Understanding

UCSB scientists probe sea floor venting to gain understanding of early life on Earth

New keys to understanding the evolution of life on Earth may be found in the microbes and minerals vented from below the ocean floor, say scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The UCSB scientists are making new contributions to this field of inquiry in their studies of seafloor hydrothermal fluid discharge into the Earth's oceans, which has been occurring ever since t...

Zebrafish may hold key to understanding human nerve cell development

Glia appear essential for 'hair cells'responsible for hearing and balance. Traditionally viewed as supportingactors, cells known as glia may be essential for the normal developmentof nerve cells responsible for hearing and balance, according to newUniversity of Utah research. The study is reported in the January 6,2005 issue of Neuron and is co-authored by scientists at the Universityof Was...

Novel ultrafast laser detection of cancer cells also may improve understanding of stem cells

To investigate tumors, pathologists currently rely on labor-intensive microscopic examination, using century-old cell-staining methods that can take days to complete and may give false readings. A lightning-fast laser technique, led by Sandia National Laboratories researcher Paul Gourley, has provided laboratory demonstrations of accurate, real-time, high-throughput identification of live...

Researchers make gains in understanding antibiotic resistance

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers chiseling away at the problem of antibiotic resistance now have a detailed explanation of how the drugs' main cellular target in bacteria evolves to become resistant to some of these medications. The findings are already leading to new experimental antibiotics that are being engineered to circumvent resistance, which is a major worldwide health problem....

Brain-mapping technique aids understanding of sleep, wakefulness

The power of a new technique to map connections among nerve cells in the brain has a UT Southwestern Medical Center scientist dreaming of solving the mysteries of sleep. By tracking which nerve cells in the mouse brain stimulate others, researchers in Japan and at UT Southwestern found that a type of neuron responsible for keeping animals awake receives inhibitory signals from neurons act...

New understanding of DNA repair may pave way to cancer treatments

A Burnham Institute study has found that a protein known for its role in gene regulation has another important function, that of initiating DNA repair. The study, published in the May 27th edition of Molecular Cell, points to new targets for treatment of cancer. Ze'ev Ronai, Ph.D., Director of the Institute's Signal Transduction Program, and his colleagues found that the protein ATF2 ("Ac...

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

A team from the chemistry and biology departments of New York University, in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), has uncovered a conformational switch--a change in shape in a carcinogen-damaged DNA site--in tumor suppressor genes altered by a known cancer-causing chemical found in cigarette smoke. This finding may open new horizons for understanding the initiation o...

The circadian clock: Understanding nature's timepiece

A cluster of brain cells less than half the size of a pencil eraser tells you when to wake up, when to be hungry and when it's time to go to sleep. The same cells also cause you to be disoriented after you've flown across multiple time zones. The human circadian clock, comprised of about 20,000 time-keeping cells, has mystified scientists since it was pinpointed in the brain about 30 year...

Virologists make major step towards understanding the process of HIV infection

A working group of virologists headed by Professor Hans-Georg Kräusslich at Heidelberg University Hospitals, jointly with Professor Hanswalter Zentgraf, Division of Applied Tumor Virology of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ), have been the first to label Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (HIV) for visual investigations without inhibiting the functional charac...

Breakthrough System for Understanding Ocean Plant Life Announced

Sixty million people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are threatened daily by a deadly parasitic disease known as African sleeping sickness. The disease is caused by organisms called trypanosomes, which are spread by the tsetse fly. African sleeping sickness affects approximately 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, a quarter of whom will die this year. Because the trypanosome has an except...

Understanding how bacteria communicate may help scientists prevent disease

Rahul Kulkarni, assistant professor of physics at Virginia Tech, has been awarded a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities to continue his research on quorum sensing in bacteria. He is modeling the sequence of events that initiate activity, such as virulence, by a bacteria colony once it has reached a critical size. The Powe award provides see...

New understanding of cell movement may yield ways to brake cancer's spread

From birth until death, our cells migrate: nerve cells make their vital connections, embryonic cells move to the proper places to form organs, immune cells zero in to destroy pathogenic organisms, and cancer cells metastasize, spreading deadly disease through the body. Scientists studying these migrations didn't know how cells determined where to go. Until now. A Burnham Institute study ha...

Proteomics brings researchers closer to understanding microbes that produce acid mine drainage

A pink, bacterial scum on the floor of an abandoned mine seems an unlikely place to study community development, but a biological breakthrough is allowing University of California, Berkeley, researchers to probe the give and take in this microbial mat. Last year, the UC Berkeley team joined with the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute to pluck out the genomes of the five dominan...

Understanding biases in epidemic models important when making public health predictions

Mathematical models have become invaluable decision-making tools for public health officials. As demonstrated during the United Kingdom's foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, models can be useful in two ways: they can reveal the underlying characteristics of an infection and they can allow the comparison of alternative control measures. Often, however, such models make implicit assumptions that may s...

New study expands understanding of the role of RNA editing in gene control

For many years, scientists thought gene activity was relatively straightforward: Genes were transcribed into messenger RNA, which was processed and translated into the proteins of the body. Certainly, there were many factors governing the transcription process, but gene control happened at the level of the DNA. In the past few years, however, evidence for a more nuanced understanding of th...

Scientists move forward understanding of schizophrenia

A Scots-led medical research team has identified a new gene linked to major mental illness that links back to a previously discovered gene known to increase the risk of schizophrenia and depression. Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, together with scientists from the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme Limited, report the discovery of the second gene, phosphod...

New understanding of jet lag

A new study demonstrates that the brain's central timekeeper - the biological clock that regulates waking and sleeping cycles - has two parts that fall out of synchrony during light schedule shifts of six hours, the time it takes to fly across the Atlantic. The finding may explain, at least in part, why transmeridian travelers suffer from jet lag, the malaise experienced after crossing sev...

NYU chemists use computer simulation to enhance understanding of DNA transcription

New York University chemists have employed a computer simulation whose results have enhanced scientific understanding of the DNA transcription process. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears in the June 7 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previous research has indicated that chromatin--a chromosome's substance consisting of histone prote...

Fish and chips: A fast track to understanding blood development

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have identified for the first time a group of genes that impact the development and function of blood stem cells, a discovery that brings researchers a step closer to harnessing the power of stem cells for disease treatments. Every day, blood stem cells divide and differentiate to generate approximately 200 billion new blood cells in the bone marr...

Computer models aid understanding of antibody-dependent enhancement in spread of dengue fever

Evolutionary trade-off exists between advantage and disadvantage Some viruses' ability to exploit the human body's own defenses to increase their replication may be both a blessing and curse, according to the findings of a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The process is known as antibody-dependent enhancement. Scientists believe antibo...

New understanding of regeneration gained by Forsyth scientists

Forsyth Institute research with the flatworm, planaria, offers new clues for understanding restoration of body structures. Researchers at The Forsyth Institute have discovered how the worm's cells communicate to correctly repair and regenerate tissue. Forsyth scientists have found that gap-junction (microscopic tunnels directly linking neighboring cells) communication contributes to this signali...

Understanding the oceans microbes is key to the Earth's future

Life on Earth may owe its existence to tiny microorganisms living in the oceans, but the effect of human-induced change on the vital services these microbes perform for the planet remains largely unstudied, says a report released today by the American Academy of Microbiology, entitled Marine Microbial Diversity: The Key to Earth's Habitability. "Since life most likely began in the oceans,...

Frog’s ear canal may provide insights for understanding human hearing loss

A rare frog that lives in rushing streams and waterfalls in east-central China is able to make itself heard above the roar of flowing water by communicating ultrasonically, scientists reported March 16 in the journal Nature. Attributes that enable the frog to hear ultrasounds are made possible by the presence of an ear canal, which most other frogs don't have. "Our research points out an e...

Forsyth scientists gain greater understanding of how embryos differentiate left from right

Researchers at the Forsyth Institute have discovered a new mechanism responsible for early left/right patterning, the process by which organs locate themselves on the left or right side of the body. The discovery of this novel mechanism, garnered through the study of three different vertebrates (frogs, chickens and zebrafish), marks the first time that a single common mechanism has been identif...

Salk researchers make fast strides towards understanding how our body controls walking

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified an important circuit in the spinal cord that controls the speed with which our leg muscles contract and relax. Their findings mark an important milestone in understanding the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements - one of the main obstacles in developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries. "Knowing...

Understanding the actions of others requires the frontal cortex

By stimulating the frontal cortex in adults, researchers have shown that this part of the brain is essential for understanding other people's actions. It has been known for over 100 years that if a person suffers a stroke in the left frontal cortex, he or she often suffers difficulties in speaking and with understanding language. However, because of these language impairments, it has been...

New understanding of COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes could revise classification of pain meds

COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes may be blocked by pain medications such as Advil and Vioxx in a more complex manner than was previously understood, a Queen's University study has found. "The results of the study have potential implications for how we classify the commonly used anti-inflammatory and pain drugs for aches, pains, and fever," says Colin Funk, a professor of Biochemistry and Physiology...

Study provides new understanding of spontaneous hybridization

Plant and animal breeders have long used hybridization to transfer useful traits between species. But does the same process happen without human aid? In a new study in the June issue of American Naturalist, Kenneth D. Whitney (Indiana University and Rice University), Rebecca A. Randell (Indiana University), and Loren H. Rieseberg (Indiana University), explore how spontaneous hybridization ?known...

New understanding of parasite cell structures may provide treatments for serious tropical diseases

Don't even think about trying to pronounce it. Although it is found in many organisms including humans, glycosylphosphatidylinositol has remained a mouthful for laymen and a puzzle for scientists. And yet GPIs, as science thankfully calls these cellular lipids, are important in numerous biological functions, including disease transmission. Now, for the first time, cellular biologists at th...

Researchers add to understanding of how brain cells communicate

An hour from now, will you remember reading this? It all depends on proteins in your brain called NMDA receptors, which allow your neurons to communicate with each other. Jon W. Johnson, University of Pittsburgh associate professor of neuroscience, and former Pitt graduate student Anqi Qian, now of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, have discovered how different types of NMDA (N-methyl-d...

A new understanding of how cells defend themselves against bacterial pore-forming toxins

Biologists at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have unveiled a new twist in a metabolic pathway that cells use to defend themselves against toxins made by disease-causing bacteria. The discovery of this pathway, published in the September 22 issue of the journal Cell, advances our understanding of how cells mount a survival response when attacked by bacteria and parasit...

RNA map provides first comprehensive understanding of alternative splicing

It's biology's version of the director's cut. In much the same way that numerous films could be stitched together from a single reel of raw footage, a molecular process called alternative splicing enables a single gene to produce multiple proteins. Now a new RNA map, created by a team of researchers at Rockefeller University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and announced in the journal Nat...

Molecular atlas provides new tool for understanding estrogen-fueled breast cancer

Lurking in unexplored regions of the human genome are thousands of previously unknown on/off switches that may influence how the growth of breast cancer is driven by estrogen, new research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers has revealed. In the October issue of Nature Genetics, the investigators present the first complete map of the molecular "control panels" -- stretches of DNA...

Ocean's 'twilight zone' may be a key to understanding climate change

A major study sheds new light on the role of carbon dioxide once it's transported to the oceans' depths. The research indicates that instead of sinking, carbon dioxide is often consumed by animals and bacteria and recycled in the "twilight zone," a dimly lit area 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface. Because the carbon often never reaches the deep ocean, where it can be stored and prevented from...

Breakthrough in understanding type-2 diabetes as key genes identified

The most important genes associated with a risk of developing type-2 diabetes have been identified, scientists report today in a new study. The research, published online in Nature, is the first time the genetic makeup of any disease has been mapped in such detail. It should enable scientists to develop a genetic test to show an individual their likelihood of developing diabetes mellitus t...

Understanding why C. difficile causes disease -- it's hungry

"The genes responsible for toxin production only seem to be expressed during periods of nutrient deprivation. This is consi...