Phosphate in Biological News

NIH stimulus funding supports Emory biomedical scientists

... for manipulating the immune system. Dietary phosphate and prostate cancer: The nutrient phosphate is an additive in products ranging from soft ... This project monitors the influence of dietary phosphate on a mouse model of prostate cancer. ...

New study reveals the protein that makes phosphate chains in yeast

... trades is polyphosphate, a long chain of phosphate molecules. Researchers at the European Molecular ... have known for a long time how bacteria make phosphate chains, but how the same process works in ... a 'tail' hanging into the cell, which removes a phosphate molecule from ATP, an important energy carrier in ...

CSHL-led team identifies key decision-point at which cells with broken DNA repair themselves or die

... decision points called gamma-H2A.X foci, has phosphate groups added to its structure at particular ... of protein --a kinase called WSTF -- attaches phosphate to critical site, a tyrosine residue, at the ... such as when the strand breaks in two the phosphate molecule placed at the decision point by WSTF has ...

Research could lead to new non-antibiotic drugs to counter hospital infections

... Lack of an adequate amount of the mineral phosphate can turn a common bacterium into a killer, ... operation or organ surgery, levels of inorganic phosphate fall. The authors of the PNAS paper, led by ... at the University of Chicago, hypothesized that phosphate depletion in the stressed intestinal tract ...

A crystal clear view of chalk formation

... nucleus. The researchers in Golm used calcium phosphate and calcium oxalate to test whether other ... also follow this crystallization pathway. Calcium phosphate is the main constituent of bones and teeth; ... with the other component - that is, carbonate, phosphate or oxalate ions. With a special electrode they ...

World fertilizer prices drop dramatically after soaring to all-time highs

... in mid-December. The price of diammonium phosphate (DAP) increased by five timesfrom $262 to $1,218 ... gasessential for nitrogen fertilizer production. phosphate prices were also driven up by a huge increase in ... of the popular DAP and other high-analysis phosphate fertilizers. The supply of ...

The medium is the message: Manipulating salmonella in spaceflight curtails infectiousness

... by Nickerson's team on earth have hinted that phosphate ions may be a principle component of the observed ... response pathways,and has been associated with phosphate regulation. Moreover, Hfq appears to be an ... How do the disparate variablesextracellular phosphate concentration, mechanical forces like fluid shear ...

Johns Hopkins researchers detect sweet cacophony while listening to cellular cross-talk

... is likely as influential and ubiquitous as its phosphate counterpart and, indeed, even plays a role in ... affects phosphorylation. Of 428 sites on which phosphate was being added to and taken off of proteins, all ... of O-GlcNAc causes the enzymes that add the phosphate to do something different, and this cross-talk ...

SEX4, starch and phosphorylation

... and phosphatases, that is, they place and remove phosphate groups on the starch molecules. Among these ... thought that GWD and PWD act in concert to place phosphate groups on starch molecules. The highly charged phosphate group may act as a wedge, disrupting the ...

Researchers discover critical detail of cellular defense against genetic mistakes

... during NMD is controlled the attachment of phosphate groups to human UPF1, researchers said. Human ... such that phosphorylation, the attachment of phosphate groups to proteins, is used in many scenarios ... The same step makes possible the attachment of phosphate groups to UPF1. Once phosphorylated, UPF1 ...

Common food additive found to increase risk and speed spread of lung cancer

... the tumors," Dr. Cho said. Dr. Cho noted that while a moderate level of phosphate plays an essential role in living organisms, the rapidly increasing use of ... Cho noted. "Therefore, the 0.5 percent intake level is actually a reduced phosphate diet by today's scale." Dr. Cho said future studies will help refine ...

Shared survival mechanism explains why 'good' nerve cells last and 'bad' cancer cells flourish

... pathway, or series of chemical reactions. This pathway the pentose phosphate biochemical pathway inhibits the activation of a key protein involved in ... (GSH), which is generated by glucose metabolism through the pentose phosphate pathway. Thus, both neurons and cancer cells are able to resist cell death ...

Master gene plays key role in blood sugar levels

... glucose circulating in the blood stream. Glucose stored in the liver has a phosphate molecular attached to it. This phosphorylated glucose cannot leave the liver until the enzyme removes the phosphate molecule. SRC-2 is critical to that removal process. If the sugar ...

UF researchers develop improved gene therapy agent

... called a hydroxyl group, which attracts phosphates in the cell. When a phosphate binds to the hydroxyl group, it sends a signal to the proteasome the ... of Medicine colleagues decided to test what would happen if they took the phosphate out of the equation. To do that, the researchers replaced tyrosine with ...

Fungi have a hand in depleted uranium's environmental fate

... can colonize depleted-uranium surfaces and transform the metal into uranyl phosphate minerals. While they probably still pose some threat, he said, The ... Ultimately, he said, the interaction of soluble forms of uranium with phosphate leads to the formation of the new uranium minerals that get deposited ...

Controlling for size may also prevent cancer

... more than one form, in this case two, one with and one without a chemical phosphate tag attached. Such tags can dramatically alter what proteins do in the ... engineered the cells to stop or slow growth, Yap in those cells has its phosphate attached and moves from the nucleusthe brain center of the cellinto the ...

Layered approach may yield stronger, more successful bone implants

... lead to improved reconstruction or repair of bones. Currently, calcium phosphate cements (CPCs)water-based pastes of powdered calcium and a phosphate compound that form hydroxyapatite, a material found in natural boneare ...

Grant supports LSUHSC research on how like cell receptor systems determine very different functions

... and Reinvestment Act and will be used to help retain key personnel needed to identify and characterize ERK phosphorylation targets proteins to which phosphate groups can be added, increasing or decreasing protein function specified by the scaffold. These phosphorylation targets are involved in the ...

Baylor researchers unravel mystery of DNA conformation

... the late Dr. Linus Pauling, who asked how the information encoded by the bases could be read if it is sequestered inside the DNA molecular with phosphate molecules on the outside. It's easy to explain when the cell divides because the double-stranded DNA also divides at the behest of a special ...

Protein can help cells or cause cancer, Purdue researcher finds

... approach to treating that cancer." During cell growth, Plk1 uses its protein kinase activity called phosphorylation, which consists of adding a phosphate group to a protein called Topors. Topors binds itself to p53 molecules during the ubiquitination process. Phosphorylation is basically an instruction ...

New piece found in the puzzle of epigenetics

... it is absolutely essential for the synthesis of snRNA that the amino acid serine at position 7 of this repeat sequence is provided with an additional phosphate group. If this is lacking, mRNA will be produced, but not any snRNA. The reason for that is presumably that this phosphorylation enables the ...

Two new studies on circadian rhythms

... oscillators that orchestrate activities through an elaborate network of interactive proteins and feedback loops. All clocks rely on transfer of phosphate groups, called phosphorylation, to clock proteins for setting the 24-hour cycle. Both studies looked at phosphorylation of the frequency (FRQ) ...

How an enzyme tells stem cells which way to divide

... Current Biology . Instead of a complex cascade of protein deactivation steps that many biologists have theorized, Prehoda said, aPKC strips phosphate off an energy-transfer nucleotide known as ATP and then attaches it to Miranda. This process forces Miranda away from aPKC and helps determine the ...

New hope for treatment of neurodegenerative disorder

... author Gennady Ermak, research associate professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Previous in-vitro research has revealed that adding the phosphate PO4, an inorganic chemical, to the mutant Huntington protein can protect against the mutant gene. This process is called phosphorylation, and can be ...

Burnham researchers present at 100th AACR Meeting

... Cancer and Genetic Deletion of FXRα Promotes Colon Tumorigenesis in ApcMin/+ Mice Adam Richardson, Ph.D., will present The Role of Pentose phosphate Pathway in the Warburg Effect. ...

2009 ASPB Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship award announcement

... Elena Shpak for her guidance and encouragement. CATEGORY B Hanwen Bai, Ohio Wesleyan University Mentor: Chris Wolverton The effects of phosphate availability on root architecture and gravity responsiveness in Arabidopsis I'm eager to carry out the work in my proposal and I'm very grateful to ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 8, 2009

... that this process involves phosphorylation. That common biological modification causes cellular activities to be turned "on" by the addition of phosphate molecules to certain amino acids within proteins. However, the specific biochemical details have been a deep mystery. Using laboratory mice, the ...

New method for detection of phosphoproteins reveals regulator of melanoma invasion

... with mutations in the gene encoding the protein kinase B-Raf. Kinases are proteins that regulate the function of other proteins by attaching a phosphate group to them. B-RAF mutations often lead to dysregulation of protein phosphorylation by the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase signaling ....

A paradigm shift in immune response regulation

... overall picture of this large puzzle has been gradually pieced together to show that modifications in the cell protein - including the addition of phosphate groups (phosphorylation) or the conjugation of small modifier ubiquitin (ubiquitination) - play a central role in controlling the immune system. ...

When fish farms are built along the coast, where does the waste go?

... and urinate by the tens of thousands, creating yet another unpleasant waste stream. The wastes can carry disease, causing damage directly. Or the phosphate and nitrates in the mix may feed an algae bloom that sucks the oxygen from the water, leaving it uninhabitable, a phenomenon long associated with ...

Tracking poultry litter phosphorus: Threat of accumulation?

... in soils, very little is known about the fate of phytate, a compound that is indigestible by poultry and abundant in poultry litter. With six phosphate groups per molecule phytate has the potential to be a significant player in non-point phosphorus pollution. As part of her doctoral dissertation ...

Sulfurous ping-pong in the urinary tract

... impulses. Transmission of signals occurs at an even more fundamental level between and within cells, including signaling molecules, which bear a phosphate or a sulfate group. The latter contain a sulfur atom. Since these processes are of supreme importance, they have been extensively studied and a ...

Columbia University scientist devises new way to more rapidly generate bone tissue

... of Dental Medicine. Dr. Mao and colleagues demonstrated that when human mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells were seeded in micropores of 3D calcium phosphate scaffolds, followed by infusion of gel-suspended CD34+ hematopoietic cells, greater vascularization was seen in mice than when mesenchymal cells were ...

Researchers create new class of fluorescent dyes to detect reactive oxygen species in vivo

... cells incubated with angiotensin II and hydro-Cy3 displayed intense intracellular fluorescence, whereas control cells incubated with hydro-Cy3 and phosphate buffer saline displayed significantly lower fluorescence. When they introduced TEMPOL, a molecule that intercepts the reactive oxygen species so that ...

GUMC researchers find gene function 'lost' in melanoma and glioblastoma

... or deactivating them, Waldman says. "In the absence of PTPRD, there are as yet unknown proteins floating around inside the cell with more phosphate residues than they should have, and it is a well known fact that the presence of these residues activates cellular growth pathways," he says. But it ...

Bacterial biofilms as fossil makers

... the bacteria must leave a permanent record. In the case of finely preserved fossil embryos, the bacteria likely excrete tiny crystals of calcium phosphate (CaPO 4 ), which eventually replace the bacterial sculptures. It is these crystals, Raff says, that provide the support for embryo and soft tissue ...

New way to make malaria medicine also first step in finding new antibiotics

... However, until now no one has done a systematic search for phosphonates in nature. Phosphonates work by disrupting biological pathways that use phosphate esters and organic acids. Each phosphonate disrupts a particular pathway. For example, FR900098 inhibits the pathway that creates isoprenoids, ...

Giant grass offers clues to growing corn in cooler climes, researchers report

... they compared the levels of these proteins in plants grown in warm and cold conditions, the researchers noticed that one of the proteins, pyruvate phosphate dikinase (PPDK), was present at much higher levels in the Miscanthus leaves grown at cool temperatures than in the leaves of either corn or ...

New master switch found in the brain that regulates appetite and reproduction

... gaining weight," Montminy says. Tweaking mutated and inefficient TORC genes may be possible through drug therapy, he adds. "TORC1 is regulated by phosphate handling enzymes called kinases, and kinases often make for very good drug targets," Montminy says. ...

Key discovered to cold tolerance in corn

... that separate C4 from C3 plants. Each of these reactions is catalyzed by a protein or enzyme. The enzyme for one of these steps, Pyruvate phosphate Dikinase, or PPDK for short, is made up of two parts. At low temperature these parts have been observed to fall apart, differing from the other three ...