Immunologists and microbiologists from the University of Melbourne's Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity - a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital - have led a study that defined a new cell type responsible for turning the attack back on the bacteria.
With this discovery, they have dissected the complex roles of legions of immune cells that interact to destroy the bacterium.
An international joint research group found that the cause of heart arrhythmia in myotonic dystrophy was RNA abnormalities in the sodium channel in the heart, clarifying the symptom's mechanism. This finding will be helpful in prevention and early intervention of death in this disease, leading to the development of new treatment.
Myotonic dystrophy, or DM is the most common muscular dystrophy in adults. However, there are currently no cure for DM and there are significant cases of sudden death suspected to be due to heart arrhythmia.
Insects transmit diseases when, probing for blood vessels, they inject saliva together with viral, bacterial, or parasitic pathogens into the skin of mammalian hosts. A study in mice published on June 16, 2016 in PLOS Pathogens suggests a critical role of mosquito saliva in the outcome of dengue virus infection.
The first eukaryote is thought to have arisen when simpler archaea and bacteria joined forces. But in an Opinion paper published June 16 in Trends in Cell Biology, researchers propose that new genomic evidence derived from a deep-sea vent on the ocean floor suggests that the molecular machinery essential to eukaryotic life was probably borrowed, little by little over time, from those simpler ancestors.
Picture a singer, accompanied by a grand piano. As the singer's voice dances through multiple octaves of range, the pianist's fingers trip from one end of the keyboard to the other. Both the singer's voice and the piano are dynamic instruments. But while the piano creates its music using the vibration of 88 strings, the singer uses only two.
Researchers developed a model aimed at identifying behavioral patterns among online supporters of ISIS and used this information to predict the onset of major violent events.
The FBI must develop modern technological capacities rather than relying on out-of-date approaches, Susan Landau argues in this Policy Forum, zeroing in on the organization's recent request to Apple to develop software through which to access an iPhone - rather than tackling the issue through its own technological efforts.
In the Canadian province of Quebec, a study of more than 26,000 trees across an area the size of Spain forecasts potential winners and losers in a changing climate.
The study, published today in the journal Science, shows that boreal forests in far-northern latitudes may one day act as a climate refuge for black spruce, the foundational tree for the northwoods ecosystem - a major source of the world's paper; home to caribou, snowshoe hare, lynx, and sable; and nesting site for dozens of migratory bird species.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 16, 2016 - The first study that shows that overweight in late adolescence in men is a significant risk factor for developing severe liver disease later in life has been published in the Journal of Hepatology. Contributing to the strength of this research are the large group of men studied (close to 45,000), very long follow-up time (nearly 40 years), and the high percentage of individuals who remained in the study (1% loss to follow-up).
A new procedure developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may revolutionize the culturing of adult stem cells. In their report that has been published online prior to its appearance in the August 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, the team describes generating and expanding airway stem cells from the sorts of tissue samples collected during routine treatment of lung disorders. The overall approach appears applicable to several other tissue types, including skin and the linings of the gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts.
Sugar in the form of blood glucose provides essential energy for cells. When its usual dietary source -- carbohydrates -- is scarce, the liver can produce it with the aid of fat. But new research from Johns Hopkins now adds to evidence that other tissues can step in to make glucose when the liver's ability is impaired, and that the breakdown of fats in the liver is essential to protect it from a lethal onslaught of fat.
Return on investment in county public health departments in California exceeds return on investment in many other areas of medical care, according to a new study by a University of California, Berkeley economist.
In summer 2011, University of Colorado Cancer Center investigators Joaquín Espinosa, PhD, and Matthew Galbraith, PhD, taught a summer symposium on gene expression at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York. As part of the three-week course, one of their students, Joel Perrez-Perri from Dr. Pablo Wappner's lab at the Instituto Leloir in Buenos Aires, Argentina, presented data from experiments on fruit flies describing the role of the histone acetyl-transferase TIP60 (aka KAT5) in regulating the expression of genes controlled by a protein known as HIF1A.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins report that a type of lab-grown human nerve cells can partner with heart muscle cells to stimulate contractions. Because the heart-thumping nerve cells were derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that in turn were made from human skin cells, the researchers believe the cells -- known as sympathetic nerve cells -- will be an aid in studying disorders that affect the nervous system -- that is, scientists will be able to grow nerve cells in the lab that replicate particular patients' diseases.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that affects multiple organs. SLE severity is highly variable, and this variability is known to be partially dependent on ancestral background. Notably, African Americans are at a higher risk of developing SLE and suffer from a more severe form of the disease compared with European Americans. In this issue of JCI Insight, Laurence Menard and colleagues at Bristol-Myers Squibb investigated differences in immune cell characteristics that may contribute to SLE severity in African Americans.