previous studies had shown that animals injected wi...

'Smart drug' targets deadly brain cancer

...espond well to the drug shared a common feature -- activation of a specific tumor protein, p70s6 kinase, which is closely associated with the drug target molecule. Knowing that this protein is a key player in the chain of events that determines drug activity could be useful in screening patients to help determ...

Remote control flies? Fly behavior controlled by laser light

...ually worked, it wasn't clear how we could measure activation in the neurons in moving, freely behaving organisms," he explains. The breakthrough, he says, came when they decided to target a small set of nerve cells in the fly called the giant fiber system. The giant fiber system controls very specific, stereo...

While on trail of dioxin, scientists pinpoint cancer target of green tea

...pping the cascade of events that would lead to the activation of several harmful genes. This weekend Palermo is receiving the Wallace Fenn Award, named after a long-time physiology professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. The award is given at graduation each year to a student...

B cells are required for development of epithelial cancer associated with chronic inflammation

...gether, these data indicate that peripheral B cell activation is an essential step for early epithelial neoplast... "Pharmacological interventions attenuating B cell activation or blocking B cell-mediated recruitment of innate immune cells may be effective in preventing premal...

Discovery of New Dopamine Action May Yield Alternative Psychiatric Drugs

... an alternative pathway by which dopamine receptor activation leads to the expression of dopamine-associated behaviors." The findings reveal another mechanism that could be targeted for the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, the researchers said. Further work is required to identify w...

Natural tumor suppressor in body discovered by UCSD medical researchers

...discovered a molecule called PTEN*, which prevents activation of Akt, no one to date had determined how to directly turn off Akt once it has been activated. Since the Akt molecule is locked in the "on" position when it has phosphate on it, the UCSD team reasoned that there must be another molecule that will st...

Cancer related gene p53 not regulated as indicated by previous tissue culture research

...rt their biological effects on tumor cells through activation of the p53 pathway. Having an accurate view of how p53 is regulated will allow the development of specific drugs that unleash the killing power of p53 by interfering with its negative regulators. Our cells are vulnerable to DNA breaks caused by UV l...

UCR chemist part of team identifying new areas of gene regulation

... play a fundamental role in the regulation of gene activation and repression. The key findings of the current p...at the core of the histone is associated with gene activation by attracting the protein string known as the SWI/SNI chromatin remodeling complex to the location o...

Montreal researchers probe the genetic basis of memory

...to long-term memory in the brain requires both the activation of molecules that facilitate memory storage, and the silencing of proteins such as GCN2 that inhibit memory storage." Although research on humans is still a distant possibility, the scientists believe their discovery may hold promise in the treatmen...

New insight into autoimmune disease: Bacterial infections promote recognition of self-glycolipids

...erent mechanism where bacterial infections promote activation of T cells that recognize molecules called glycosp...important mechanism leading to autoreactive T cell activation and, possibly, participates in the pathogenesis of some autoimmune diseases, such as MS and GBS, in ...

A protein in the eye may prevent immune response and protect eyes from disease

...e spleen suggests that F4/80 expression and immune activation may be mutually exclusive. According to Stein-Streilein, the next steps for the group will be to tease out exactly how the protein accomplishes its goal. Ultimately knowledge of the F4/80 protein and its role in immune regulation may lead to novel t...

Gene expands malaria's invasion options

...ar for cell entry. These results suggested that activation of the PfRh4 gene was required for the parasite ... on cells with the sugar - further suggesting that activation of the PfRh4 gene is required for switching from sialic acid-dependent to - independent invasion. ...

Spiders help scientists discover how muscles relax

...ecular basis of muscle relaxation, and perhaps its activation too. "We have solved the structure of the array of miniature motors that form our muscles and found out how they are switched off," said Raul Padron, a HHMI international research scholar in the Department of Structural Biology at the Venezuelan In...

Deep sleep short-circuits brain's grid of connectivity

...c stimulation - that permits precise, non-invasive activation of small regions of the brain. Subjects are also equipped with a cap of electrodes to monitor the brain's electrical activity so that the cell signals elicited by the quick bursts of electricity can be tracked. In subjects who are awake, the pulses ...

Frog peptides block HIV in lab study

...c stimulation - that permits precise, non-invasive activation of small regions of the brain. Subjects are also equipped with a cap of electrodes to monitor the brain's electrical activity so that the cell signals elicited by the quick bursts of electricity can be tracked. In subjects who are awake, the pulses ...

Thinking the pain away? Study shows the brain's painkillers may cause 'placebo effect'

... All of the participants showed an increase in the activation of their mu opioid endorphin system after they wer...tions, they also observed that the placebo-induced activation of the opioid system was correlated with various elements of the experience of pain. For example, ...

Nicotine triggers the same brain reward circuitry as opiates

...ote Blendy and her colleagues. They wrote that the activation of CREB "is evident not only after acute and repeated nicotine administration, but also following exposure to an environment in which the animal has previously received nicotine." The researchers noted that clinical studies of opioid receptor blocke...

A new molecule discovered in the battle between plants and disease

...oAtPep1 gene in Arabidopsis induced a constitutive activation of PDF1.2, PR-1, and tyrosine amino transferase (TAT3) genes, but not the expression of LOX2 or VSP2 genes. The transgenic plants were more resistant toward the oomycete root pathogen Pythium irregulare than wild-type plants, evidenced by a more robu...

New lead reported in tumor angiogenesis

...othelial cells promotes tumor angiogenesis by MAPK activation of Notch signaling." The article was published in the July issue of Cancer Cell, and its authors are: Qinghua Zeng, Shenglin Li, Douglas B. Chepeha, Jong Li, Honglai Zhang, Peter J. Polverini, Jacques Nor, Jan Kitajewski, and Cun-Yu Wang. ...

Treatments have same target, different responses for lung cancer patients with genetic mutation

...ess EGFR. Cetuximab targets EGFR by preventing its activation by extracellular signals, or signals occurring outside of the cell, as opposed to the intra-cellular signal blocking of drugs like gefitinib. The researchers treated seven different NSCLC cell lines with cetuximab or gefitinib, and compared the dr...

Newfound roadblock to interferon effectiveness against malignant melanoma

...too much STAT5 activity to begin with, the further activation of STAT5 function by interferon induces a mechanism that blocks the ability of the drug to effectively inhibit growth. Confirming this initial finding, the researchers found that when they inhibited STAT5 in interferon-resistant melanoma cells, they...

UCSD study clarifies insulin's role in blocking release of energy in patients with type II diabetes

...n --, the main energy storage hormone, is to block activation of the protein kinase A (PKA) enzyme. After a meal...ter. When energy is needed, catecholamine triggers activation of PKA, and energy is released. But in people with Type II diabetes, the hormonal balance has been t...

Visceral Leishmaniasis: Successful Vaccine Trial In Dogs

...at the effectiveness of the vaccine stems from the activation of certain cells of the immune system, the T lymphocytes of type Th1. These induce the infected macrophages to produce nitric oxide, highly toxic for cells. This process, which did not occur in the untreated dogs, thus enables macrophages to get rid ...

Newly Discovered Role for Heart Response Enzyme May Yield Better Heart Failure Therapy

..., a process called phosphorylation. By preventing activation of tropomyosin by PI(3)K in cells, the researchers prevented heart receptors from leaving the cell surface, thereby blocking the initial step that occurs during heart failure. Also, the researchers reported, when they eliminated tropomyosin activity ...

Scientists uncover new clues about brain function in human behavior

...te the amygdala. The fMRI showed considerably less activation of the amygdala in participants with Williams Syndrome than in the healthy volunteers (see graphic below). These findings suggest that reduced danger signaling by the amygdala in response to social stimuli might be responsible for their fearlessness ...

Opiate cocktail may spare cells from morphine's dark side

... morphine with the methadone mixture prevented the activation of cellular signaling pathways associated with morphine tolerance and dependence. They also showed, perhaps most importantly, that whereas rats receiving only morphine develop tolerance to the drug, those rats receiving the morphine/methadone cocktai...

Study charts origins of fear

...elopment of fear. Previous research had pointed to activation in the hippocampus, an area buried in the forebrain that regulates emotion and memory, as the origin of fear memory. "This is critical as it changes how and where scientists thought fear was developed," says Zhuo, the EJLB-CIHR Michael Smith Chair ...

Enzyme affects hypertension by controlling salt levels in body

...r enzyme, SGK1, which is well known to lead to the activation of sodium ion channels in kidney cells. "The kidney plays a very important role in controlling blood pressure by controlling how much sodium gets reabsorbed back into the kidney and the blood," said Dr. Chou-Long Huang, associate professor of intern...

Israeli scientists successfully transplant frozen-thawed ovaries in sheep

...loped into 8-cell embryos. "We used parthenogenic activation as we had only a low number of oocytes and because IVF success in sheep depends on the quality of the ram's sperm. This way, we knew that the development of the embryo depended solely on the quality of the ooctye," said Dr Arav. Two years after tran...

Molecular trigger for Huntington's disease found

...tches on a host of other genes. This abnormal gene activation damages the cells' power plants, called the mitochondria, and kills brain cells. The researchers also speculated that disturbances in p53 may also play a role in some forms of Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's di...

Firefly protein lets researchers monitor molecule linked to cancer

...red IKK activity via changes in the levels of gene activation at the end of the pathway," he notes. "But those t...a-Worms D. Real-time imaging of ligand-induced IKK activation in intact cells and in living mice. Nature Methods, August 2005. Funding from the National Institute...

UNC scientists discover new role for protein as fundamental inhibitor of cell movement

...s lead author. "CIB1 plays a prominent role in the activation of PAK1 and potentially may be another important p...f tumor promoters, the GTPases Rac and Cdc42. CIB1 activation of PAK1, however, is different from these GTPases. "CIB1 activates PAK1 before Rac and Cdc42," said...

Tissue regeneration operates differently than expected

...T signalling pathway which also is involved in the activation of T-lymphocytes during immune response. From the findings presented by Thomas Braun and his collaborators some important consequences for the use of adult stem cells in possible therapeutic approaches could arise, since they contradict the predomin...

U-M scientists discover identifying markers for primitive blood-forming stem cells

...he SLAM family helped regulate the development and activation of white blood cells called lymphocytes, but no one knew they also were associated with hematopoietic stem cells. "SLAM is the first family of receptors whose patterns of gene expression can be used to precisely distinguish hematopoietic stem cells ...