brake in Biological News

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 mig...

Scientists discover new genetic immune disorder in children

... known as interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra). IL-1Ra binds to the same cell receptors as the inflammatory protein interleukin-1, and acts as a brake on this inflammatory protein. Without IL-1Ra, the children's bodies cannot control systemic inflammation that can be caused by interleukin-1. The s...

Simple drug treatment may prevent nicotine-induced SIDS: Study

...fetus to nicotine results in higher levels of this brake protein. "The result is like trying to drive your car with the parking brake on. You might go a little bit, but the brakes hol...ibenclamide in laboratory rats, which override the brake protein, the adrenal glands were able to respond t...

Smoke from cigarettes, cooking oil, wood, shift male cardiovascular system into overdrive

... pressure and may cause damage if activated too long. Women respond with a greater parasympathetic response, dubbed "rest and digest," which acts as a brake on the heart and blood pressure. The study, Autonomic responses of men and women to particulate exposures, was conducted by Joyce McClendon Evans, ...

Smoke from cigarettes, cooking oil, wood, shift male cardiovascular system into overdrive

... pressure and may cause damage if activated too long. Women respond with a greater parasympathetic response, dubbed "rest and digest," which acts as a brake on the heart and blood pressure. The study, Autonomic responses of men and women to particulate exposures, was conducted by Joyce McClendon Evans, ...

Cheap and efficient white light LEDs new design described in AIP's Journal of Applied Physics

... Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Found in everything from brake lights to computer displays, LEDs are more environmentally friendly and muc...ngle color -- like red -- with applications such as traffic lights and auto brake lights. Indoor lighting though, requires "natural" white light. This qualit...

Skin cancer study uncovers new tumor suppressor gene

...sease. Tumor suppressor genes encode proteins that normally serve as a brake on cell growth. When such genes are mutated, the brake may be lifted, resulting in the runaway cell growth known as cancer. In con...

New and unexpected mechanism identified how the brain responds to stress

...of Nature Neuroscience . Normally, neurons receive different chemical signals that tell them to either switch on or switch off. The off signal or brake only works if the levels of chloride ion in the cells are maintained at a low level. This is accomplished by a protein, known as KCC2. What Bains an...

A budding role for a cellular dynamo

...end of the cell to the other. Molecular machines called formins produce many of the actin fibers, but in the absence of a displacement factor to put a brake on the process, formins will essentially stop at nothing, producing excessively long actin filaments at ridiculously fast rates, and wreaking cellular...

Mayo Clinic: Brain disorder suggests common mechanism may underlie many neurodegenerative diseases

...ne-rich domain and its 'GKNDG' binding motif," Dr. Farrer says. "This region acts like a parking brake, so Perry mutations in p150glued mean that this brake is affected. It would be analogous to driving that train with faulty brakes." What amazed the researchers are the similarities that Perry syndrome ...

New molecular insight into vertebrate brain development

...erved signaling cascade that is known to regulate organ size in the fly and mouse. Previous research has demonstrated that Hippo signaling serves as a brake on cell growth and proliferation by preventing another protein, YAP, from entering the nucleus and activating pro-growth genes. Drs. Xinwei Cao, S...

Urea tanks on diesel trucks -- that's the law in the United States starting in 2010

...Exhaust Emission Rules Kedzie says that diesel-powered vehicles manufactured in the United States in 2010 can emit no more than 0.2 grams of NOx per brake horsepower hour90% less than current emissions. The new EPA regulations will not apply to vehicles manufactured before 2010. Tractors, bulldozers,...

Early parenting plays key role in infants' physiological response to stress

...response called vagal tone. Vagal tone acts like a brake on the heart when the body is in a calm state, but during a challenging situation, this brake is withdrawn, allowing heart rate to increase so t...stressor (a decrease in vagal tone which takes the brake off the heart so it can respond appropriately), wh...

Senescence in liver cells is found by CSHL scientists to help limit acute tissue damage

...iver cancer, the role of senescence in limiting fibrosis was two-pronged. "Cell-cycle arrest in the cells that generate the fibrosis places a kind of brake on the process, limiting how far it can go," Lowe explained. "We hypothesize that HSCs, when they senesce, secret less fibrogenic protein and also s...

Unlocking mystery of why dopamine freezes Parkinson's patients

...mine normally helps you adjust the pressure on the brake and gas pedals. It helps you learn that when you see a red light at an intersection, you brake and when the green light comes on, you take your foot off the brake and depress the gas pedal to go. Parkinson's dise...

Gene may hold key to future cancer hope

...ccuracy - just one chromosome segregated incorrectly, for instance, leads to Downs syndrome - so the cell has a surveillance mechanism which acts as a brake to delay chromosome segregation until accuracy has been guaranteed. An important part of this intricate surveillance system is Bub 1. The team foun...

Common cancer gene sends death order to tiny killer

...aged or missing p53, they found that those cells had limited or zero miR-34a. "With no p53 gene or miR-34a to stem tumor development, there's no brake in pancreatic cells and uncontrolled growth leads to cancer," says Anirban Maitra, M.B.B.S., associate professor of pathology, oncology and genetic me...

Researchers shed light on mechanism of action used by anti-cancer drug

...served that exposure of cells to sorafenib resulted in the pronounced phosphorylation of a protein known as eIF2á, a process that serves as a critical brake on protein translation in cells subjected to ER stress. Interestingly, they also found that sorafenib, by virtue of its ability to inhibit Raf, also p...

Putting feelings into words produces therapeutic effects in the brain

...ut feelings into words, you’re activating this prefrontal region and seeing a reduced response in the amygdala,” he said. “In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses.” ...

Salk scientists hammer out a pathway that promotes muscle cell survival in mice

...cific genes in response to exercise by releasing a brake that normally keeps these genes off. Learning how ...lase (HDAC), stuck in place. Without loosening the brake by a chemical modification process known as phosph...ility that SIK1 is the enzyme controlling the HDAC brake in muscle cells, the researchers reduced SIK1 acti...

Slowing the racing heart

...tivity," said Ke. "Although adrenaline and other mechanisms that accelerate the heart rate have been well studied, mechanisms that might act as a brake are poorly understood," said Solaro. "Identification of this previously unknown molecular mechanism for slowing the heartbeat may offer new avenu...

UCSD researchers discover variants of natural tumor suppressor

...y to tumor growth," said Newton. "PHLPP is like a brake that, when on, slows the driver but when 'off' all...ell survival. Therapies directed at releasing the brake on this driver would allow cells involved in heart...P variants are important in cancer; the loss of a brake to any of the three Akt pathways sends 'go, go, go...

Morphine makes lasting -- and surprising -- change in the brain

...ase dopamine release. So the net effect of morphine and other opioids, Kauer found, is that they boost the brain’s reward response. "It’s as if a brake were removed and dopamine cells start firing," she explained. "That activity, combined with other brain changes caused by the drugs, could increase vu...

Signal protein shows promise for blocking tumor promoters in skin cells

...esearch by investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Using animal models, the researchers discovered that Srcasm acts like a brake in epithelial cells, preventing uncontrolled cell growth caused by a family of proteins called Src kinases. This finding, published online in the Jour...

Detailed 3-D image catches a key regulator of neural stem cell differentiation in action

...ontrol that switch, a protein called Scp1, at will. "Scp1 is an important brake that regulates the transition from neuronal precursor to mature neuron," ex...h.D, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Salk. "Loosening the brake with an inhibitor would allow us to influence the timing of neuronal differ...

Think fast! Rice undergrad unlocks nerve speed secret

...aptotagmin is the actuator," McNew said. "We also knew there was a chemical brake in the system, something that held the pre-positioned vesicle in check, but poised for release. These new studies clearly show that the brake is a protein called complexin." Rice's study, which was conducted in Mc...

A switch between life and death

...result is that they block their expression into proteins. In this case, those proteins would go on to shut down cell division. With bantam around, the brake is off, and they continue to divide." Cohen and his lab have been studying microRNAs like bantam for some time because of their important role in ...

Researchers find molecular 'brake' to cell death

... undergoing apoptosis, or programmed cell death, and they say that optimal anti-cancer therapies should take a two-pronged approach to overriding this brake in order to force a tumor cell to die. Very few drugs do this now, they say. The discovery "demonstrates that apoptosis is more complicated than ha...

Researches discover gene critical for protection against septic-shock-induced death

...ody's first line of defense. "Sepsis syndrome is like a speeding car with a brake failure. Nrf2 may function like a brake that regulates the speed," said Biswal, senior author of the study and assi...

Protein found to control tumor growth in certain breast cancers

...mice receiving Nod1 cell lines tumor growth did not occur even in the presence of estrogen pellets, indicating that Nod1 acts as an effective cellular brake on estrogen-dependent tumor growth. In addition, the presence of Nod1 reduced the expression of the naturally occurring estrogen receptor in vitro, f...

Mechanism for Epstein-Barr virus protein's role in blood cancers discovered

... found that the viral protein--called EBNA3C (for EBV nuclear antigen)--mediates the degradation of the retinoblastoma protein, an important molecular brake for cell proliferation. Erle S. Robertson, PhD, an Associate Professor of Microbiology who leads the Tumor Virology Program at Penn's Abramson Cance...

Customized gene chip provides rapid detection of genetic changes in children's cancer

...rmality is loss of heterozygosity (LOH), the deletion of one copy of a pair of genes. When the gene involved is a tumor suppressor gene, LOH removes a brake on uncontrolled cell growth, the growth that is the hallmark of cancer. Researchers in Dr. Maris' laboratory previously established that LOH in a r...

Visceral Leishmaniasis: Successful Vaccine Trial In Dogs

...affected areas, the dog population is hit heavily by infection. It acts as parasite reservoir for humans. Development of a vaccine for dogs could help brake transmission of the disease to humans, by reducing this reservoir. Such prevention treatment has just been tested successfully on dogs by an IRD team ...

Discovery suggests why stem cells run through stop signs

...iding. Without the microRNAs at work, the brakes were applied to the cell division of the mutant stem cells, just like ordinary cells. The cellular brake (in this case a protein called Dacapo, a fruit fly homologue of a human tumor suppressor) kept the stem cells from proliferating. "Determining whic...

Gene keeps neural cells on correct developmental path

...of neural genes in other cells, REST keeps the chromatin in embryonic stem and precursor neurons open and poised for gene activity. "REST keeps the brake on lightly until a trigger tells embryonic stem cells it's time to make a neuron," Mandel said. The cell then triggers the expression of an ensemble o...

Yale Scientists Find MicroRNA Regulates Ras Cancer Gene

...for Ras and likely inhibits translation of the Ras protein," said Slack. "The microRNA does not revert a mutated Ras to normal; instead it acts like a brake on an accelerated Ras." Lung cancer currently has a poor prognosis with less than 15 percent of patients surviving five years. The lungs, however, ...

Novel Therapy Tested in Mice Could Chase Away Cat Allergies

...h to develop therapies to prevent deadly food allergy reactions as well,?says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. The injectable treatment puts a brake on the release of a key chemical from cells involved in cat allergy reactions. That chemical, histamine, brings on allergy symptoms such as sneezing, ...