Dire

Combination therapy boosts effectiveness of telomere-directed cancer cell death

Sometimes apotential target for a drug seems very promising on paper; things areoften very different in reality. Its the case of telomerase inhibitorsto treat cancer; they are supposed to strip the "immortal" (able todivide indefinitely) aspect of cancer cells. Yet, something in the cellseems to block their function, preventing them to inhibit completelythe...

BRCA1 causes ovarian cancer through indirect, biochemical route

Mutated BRCA1 genes cause ovarian cancer indirectly, by interfering with the biochemical signals one ovarian cell sends to another, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Their work is being published in the March 29 issue of the journal Current Biology.</p...

Poplar trees redirect resources in response to simulated attack

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have applied some of the same techniques used in medical imaging to track the distribution of nutrients in poplar trees in response to a simulated insect attack. The research provides new insights on a long-debated theory about how plants respond to environmental stress, and shows that radiotracer imaging can be a big he...

Weizmann Institute scientists develop a new approach for directing treatment to metastasized prostate cancer in the bones.

Few things about growing older are asinevitable and obvious as “going gray,?yet scientists have been unableto explain the precise cause of this usually unwelcome transformation.In a report posted today on the Web site of the journal Science,researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s HospitalBoston say they have found the cellular cause of graying hair whileinvestigating th...

Cerebral navigation: How do nerve fibers know what direction to grow in?

Nervous system development requires billions of neurons to migrate to the appropriate locations in the brain and grow nerve fibers (axons) that connect to other nerve cells in an intricate network. Growth cones, structures in the tips of growing axons, are responsible for steering axons in the right direction, guided by a complex set of signals from cells they encounter along the way. Some signal...

Stem cells bring fast direct improvement, without differentiation, in acute renal failure

Acute renal failure, or ARF, is as serious as it sounds. An estimated 40% of critical care hospital admissions experience ARF. Estimates of their death rate range from 50% to 80%, complicated by the fact that patients with ARF often simultaneously suffer failure of other major organ systems. The most serious form of ARF is caused by ischemia, or loss of blood supply to the kidneys caused b...

Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland

Swarms of millions of locusts have, since Biblical times and until our very own day, been considered a "plague" of major proportions, with the creatures destroying every growing thing in their path. Until now, it was thought that the directions of these swarms were predominantly directed by prevailing winds. Now, Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have shown that a physiological tra...

Cells direct membrane traffic by channel width

For a glycerol molecule, a measly angstrom's difference in diameter is a road-closed sign: You can't squeeze through unless you are a sleek, water-molecule-sized sports car, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The roadway is in aquaporins, a class of proteins that form trans-membrane channels in cell walls in all forms of life. They allow for water movement be...

SLU researchers uncover direct evidence on how HIV invades healthy cells

Using sophisticated detection methods, researchers at the Saint Louis University Institute for Molecular Virology (IMV) have demonstrated the molecular mechanism by which the HIV virus infects, or integrates, healthy cells. The discovery could lead to new drug treatments for HIV. Although scientists theorized that two ends of the virus' DNA must come together inside a healthy cell in order...

Penn study finds direct role for glial cells in brain cross-talk

Findings may help elucidate mechanisms of wake-sleep transitions and epileptic seizures Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have demonstrated that star-shaped glial cells in the brain called astrocytes are directly involved in regulating communication between neurons. A central finding of the study is that astrocytes modulate the level of a signaling molecule...

Navigating the brain for sense of direction as paradigm for higher cognitive functions

No matter how healthy a life one leads, no person has managed to live much longer than a century. Even though the advances of the modern age may have extended the average human life span, it is clear there are genetic limits to longevity. One prominent theory of aging lays the blame on the accumulation of damage done to DNA and proteins by “free radicals,?highly reactive molecules produced by the...

Scientists directly view immune cells interacting to avert autoimmunity

Using a new form of microscopy to penetrate living lymph nodes, UCSF scientists have for the first time viewed immune cells at work, helping clarify how T cells control autoimmunity. The technique, known as two-photon laser-scanning microscopy, was able to focus deep within the lymph node of a diabetic mouse, allowing the researchers to show that immune cells known as T regulatory, or Tre...

BioMed Central launches Biology Direct

BioMed Central is pleased to announce the launch of Biology Direct, a new online open access journal with a novel system of peer review. Biology Direct will operate completely open peer review, with named peer reviewers' reports published alongside each article. The journal also takes the innovative step of requiring that the author approach Biology Direct Editorial Board members directly to revi...

First direct mechanical communication of mitochondria, cardiomyocyte nucleus shown

In a paper being presented in two American Physiological Society sessions at Experimental Biology 2006, a joint Estonian-French team demonstrated "for the first time that mitochondria are able to induce nuclear deformation, suggesting that mitochondria may mechanically regulate nuclear function." The team, which has been collaborating for over 10 years, reported that it recently "found a v...

HIV infection requires an accomplice: B cells with special protein direct HIV to T cells

HIV infection of T cells requires activation of a molecule on the surface of B cells, a finding that reveals yet another pathway the virus uses in its insidious attack on the immune system, University of Pittsburgh researchers will report at the XVI International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2006). "The research supports a new role for B cells in the development and spread of HIV between cells,...

Protein's role in regulating cell death sets direction for cancer research

A protein called calpain can be the key either preventing or promoting the cell death, a Queen's University study has found. "This work provides proof in principle that pharmacological inhibition of calpain may be used to block cell death in situations where this is not desirable, such as in neuronal cells of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's patients, but to promote cell death in cancer cells w...

Two nerve cells in direct contact

Movements in space create in humans and animals so-called optical flow fields which are characteristic for the movement in question. In a forward movement, the objects flow by laterally, objects at the front increase in size and objects further away hardly change at all. At a higher level in the visual centre in the brain, there must be a computation of the visual information, so that animals can...

Man's earliest direct ancestors looked more apelike than previously believed

Modern man"s earliest known close ancestor was significantly more apelike than previously believed, a New York University College of Dentistry professor has found. A computer-generated reconstruction by Dr. Timothy Bromage, a paleoanthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Biomaterials and of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, shows a 1.9 million-year-old skull belonging to Homo rudolf...

Antibody signal may redirect inflammation to fuel cancer

As evidence mounts that the body's normally protective inflammation response can drive some precancerous tissues to become fully malignant, UCSF scientists report discovering an apparent trigger to this potentially deadly process. Typically, the "innate" immune system's Pac-Man-like white blood cells, or leukocytes, engulf and destroy invading microbes when receptors on their surface rece...