regulati

A new mechanism of regulating RNA degradation

As any dedicated video game player knows, the first requireme...

New insight into regulation of blood stem cells

Scientists have made a significant advance toward understanding the regulation of blood stem cells and the complex, lifelong process of blood cell formation. A research study published in the February issue of Developmental Cell expands on previous studies by using adult animals to examine the role of a key gene known to be required for blood cell formation. Information gained from this research...

NYU, Rockefeller researchers find complexity of regulation by microRNA genes

Collaborating researchers at New York University and Rockefeller University have discovered that microRNA 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...

MicroRNAs play a big part in gene regulation - and evolution

Regulating when and where certain proteins are made is crucial to the normal functioning of living things. To make proteins, information from DNA is transcribed into RNA molecules and then translated into the amino acids building blocks of proteins. But not all genes code for proteins--some make RNA molecules called microRNAs. These small RNA molecules interfere with--and therefore control--the p...

Depression gene may weaken mood-regulating circuit

A brain scan study suggests that a suspect gene may increase susceptibility to anxiety and depression* by weakening a circuit for processing negative emotion. People with the depression-linked gene variant showed less gray matter and weaker connections in the mood-regulating circuit. How well the circuit was connected accounted for nearly 30 percent of their anxious temperament, researchers at th...

UCR chemist part of team identifying new areas of gene regulation

Researcher Kangling Zhang at the University of California, Riverside is part of a team that has discovered a new way that yeast governs genetic expression and repression, a finding that could be repeated in cells of other organisms. Zhang, an academic coordinator at the Mass Spectrometry Facility of the Department of Chemistry at UCR, worked with Feng Xu and Michael Grunstein of the Depart...

Bioinformatics reveals new gene regulation system

By comparing 140 sequenced bacterial genomes, researchers have uncovered a system for regulating genes essential to bacterial replication ?and they did it solely by computer keystrokes and mouse clicks. Mikhail Gelfand, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems (IITP) in Moscow, and his postdoctoral fellow, Dmit...

Researchers appeal for new regulations to save coral reefs from live fish trade

Researchers are calling for tighter controls on the live reef fish trade, a growing threat to coral reefs, in letters to the international journal Science. <...

Mechanism regulating tooth shape formulation found

One of the remaining challenges for evolutionary developmental studies of mammals, whose evolution is best known from their teeth, is how their tooth shape is altered during development. Researchers of the University of Helsinki together with their Japanese colleagues from the University of Kioto now propose a 'balance of induction' mechanism directing the placement of tooth shape features called...

Researchers Discover Gene That Determines Asthma Susceptibility By Regulating Inflammation

Disruption of a single gene, Nrf2, plays a critical role in determining the susceptibility to asthma. A research team led by Shyam Biswal, PhD, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found the absence of Nrf2 exacerbated allergen-mediated asthma in mice models. The study’s findings, published in the July 4, 2005, edition of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, may hold therapeuti...

Novel enzyme offers new look at gene regulation

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have purified a novel protein and have shown it can alter gene activity by reversing a molecular modification previously thought permanent. In the study, the authors showed that a protein called JHDM1A is able to remove a methyl group from histone H3, one of four histone proteins bound to all genes. Until just last year, the add...

Researchers discover new form of cancer gene regulation

The Quaking gene, first described as a mutation in mice that causes rapid tremor, is thought to suppress tumor formation and protect humans from cancer. Now, a team of researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin has shown that the Quaking gene likely suppresses tumor growth by inhibiting production of a protein associated with GLI1, a cancer-causing oncogene h...

K-State researchers study gene regulation in insects

Susan Brown, an associate professor of biology at Kansas State University, is interested in how evolution generates so much diversity in insects shapes and forms. Take the fruit fly and the beetle, for example. Even though they look very different, they have the same segmented body plan consisting of head, thorax and abdomen, Brown said. They differ, though, in how they make segments in th...

Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation ?not genes

The vast differences between humans and chimpanzees are due more to changes in gene regulation than differences in individual genes themselves, researchers from Yale, the University of Chicago, and the Hall Institute in Parkville, Victoria, Australia, argue in the 9 March 2006 issue of the journal The scientists provide powerful new evidence for a 30-year-old theory, propose...

Cells use mix-and-match approach to tailor regulation of genes

Scientists eager to help develop a new generation of pharmaceuticals are studying cellular proteins called transcription factors, which bind to upstream sequences of genes to turn the expression of those genes on or off. Some pharmaceutical companies are also hoping to develop drugs that selectively block the binding of transcription factors as a way to short-circuit the harmful effects of diseas...

Basic work on E. coli identifies two new keys to regulation of bacterial gene expression

The cellular process of transcription, in which the enzyme RNA polymerase constructs chains of RNA from information contained in DNA, depends upon previously underappreciated sections of both the DNA promoter region and RNA polymerase, according to work done with the bacterium E. coli and published today (June 16) in the journal Cell by a team of bacteriologists from the University of Wisconsin-M...

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...

Scientists discover new regulating mechanism in cells

Researchers here have discovered a new mechanism used by cells ?and manipulated by retroviruses ?to control the making of certain essential proteins, including some involved in cancer. The study by researchers with The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center ?Arthur G. James Cancer Hosp...

Regulating the nuclear architecture of the cell

An organelle called the nucleolus resides deep within the cell nucleus and performs one of the cell's most critical functions: it manufactures ribosomes, the molecular machines that convert the genetic information carried by messenger RNA into proteins that do the work of life. Gary Karpen and Jamy Peng, researchers in the Life Sciences Division of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berk...

Unique gene regulation gives chilly bugs survival advantage at bottom of the world

The larvae of Antarctic midges never stop producing special proteins that minimize environmental stress, allowing them to withstand a range of intense environmental conditions in one of the world's harshest environments. Scientists found that adult midges (Belgica antarctica) lose their ability to continually express these protective heat-shock proteins. Instead, like most animals, adult...