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Tag: "acting" at biology news

UC Davis study finds HIV hiding from drugs in gut, preventing immune recovery

...ons," Dandekar said. "In these patients the gut is acting as a viral reservoir that keeps us from ridding patients of the virus." Physicians treating HIV-infected patients have long relied on blood measurements of viral load and T-cell counts when choosing a course of treatment. Viral load is the number ...

Flick of a protein switches immune response

...ends on the combination of "transcription factors" acting on it. Transcription factors help to translate a gene's instructions into actual proteins. FOXP3 and NFAT are two such factors; the human body contains around 3,000. "The work provides a structural demonstration of combinatorial control of gene exp...

Survival of the selfless - scientists find cheats don't always prosper

...the long-term winner will always be the individual acting selfishly rather than the one working as part of a group. To test this theory, scientists set up a series of competitions between two strains of yeast. The strains are identical apart from the genes that determine whether they convert energy from re...

Scientists discover why cornea is transparent and free of blood vessels, allowing vision

...EGFR-3 halts angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) by acting as a "sink" to bind or neutralize the growth factors sent by the body to stimulate the growth of blood vessels. The cornea has long been known to have the remarkable and unusual property of not having blood vessels, but the exact reasons for this had...

New bird flu drug promises to beat the problem of resistance

...with Tamiflu for ordinary forms of flu. Although acting upon the same target on the influenza virus as existing treatments, the new drug molecules being developed are specific for a part of the virus that is unable to mutate (change), which means it should be impossible for the influenza virus to develop ...

New research: Soy germ isoflavones reduce bone loss

...stmenopausal women, with estrogen deficiency often acting as the major cause. Hormone replacement therapy has been the most effective treatment for maintaining bone density. This treatment often has adverse side effects such as an increased risk for endometrial cancer and breast cancer." "It is imperativ...

Leptin has powerful effect on reward center in the brain

... metabolism, exerts a strong effect on appetite by acting in the mid-brain region as well as in the hypothalamus, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Neuron. "Finding that metabolic hormones directly regulate the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the mid-brain has profound implications for how r...

Ghost protein leaves fresh tracks in the cell

Spectrin and ankyrin are two essential proteins acting like bricks and mortar to shape and fortify cell membranes. But distinguishing which protein is the brick and which is the mortar has turned out to be difficult. New evidence suggests that spectrin can do both jobs at once. Ron Dubreuil, associate p...

New mechanism explains glucose effect on wakefulness

...nts showed that glucose inhibits orexin neurons by acting on a class of potassium ion channels known as "tandem pore" channels, about which little was known. "Together, these results identify an unexpected physiological role for the recently characterized [tandem pore potassium] channels and shed light on ...

Alarming decline in Nepal's rhinos and tigers in former Maoist stronghold

...s are still doing well," said Sybille Klenzendorf, acting director of WWF's Species Conservation Program. ...

Save the whales? Sure, but how many?

...at scientists and managers need. 'Having animals acting like animals in the fullest sense, seems the standard conservationists should seek, whether it's bison on the Great Plains or Asia's forests with tigers and their prey,' said Sanderson. ...

Molecular 'on/off switch' controls immune defenses against viruses

...to bind to its signaling partners, including LGP2, acting as a switch for controlling immune response, Dr. Gale said. "Hepatitis C and others viruses hijack this signaling pathway to stop immune defenses," he said. His research team and others are working to design novel therapeutics and drugs that co...

Study suggests evolutionary link between diet, brain size in orangutans

...life histories," they said. "Assuming selection is acting on brain size, life history is prolonged because development of larger brains require more time." Their previous work led Taylor, an anatomist who studies bones, to begin collaborating with van Schaik, a field biologist who studies living orangs in...

Fighting like a girl or boy determined by gene in fruit flies

...ruit flies with the female fruitless gene were not acting like males, but it wasn't clear that they were acting like females, either. (Ultimately, courtship behavior is constrained by pheromones and anatomy, whic...

Pressured by predators, lizards see rapid shift in natural selection

..., a reversal in the direction of natural selection acting on limb length in a population of lizards." Losos and colleagues studied populations of the lizard Anolis sagrei on minuscule islands, or cays, in the Bahamas. They introduced to six of these cays a larger, predatory lizard (Leiocephalus carinatus...

Study shows enzyme builds neurotransmitters via newly discovered pathway

...ol food intake, among other critical processes, by acting on cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. The system drives consumption of fat and calorie-rich foods and the amount of fat stored or expended and plays a significant role in energy homeostasis. "At least one cannabinoid receptor anta...

Brown seaweed contains promising fat fighter, weight reducer

...ol food intake, among other critical processes, by acting on cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. The system drives consumption of fat and calorie-rich foods and the amount of fat stored or expended and plays a significant role in energy homeostasis. "At least one cannabinoid receptor anta...

Nanotechnology propels advances in regenerative medicine research

...ol food intake, among other critical processes, by acting on cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. The system drives consumption of fat and calorie-rich foods and the amount of fat stored or expended and plays a significant role in energy homeostasis. "At least one cannabinoid receptor anta...

'Conversation stoppers' fight deadly bacterial infections

...ol food intake, among other critical processes, by acting on cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. The system drives consumption of fat and calorie-rich foods and the amount of fat stored or expended and plays a significant role in energy homeostasis. "At least one cannabinoid receptor anta...

Siberian lakes burp 'time-bomb' greenhouse gas

.... five times higher than previously estimated" and acting as a positive feedback to climate warming, said Katey Walter, in a paper published today in the journal Nature. Walter's project is the first time this type of bubbling has been accurately quantified. "We realized that our previous estimates were mi...

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