#Nanowire clothing could keep people warm without heating everything else To stay warm when temperatures drop outside,
However gene expression studies showed that it is churned actually out by non-neuronal cells called astrocytes.
That was the first description of hevin's function in the nervous system said Eroglu an assistant professor of cell biology and neurobiology and a member of the Duke Institute for Brain sciences.
Other authors include Sagar Patel Jonnathan Singh Alvarado Osman Calhan Il Hwan Kim Akiyoshi Uezu and Scott Soderling of Duke's Cell biology Department;
Louis-Jan Pilaz and Debra Silver of Duke's Molecular genetics and Microbiology Department; and Daniel Wilton and Beth Stevens of Boston Children's Hospital Department of Neurology Harvard Medical school.
#Researchers uncover key cancer-promoting gene One of the mysteries in cancer biology is how one protein,
When 720 genes from the human genome were screened against lung cancer and breast cancer cells, Bub1 emerged as playing a strong role in TGF-beta signaling.
Initial lab testing suggests that a Bub1 inhibitor can very specifically target Bub1 without causing damage to other parts of the cell. hen you look at gene expression in cancer,
Newer genome editing tool shows promise in engineering human stem cells In a recent online report on the work in Molecular Therapy the Johns Hopkins team says the findings could streamline
The engineered editing system makes use of an enzyme that nicks together DNA with a piece of small RNA that guides the tool to where researchers want to introduce cuts or other changes in the genome.
Previous research has shown that CRISPR can generate genomic changes or mutations through these interventions far more efficiently than other gene editing techniques such as TALEN short for transcription activator-like effector nuclease.
The researchers compared the ability of both genome editing systems to either cut out pieces of known genes in ipscs
and AAVS1 a gene that's been discovered recently to be a safe harbor in the human genome for inserting foreign genes.
However when using these genome editing tools for replacing portions of the genes such as the disease-causing mutations in JAK2
It can be designed to target only the mutation-containing gene without affecting the healthy gene in patients where only one copy of a gene is affected.
CRISPR-mediated genome editing opens the door to many genetic applications in biologically relevant cells that can lead to better understanding of
Reported in the January 2015 issue of Nature Cell biology, their surprising new findings identify two transcription factors--the glucocorticoid receptor (GR)
and that involve previously unsuspected biological pathways. Perhaps most importantly, we found that these pathways work completely in the nucleus of the cell by regulating the expression of key target genes,
and this type of intergenerational event almost certainly develops in the nucleus."Epigenomic modifications refer to changes in the structure of DNA that are distinct from mutations
The researchers speculate that byproducts from other bacteria infections in other diseases might change gene expression using similar mechanisms.
This interaction by SCFA and T-cells surprised co-investigators Fengchun Ye, assistant professor of biological sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of dental medicine,
and Jonathan Karn, director of the Center for Aids Research and professor and chair of the Department of Molecular biology and Microbiology at Case Western Reserve's medical school.
but also following patient responses to therapy said Mitchell the paper's corresponding author and professor of Pathology Microbiology and Immunology.
The prostate cancer study identified 20 hotspots of greatest chromosomal instability as additions or deletions in less than 0. 5 percent of the total DNA present in human chromosomes.
It examines the entire genome rather than known specific gene point mutations. Robust mutation panels vastly improve monitoring
since cancer cells are constantly deleting chromosomal DNA and liquid biopsies with only one or two mutations will allow cancer cell escape variants to go undetected he said.
Since the entire genome was surveyed the researchers were able to identify a non-coding region of the genome as a hotspot which may be generating previously unrecognized chromosomal control elements in prostate cancer.
The other 19 hotspots were involved rich in genes in replication and cell control processes that are highly relevant to cancer.
#New technology focuses diffuse light inside living tissue In the Jan 5 issue of Nature Communications Wang the Gene K. Beare Professor of Biomedical engineering at Washington University in St louis reveals for the first time a new
When light is shined into living biological tissue breathing and blood flow changes the optical interference or speckle pattern
To overcome this obstacle the team used a fast-responding photorefractive crystal that is sensitive to light at the 790-nanometer wavelength making it suitable to focus light deep into biological tissue.
The improved speed allowed Wang to achieve the first optical focusing of diffuse light inside a scattering medium containing living biological tissue.
This gives us a window into the future to see what bacteria will do to evade drugs that we design before a drug is deployed said co-author Bruce Donald a professor of computer science and biochemistry at Duke.
Developing preemptive strategies while the drugs are still in the design phase will give scientists a head start on the next line of compounds that will be effective despite the germ's resistance mutations.
Until now scientists trying to predict the genetic changes that would enable a bacterium to evade a particular drug have had to look up possible mutations from libraries of resistance mutations that have been observed previously.
With a new drug there is always the possibility that the organism will develop different mutations that had never been seen before.
Will they be the same old mutations we've seen before or might the bacteria do new things instead?
From a ranked list of possible mutations the researchers zeroed in on four tiny differences known as single nucleotide polymorphisms
Though none of the mutations they identified had been reported previously experiments with live bacteria in the lab showed their predictions were right.
When the scientists treated MRSA with the new drugs and sequenced the bacteria that survived more than half of the surviving colonies carried the predicted mutation that conferred the greatest resistance--a tiny change that reduced the drugs'effectiveness by 58-fold.
The fact that we actually found the new predicted mutations in bacteria is very exciting Donald said.
The researchers are now using their algorithm to predict resistance mutations to other drugs designed to combat pathogens like E coli and Enterococcus.
We might even be able to coax a pathogen into developing mutations that enable it to evade one drug
Their computational approach could be especially useful for forecasting drug resistance mutations in other diseases such as cancer HIV
and more affordable way to examine biomolecular behavior opening the door for scientists in virtually any laboratory worldwide to join the quest for creating better drugs.
Biomolecular interaction analysis a cornerstone of biomedical research is accomplished traditionally using equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars said Wyss Associate Faculty member Wesley P. Wong Ph d. senior author
and report how molecules behave enabling biological measurements to be made by almost anyone using only common and inexpensive laboratory reagents.
Wong who is also Assistant professor at Harvard Medical school in the Departments of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology and Pediatrics and Investigator at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital calls the new
and measure the ratio of open DNA nanoswitches vs. their closed counterparts through gel electrophoresis a simple lab procedure already in use in most laboratories that uses electrical currents to push DNA strands
which is a staggering comparison to the cost of conventional equipment used to test biomolecular interactions.
Wesley and his team are committed to making an impact on the way biomolecular research is done at a fundamental level as is evidenced by their efforts to make this technology accessible to labs everywhere said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber M d. Ph d. who is also the Judah Folkman
Professor of Vascular Biology at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical school and a Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard SEAS.
Biomedical researchers all over the world can start using this new method right away to investigate how biological compounds interact with their targets using commonly-available supplies at very low cost t
"The technology, called the Missouri Osteochondral Allograft Preservation System, or MOPS, more than doubles the storage life of bone
and further groups from Freiburg and Hungary has refuted a long-held assumption in biology: The scientists have shown that it is not only possible to extend the functions of organelles--organs of the cell
which there is no direct blueprint in the genome. Instead, however, the scientists developed an approach using amphiphilic proteins.
The biosynthesis of proteins can be controlled by a blueprint in the form of plasmid DNA.
The approach opens up new possibilities for the study of biomedical processes as well as for applications in biotechnology, chemistry, and pharmacy."
This is a fundamentally new approach for biology, biotechnology, and medicine,"says Schiller. With the help of chemical reactions that were previously impossible in the cell,
Schilller was awarded the research prize"Next Generation of Biotechnological Methods--Biotechnology 2020+"from the Federal Ministry of Education
He heads a research group at the Center for Systems Biology (ZBSA) of the University of Freiburg that combines chemical biology, organic synthesis, synthetic biology,
and new biomaterials with technical systems like microreactors and with modern analytical methods. The team is collaborating with further research groups at the ZBSA, the Faculty of chemistry and Pharmacy, the Faculty of biology, the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK),
and the Cluster of Excellence BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies of the University of Freiburg
which now contains detailed information on 12,122 species and 2, 440 experts on biological invasions in Europe.
when assessing the health, economic and ecological hazards,"estimates the biologist Dr. Stefan Klotz of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research.
"It was planned originally to limit the list of species to be combated actively to 50,"reports Professor of Biology Ingolf Kühn from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research."
Once the bio-ink adheres to the scaffolding it goes into a bioreactor an appliance like a rotisserie oven that keeps the cells warm
A new bioreactor costs between $50000 and $150000 so Mr. Goldstein customized an incubator for his needs making gears
and other parts on their Makerbot Replicator Desktop 3d printer to produce a brand new bioreactor.
Mr. Goldstein originally came to the Feinstein Institute as a molecular biologist working with cells chemicals and drugs.
if a complete treatment can be achieved said John March professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University and the paper's senior author.
This technology was licensed by the Biopancreate a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cortendo AB a biopharmaceutical company incorporated in Sweden
Kotov is a professor of chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, materials science and engineering and macromolecular science and engineering g
#Researchers use oxides to flip graphene conductivity A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania;
#Cell imaging gets colorful Campbell has created a new method that converts biochemical processes into color changes that are visualized easily.
This method is a new tool for cell biologists and neuroscientists to use to address questions ranging from fundamental mechanisms in cell biology to the underlying causes of mental illness to the discovery of novel therapeutics.
The results are published in the January 26th issue of Nature Methods. Proteins control essentially all biological processes in a cell
and while they may sometimes act alone proteins most often interact with other proteins to carry out their normal biological functions.
which he has dubbed FPX that employs genetically encoded fluorescent proteins to image dynamic biochemical events in live cells and tissues.
Strategies for converting fluorescent proteins into active biosensors of intracellular biochemistry are few in number and technically challenging comments Campbell.
and taking advantage of the fact that green and red fluorescence are mutually exclusive Ding was able to construct a wide variety of biosensors that underwent dramatic changes in fluorescence in response to biochemical processes of interest.
and engineering them to be biosensors that change their color in response to specific biological events Campbell has provided a tool for researchers to immediately pinpoint a major change at the cellular level minimizing the need for extensive biosensor optimization and providing
It will be immediately relevant to many areas of fundamental cell biology research and practical applications such as drug discovery.
"said senior author James Mitchell, associate professor of genetics and complex diseases.""However, the real importance of this work is the identification of unexpected molecular pathways underlying cerebral malaria that we can now target with existing drugs."
Dr. Melanie Mormile professor of biological sciences at Missouri S&t and her team discovered the bacterium Halanaerobium hydrogeninformans in Soap Lake Washington.
It can produce hydrogen under saline and alkaline conditions in amounts that rival genetically modified organisms Mormile says.
In her first single-author article Mormile's findings were featured in the Nov 19 edition of Frontiers in Microbiology.
Also named on the patents are Dr. Judy Wall Curators'Professor of Biochemistry and Joint Curators'Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and her former lab members Matthew Begemann and Dwayne Elias. A pending patent application submitted along with Elias;
Dr. Oliver Sitton professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at Missouri S&t; and Daniel Roush then a master's student for Mormile is for the conversion of glycerol to 1 3-propanediol also under hostile alkaline and saline conditions.
This patented and patent-pending technology is available for licensing through the Missouri S&t Center for Technology Transfer and Economic Development t
and director of the U s. Department of energy-funded Nanoporous materials Genome Center based in Minnesota. Predicting the zeolites'performance required serious computing power efficient computer algorithms and accurate descriptions of the molecular interactions.
what we've achieved here said paper co-author Michael Deem chair of Rice university's Department of Bioengineering and a professor of physics and astronomy y
#How cancer turns good cells to the dark side A new computational study by researchers at the Rice-based Center for Theoretical Biological Physics shows how cancer cells take advantage of the system by
Led by Rice biophysicists Eshel Ben-Jacob and Jos Onuchic the researchers decode how cancer uses a cell-cell interaction mechanism known as notch signaling to promote metastasis. This mechanism plays a crucial role in embryonic development
The first clues biologists had to notch-delta signaling came a century ago in studies of the wing formation of fruit flies.
The consortium known as the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) shared results from analyses of genetic data
This finding opens up new avenues for research in this disease by giving new clues about the biological mechanisms involved.
Given the likelihood that thousands of variants are involved large scale international efforts such as in this study are an important step in unravelling this genetic and biological complexity so as to develop new and better treatments.
ENIGMA's scientists screen brain scans and genomes worldwide for factors that help or harm the brain said ENGIMA cofounder Professor Paul Thompson from University of Southern California.
This crowdsourcing and sheer wealth of data gives us the power to crack the brain's genetic code.
By working together in large collaborative projects we can tackle these types of problems and further our understanding of the biology of the brain.
Microbes are pretty promiscuous with their genetic information and they share it across species fairly easily.
Until now, a melanoma's rampant growth was attributed mainly to genetic causes, such as mutations in certain genes.
However, researchers from the University of Zurich now reveal that so-called epigenetic factors play a role in the formation of metastases in malignant skin cancer.
malignant metastatic formation of melanoma, was previously put down to the high mutation rate that is characteristic of melanoma,
A highly active epigenetic factor in cancer cells The readability of genes is controlled by epigenetic factors, namely factors
whether epigenetic factors are especially active in melanoma cells --and stumbled across EZH2, an epigenetic control protein found very frequently in malignant melanoma cells compared to normal cells.
Joining forces with dermatologists and oncologists from the University Hospital in Zurich and backed by the University Research Priority Program"Translational Cancer Research,
the epigenetic factor EZH2 controls genes that govern tumor growth as well as genes that are important for the formation of metastases.
Epigenetic factors like EZH2 therefore appear to be highly promising targets for future cancer treatments,
#Neuroscientists lead global consortium to crack brain's genetic code In the largest collaborative study of the brain to date,
researchers from the Keck School of medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) led a global consortium of 190 institutions to identify eight common genetic mutations that appear to age the brain an average of three years.
An international team of roughly 300 scientists known as the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis (ENIGMA) Network pooled brain scans
"ENIGMA's scientists screen brain scans and genomes worldwide for factors that help or harm the brain--this crowdsourcing and sheer wealth of data gives us the power to crack the brain's genetic code,
if the genetic mutations are implicated in disease. The ENIGMA researchers screened millions of"spelling differences"in the genetic code to see which ones affected the size of key parts of the brain in magnetic resonance images (MRIS) from 30,717 individuals.
The MRI analysis focused on genetic data from seven regions of the brain that coordinate movement, learning, memory and motivation.
People who carry one of those eight mutations had, on average, smaller brain regions than brains without a mutation but of comparable age;
Calcium carbonate platelets('bricks')alternate with soft biopolymer layers('mortar'.'While the solid platelets serve as the load bearing
Understanding this biology is necessary to move toward better treatment and prevention options for stress-related psychiatric and medical conditions
and drug resistance than many current drugs says Douglas Robinson Ph d. a professor of cell biology in the Institute for Basic Biomedical sciences at Johns hopkins university School of medicine.
Most drug screens look for an effect on a specific biochemical pathway that has been linked to disease;
Published online ahead of print in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical engineering (TBME), Mohs and co-authors report on their prototype system that combines a fluorescent dye that localizes in tumors with a real-time imaging system that allows the surgeon to simply view a screen to distinguish between normal tissue and the ightedmalignant tissue.
and Bioengineering for a project to optimize the system and to test it in rodents.
an urban research and business park specializing in biotechnology, materials science and information technology. Wake Forest Baptist clinical, research and educational programs are ranked annually among the best in the country by U s. News & World Report u
However they used a biological technology for this purpose that they developed and published in Nature Protocols three years ago.
and clinicians led to the discovery of a human genetic disorder with severe consequences that is linked to a mutation in the human NGLY1 gene.
In a big step towards understanding the effects of this mutation research by scientists at the RIKEN-Max Planck Joint Research center in Japan implicates the enzyme ENGASE as the factor responsible for deficient protein degradation that occurs in the absence
of mouse Ngly1 gene expression. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the paper details how lack of the Ngly1 protein results in the incomplete removal of the sugar portion of glycoproteins--a process called deglycosylation.
People with the NGLY1 mutation have many severe symptoms from delayed development and epilepsy to abnormal liver function
if the abnormal aggregation of this type of glycoprotein is somehow related to them it is tempting to speculate that inhibition of ENGASE activity may serve as a therapeutic target for patients carrying mutations in the NGLY1 gene.
It is shorter than any insulin that has been described in any animal said senior author Baldomero M. Olivera a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah.
or biomolecules also display strong absorption lines at this boundary between near and mid-wavelength infrared.
It provides data on the gene expression profiles of hundreds of individual cells in a single experiment producing an exact picture of the individual cell types.
and controlled for thereby allowing relevant biological signals to be identified more easily. We've defined how factors such as cell-cycle stage measurement noise
or biological processes can be taken into account making it possible to create a more accurate picture of gene expression in different cell types
If all you have is gene expression data from single cells you need a way to identify
so you can reveal the underlying biology explains Oliver Stegle Research Group Leader at EMBL-EBI.
The emergence of fluorescent proteins and transgenic techniques over the past 20 years has transformed biomedical research even delivering neurons that flash as they fire in the living brain.
SCAPE can also be combined with optogenetics and other tissue manipulations during imaging because unlike other systems it does not require any movement of the imaging objective lens
(Higgins Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics) Wesley Grueber (associate professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and of neuroscience Department of Physiology & Cell Biophysics
of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia. Hillman's sophistication in optical physics has led her to develop a new imaging technique that permits large-scale detection of neuronal firing in three-dimensional brain tissues.
You physically make the sample bigger rather than trying to magnify the rays of light that are emitted by the sample says Ed Boyden an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
Unfortunately in biology that's right where things get interesting says Boyden who is a member of MIT's Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
And the cast itself is swollen unimpeded by the original biological structure Tillberg says. The MIT team imaged this cast with commercially available confocal microscopes commonly used for fluorescent imaging
There are lots of biological questions where you have to understand a large structure Boyden says. Especially for the brain you have to be able to image a large volume of tissue
helps explain the biologic basis of these diseases and suggests targets for drug treatments and gene therapy, said Daiger, the report's senior author and holder of the Thomas Stull Matney Ph d. Endowed Professorship in Environmental and Genetic sciences at UTHEALTH School of Public health."
"The challenge now is to block the activity of these mutations and clinical trials are underway to do just that,
"he said.""Dr. Daiger is trying to make a breakthrough in potentially blinding diseases with no known treatments,
"For approximately three decades, Daiger, a member of the Human genetics Center at the UTHEALTH School of Public health, has been following the progress of hundreds of families across the country with retinitis pigmentosa."
This means that only one parent needs the mutation in order to pass the disease to a child.
"The story of the HK1 mutation is itself interesting. What we found is a mutation present in families from Louisiana, Canada and Sicily.
Our evidence suggests the mutation arose in a common ancestor who lived centuries ago, "Daiger said."
"The mutation spread in Europe and North america, and may be common among Acadians in Louisiana. This is called a founder mutation
#Ancient'genomic parasites'spurred evolution of pregnancy in mammals An international team of scientists has identified large-scale genetic changes that marked the evolution of pregnancy in mammals.
They found thousands of genes that evolved to be expressed in the uterus in early mammals,
study author Vincent Lynch, Phd, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago.""Most remarkably, we found the genetic changes that likely underlie the evolution of pregnancy are linked to domesticated transposable elements that invaded the genome in early mammals.
So I guess we owe the evolution of pregnancy to what are effectively genomic parasites."
The team found that this process was driven by ancient transposons--stretches of non-protein coding DNA that can change their position within the genome.
Sometimes called"jumping genes""transposons are thought generally to be genomic parasites that serve only to replicate themselves.
By randomly inserting themselves into other places in the genome, transposons appear to have passed on this activation mechanism to nearby genes."
"Lynch and his colleagues note their findings represent a novel explanation for how entirely new biological structures
genome-wide changes that allowed numerous genes to be activated by the same signal--in this case, progesterone,
Stunning advances in gene-sequencing technologies in concert with their plummeting costs have turned many scientists'attention to minute variations in the genome--the entire toolbox of genes carried in virtually every cell in the body--in the hope of predicting people's future health.
if you sequence someone's genome you can tell what diseases they're going have 50 years later said Mark Davis Phd professor of microbiology and immunology and director of Stanford's Institute for Immunity Transplantation and Infection.
Monozygotic twins inherit the same genome. Despite inevitable copying errors when cells divide which cause tiny genetic divergences to accumulate between monozygotic twins over time they remain almost 100 percent genetically identical.
Other Stanford co-authors of the study are Atul Butte MD Phd associate professor of pediatrics (systems medicine) and of genetics;
Holden Maecker Phd associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of Stanford's Human Immune Monitoring Center;
Information about Stanford's Department of Microbiology and Immunology which also supported the work is available at http://microimmuno. stanford. edu
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