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Tag: "roles" at biology news

ORNL, UC Berkeley unravel real-world clues to Earth's mysteries

...ch noted that while microbial communities play key roles in the Earth's bio-geochemical cycles, scientists know little about the structure and activities within these communities. This is because the commonly used artificially cultivated organisms lack the diversity found in nature, so potentially critical...

Specialized immune-system B cells play double-barreled role

...ine action. For example, the new insights into the roles of the two B-1 cell subtypes could help explain why the immune-triggering molecules called antigens from the pneumococcus bacteria do not elicit a strong adaptive immune response in infants, people with compromised immune systems and the elderly. Suc...

The making and breaking of microtubules

...ties for new experiments testing the physiological roles of these microtubule intermediates in the cell." Richard Rodewald, a program officer and cell biologist at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which funded the research, noted that "these studies provide a persuasive model, in elegan...

Discovery of New Dopamine Action May Yield Alternative Psychiatric Drugs

... of psychiatric therapy. Akt also plays important roles in many other processes in the body, including inflammation, cell death and the cell proliferation that can spur cancer, the researchers added. Therefore, similar mechanisms might also underlie other disease pathways. Collaborators on the study incl...

NYU, Rockefeller researchers find complexity of regulation by microRNA genes

... genes, which have recently been shown to have key roles in gene regulation, can team up and regulate target genes in mammals. MicroRNAs are a recently discovered large class of regulatory, non-coding genes, which bind to partially complementary sites in target messenger RNA to regulate their stability and...

Disabling gene defuses rheumatoid arthritis in mice

...ice. Foxj1 and Foxo3a are thought to play similar roles in immune T cells. To get a better sense for Foxo3a's activities, Peng's group created a line of mice where Foxo3a had been disabled and studied the effects this change had on T cells. As a follow-up, Peng decided to inject the new line of mice with...

Pair of cancer genes found to drive both cell migration and division

...o divide as well. The next steps are to study the roles of the two genes in dividing cells by seeing if controlling the location of the PTEN and PI3K proteins can determine the direction in which cells divide, Devreotes says. ...

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

...f inflammation-associated skin cancer to study the roles and interactions of these different white blood cells in the progression of cancer. The mice used in the study, called HPV16 mice, developed premalignant skin that was characterized by infiltration of innate immune cells. Genetic elimination of T an...

Structure-building cell signals also may influence learning and memory

...e, they pave the way for future experiments on the roles played by ephrins in memory, learning, and other nerve cell functions, and potentially even in certain cancers. By inserting chicken ephrin genes into rat cells, Fumitoshi Irie, Ph.D., Professor Yu Yamaguchi, M.D., Ph.D., and their colleagues found ...

Stanford gut check shows diversity of intestinal ecosystem

...d human microbial ecology, and in appreciating the roles played by microbes in human health and disease. The paper by Eckburg and Relman is intended as the first of several studies looking at how microbial communities vary according to host, diet, geography, disease and other variables. To distinguish in...

Signs of aging: Scientists evaluate genes associated with longevity

... nematode aging may have fundamental and analogous roles in humans," Dr. Brooks-Wilson explains. "The human orthologs of some gene family members identified in this study have been associated with human age-related diseases." SAGE involves the isolation of short gene-specific sequence tags and provides an...

Defensins Ward Off HIV In Two Ways

...s response to viruses and therefore play important roles in the immune system. The researchers show that alpha-defensin-1 fights HIV in two different ways. Without serum (the watery portion of blood that remains when blood cells are removed) and under conditions where viral burden is low, alpha-defensin-1...

Building a human kinase gene repository

...ther cellular components. They play key regulatory roles in all aspects of eukaryotic cell physiology and their deregulation is associated with a number of pathological conditions, which make kinases key targets in drug discovery efforts, primarily in oncology. This collection is unique because clones in ...

Scientists discover that three overlapping signals in embryo help get the backbone right

...land and his UC Berkeley colleagues found numerous roles for noggin at later stages of development, they were unable to prove that noggin was essential to brain and spinal cord development. Blocking any one of these five factors had only a minimal effect on the fate of the embryo. Khokha and Harland decid...

NYU and MSKCC research provides model for understanding chemically induced cancer initiation

...mportant tumor suppressor gene that plays critical roles in cellular functions such as cell-cycle control, differentiation, and DNA repair. Many different chemical carcinogens, including those that are primary components of cigarette smoke, are known to damage DNA. This damage occurs at special positions o...

Same-Sex Mating Discovered in a Toxic Fungus

...es, pheromone receptors and other genes with known roles in mating -- exhibited a defect in fruiting. The newly described mating strategy might allow a single mating strain to expand rapidly by cell division, yet retain its ability to generate diversity by undergoing sex, said Heitman. That diversity migh...

Emergence of cancer as major cause of childhood death in developing countries is not being adequately addressed

...ng countries. This would facilitate studies of the roles that genetic background, environment and lifestyle play in susceptibility to cancer and pathogenesis of particular cancers. Such studies would be easier to conduct if pediatric cancer units are created in resource-poor nations and if their developmen...

Protein That Promotes Survival Of Stem Cells Might Be Key To Poor Leukemia Prognosis

...s." The importance of Mcl-1 lies in the differing roles it plays in health and disease. "On one hand, this protein keeps HSCs and progenitor cells alive and multiplying so the body can maintain its needed supply of blood cells," he said. "However, Mcl-1 also prevents the abnormal white blood cells found ...

Disease diagnosis, biodefense among UH chemical research projects

...tissue. Czernuszewicz's research is focused on the roles of salivary nitrophorins in storing and releasing NO and binding histamine by using resonance Raman spectroscopic techniques as a probe of molecular structure. # Yuriy Fofanov, assistant professor of computer science and assistant professor of biolo...

Researchers rein in regulatory RNAs

...ese results will lead to a better understanding of roles of non-coding RNAs in gene regulation. ...

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