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Tag: "mutation" at biology news

Reactivated gene shrinks tumors

...rogrammed cell death. When p53 is turned off by mutation or deletion, cells are much more likely to become cancerous, because they will divide uncontrollably even when DNA is damaged. In this study, the researchers used engineered mice that had the gene for p53 turned off. But, they also included a gene...

Turning a cellular sentinel into a cancer killer

...ve any anti-tumor effect." For one thing, the high mutation rate in cancers might enable a cancer to switch the p53 pathway back off, or to circumvent the pathway in some other fashion. For those reasons, researchers were not sure whether the pathway would be a useful therapeutic target. To reactivate p53, ...

A first glimpse of the influenza replication machine

...ed during a worldwide influenza pandemic caused by mutation of a bird-specific strain of the influenza virus. Recently H5N1, another highly infectious avian strain has caused outbreaks of bird flu around the world. There is great concern that this virus might also mutate to allow human-to-human transmission a...

Minuscule molecules pack a powerful punch

...bryonic stem cells which they used to transfer the mutation into mice. Previous research showed that miR-155 was active in cells of the immune system and overactivity was found in lymphoma development. "Very little is known about the function of the hundreds of microRNA genes," said Dr Antony Rodriguez, le...

Brain tissue reveals possible genetic trigger for schizophrenia

...'s disease or cystic fibrosis, the basis is a gene mutation that leads to a malformed protein. But with other complex genetic disorders ?such as schizophrenia, many cancers, and diabetes ?we find not mutated proteins, but correctly formed proteins in incorrect amounts," said study lead author and UNC professo...

Clues to gene expression in cystic fibrosis will guide research

...ercentage of CF sufferers with a rare genetic stop mutation responded positively to gentamicin treatment. Aleksander Edelman and Isabelle Sermet-Gaudelus of Faculté de Médicine Necker in Paris led collaborators from several French institutions studying how the antibiotic gentamicin affected CF patients with ...

Protein averts cell suicide but might contribute to cancer

...but the gap ?and the stop-gap base ?might become a mutation that, in conjunction with later genetic damage, causes the cell to eventually become cancerous. "The objective of this enzyme is to allow replication to continue, not to repair the damage," says Fiala. The damage will persist, and cells might try...

Widely used hepatitis B drug spurs HIV drug resistance

...six months of entecavir therapy, a so-called M184V mutation of HIV develops. Thio says viruses with this mutation are known to be resistant to lamivudine, better known as 3TC, a medication that prevents HIV replica...

White blood cells of cancer-resistant mice overwhelm natural defenses of cancer cells

...osette," and then killing them. "Apparently, the mutation in the cancer-resistant mice renders the white blo...ave also continued to investigate how the original mutation works, a mutation that protects the cancer-resistant mice from a wide variety of injected cancer cel...

Mutant gene causes severe kidney disease in infants

...embryo, so defects were present at birth. A milder mutation seemed to interfere with repair mechanisms in the glomerulus, so defects didn't show up until later in life." U-M scientists used DNA microarrays to analyze blood samples from 26 families around the world who had children diagnosed with steroid-re...

With fruit fly sex, researchers find mind-body connection

...xample, McKeown recently helped discover a genetic mutation that causes flies to develop symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease ?a gene very similar to one found in humans. Some of McKeown's recent work focuses on understanding gene networks that control sexual behavior. Research on the topic is often con...

Tearing down the fungal cell wall

...r, stated: "What we have been able to show is that mutation of the AbNPS2 gene is accompanied by structural changes that occur in the cell wall of the spores, a decrease in spore germination rate, lower survival rates for the spores under adverse environmental conditions, and a reduced ability of the fungus t...

Discovery of the first resistance gene to rice yellow mottle virus

...nteraction with the virus. In these varieties, the mutation does not appear to alter the protein's role in its primary biological functions, but can prevent its interaction with the virus which is then blocked in one of the stages of its infectious cycle. In parallel, a team of IRD virologists showed that ...

Fruit fly study identifies gene mutation that regulates sensitivity to alcohol

...ornia, San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered a gene mutation in fruit flies that alters sensitivity to alcohol....particular gene associated with this behavior. The mutation also altered the flies' sensitivity to cocaine and nicotine as well. Because this gene variant affe...

From a lowly yeast, researchers divine a clue to human disease

...8 issue of the journal Molecular Cell, shows how a mutation in a single gene can have widespread effects on regulation of the genetic program in a cell, causing some genes to be read more than normal and others less than normal. While nearly every cell in an organism contains a complete set of DNA, each ind...

Regulating the nuclear architecture of the cell

...NA. But lack of H3K9 methylation -- whether from a mutation in Su(var)3-9; or in the gene that codes for the HP1 protein; or a mutation that disables RNA interference -- allows the heterochromatin to open up. The decondensed, repeated D...

Pourquié lab identifies genes involved in formation of vertebral precursors

...urquié. "I'm excited about this work because mutation of the genes involved in the segmentation clock os...any novel genes associated to the oscillator whose mutation could lead to such disease." ...

Geneticists discover genes that make fruit fly hybrids sterile

...24 issue of Science, focuses on a rarely occurring mutation in a D. melanogaster gene called "Hmr" (Hybrid male rescue) and a similar mutation in a D. simulans gene called "Lhr" (Lethal hybrid rescue) that make these genes nonfunctional. Whe...

Mutant mouse provides insights into breast cancer

...(copying) and breast cancer. The mouse contains a mutation in a gene essential for replicating DNA in both humans and mice that increases the rate of flawed copies of genetic material, leading to mouse breast cancers. In a paper published in Nature Genetics online (and upcoming in the Dec. 27 print issue),...

Scientists find mutations that let bird flu adapt to humans

... infected with bird flu, they may be able to map a mutation trajectory that will help predict when the avian virus will cross the threshold to become a human pathogen. The last two flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968 were caused by avian viruses that had accumulated enough genetic mutations to be considered hyb...

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