Tag: "machinery" at biology news

Engineered mouse mimics cognitive aspects of schizophrenia

...ain in which the abnormal activity of the dopamine machinery in a specific part of the brain causes cognitive a... theory that hyperactivity in the brain's dopamine machinery plays a central role in schizophrenia. Dopamine is a major neurotransmitter in the brain--a chemical...

Commonly used antidepressants may also affect human immune system

...rised us to find that these immune cells also have machinery to take up serotonin and to secrete it in an excitatory manner," Ahern said. "The point behind this transmission is not entirely clear, but it appears to be an additional way of stimulating a T cell response." Drugs that block serotonin reuptake "li...

'Executive' monkeys influenced by other executives, not subordinates

... can begin to understand the physiology and neural machinery of status, they said. Further animal studies will ...monkeys will enable greater insight into the basic machinery of social interaction. "Thanks to a combination of molecular and behavioral studies, we're starting...

Driver of anthrax toxicity could lead to late-stage therapy

...host protein LRP6, or other components of the host machinery integral to the toxin's internalization, might offer a novel method to prevent the toxin from infiltrating and killing cells. "Our discovery of the role of LRP6 in anthrax toxicity and the demonstration that antibodies directed against the extracell...

Genes involved in cell growth and cell division identified

...he regulation of growth in human cells as the core machinery involved in this process is very similar in all multicellular organisms from insects to humans. Because the regulation of cell growth is central for embryonic development as well as cancer, it is highly important to have a holistic view on these proc...

Master genetic switch found for chronic pain

...diverse specialized components of the pain-sensing machinery could be established in a piecemeal fashion, "Our data, however, provide strong evidence that Runx1 is required to specify the receptive properties of a large cohort of nociceptive sensory neurons." They also concluded that the dual functions they di...

Pair of studies offer new clues to combat antibiotic resistance

... the need for a better understanding of resistance machinery and the availability of new antibiotics, they say. Limited and selective use of antibiotics to prevent their overuse is also a way to stem resistance, according to health experts. ...

Poison + water = hydrogen. New microbial genome shows how

...ues identified what may be the minimal biochemical machinery necessary for any microbe to sporulate. Thus studies of this poison eating microbe may help us better understand the biology of the bacterium that causes anthrax. Building off this work, TIGR scientists are leveraging the information from the genom...

Feeling old?

...some dependent proteoloysis, a complex degradative machinery that breaks down contractile muscle protein, and that leucine supplementation can fully restore correct function. "Preventing muscle wasting is a major socio-economic and public health issue, that we may be able to combat with a leucine-rich diet," ...

How the neuron sprouts its branches

...uch studies could give important insights into the machinery of neuronal growth and how it is controlled, he said. "Understanding this machinery has clinical relevance because many disorders of brain development in children manifest abnormal den...

RNA splicing occurs in nerve-cell dendrites

...ting protein," notes Eberwine. "Since the splicing machinery is present in dendrites, one could speculate that if pre-mRNA is present naturally in the dendrite, when activated, it may be spliced and translated, giving rise to many different proteins." Protein diversity is a key aspect to the complexity of t...

Researchers discover new form of cancer gene regulation

...cess called translation, during which the cellular machinery makes a protein by linking amino acids together according to the plan described in the messenger RNA and thereby based on the information from the DNA sequence of the gene. Iannaccone and colleagues showed that after the messenger RNA for GLI1 is ...

Discovering the first steps in transcription-coupled repair

...even when the gene for CSB is normal. Fixing the machinery The first step in TCR is the recognition that an... can be left in place and remodeled by the protein machinery of transcription-couple repair, so that repairs to the DNA can proceed without the loss of the messe...

'Sharp' older brains are not the same as younger brains

...ally equivalent to young rats in some of the basic machinery that neurons use to encode and store information in the brain," said Gallagher, who collaborated with Alfredo Kirkwood and Sun Seek Min of Johns Hopkins' Krieger Mind/Brain Institute and Hey-Kyoung Lee, now of the University of Maryland College Park....

Key brain regulatory gene shows evolution in humans

...e and function. Proteins constitute the molecular machinery of the cell, for example, catalyzing the multitude of chemical reactions in the cell. DNA genes constitute the blueprints for such proteins, with the regulatory segments of these genes determining how actively the genes churn out proteins. The resea...

Normal chromosome ends elicit a limited DNA damage response

...logical Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to prot...st like broken strands of DNA that a cell's repair machinery is designed to fix. But mending chromosome ends, or telomeres, would set the stage for the developme...

Grabbing addiction by the tail

...s anchored inside the cell. In addiction, cellular machinery tugs on this tail, pulling the entire receptor int...longer works. Wang's peptide tricks the cellular machinery into tugging on it instead of the receptor's tail. "Once it gets inside the neuron, the peptide comp...

HIV inserts into human genome using a DNA-associated protein

... by LEDGF. "This implies that LEDGF is part of the machinery that helps dictate the placement of retroviral integration sites within chromosomes," says Bushman. Bushman notes that finding that LEDGF is part of the cellular apparatus necessary for HIV replication is important to the field of gene therapy. Cont...

Researchers learn how blood vessel cells cope with their pressure-packed job

...de of actin, a fibrous protein that is part of the machinery that gives muscle its ability to contract. Actin also gives virtually all cells their ability to make an internal "cytoskeleton." The stress fibers of endothelial cells in arteries are aligned parallel to the long axis of blood vessels, and this alig...

Prions rapidly 'remodel' good protein into bad, Brown study shows

... sheds important light on the mysterious molecular machinery behind prions, infectious proteins that cause fatal brain ailments such as mad cow disease and scrapie in animals and, in rare cases, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and kuru in humans. Because similar protein self-replication occurs in neurodegenerative ...

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