Information flow in cells relies on calcium as a key agent in several signalling pathways. Calcium dependent signalling is crucial in nearly every aspect of life - muscle movement, immune reactions, nerve function, light sensing and many such processes. In fact, one could consider any cellular function, and calcium signalling is probably involved in it in some way. Now, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore have discovered a new player in calcium signalling pathways - a protein named Septin 7 that functions as a 'molecular brake' to Orai activation.
Body
Testing cancers for 'addiction' to a gene that boosts cell growth can pick out patients who may respond to a targeted drug under development, a major new study reports.
By measuring the number of copies of just one gene from cancer DNA circulating in the bloodstream, scientists were able to identify the patients with stomach cancer who were most likely to respond to treatment.
T cell receptors are an important part of the human immune system. They are able to switch their conformation from an inactive to an active state spontaneously without any antigens present. Cholesterol binds and stabilizes inactive receptors, giving it a decisive role in the activation of a T cell. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schamel and Dr. Susana Minguet, immunologists from the University of Freiburg, and their team of researchers were able to demonstrate this in a study that has been recently published in the journal Immunity.
DARIEN, IL - A new study found that military service members who reported insomnia symptoms or short sleep durations were less resilient than members who reported healthy sleep hygiene. Several physical and mental variables were evaluated as indices of resilience. These variables were, self-rated general health, lost workdays, deployment, completion of service term, and health care utilization.
Long sleep duration was less predicative of resilience outcomes.
May 27, 2016 - Simultaneous transplantation of a "composite" skull and scalp flap plus a kidney and pancreas--all from the same donor--provided excellent outcomes for a patient with a non-healing scalp defect and declining organ kidney and pancreas function, according to a report in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
RICHLAND, Wash. - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are playing a central role as the nation devotes more than $500 million to understand communities of microorganisms and their role in climate science, food production and human health.
Scientists Janet Jansson and Ljiljana Paša-Toli are part of a core group of scientists advising the White House on issues related to research around the microbiome, a term that describes a community of microbes in a given environment.
Finding new, more effective and personalised treatments for cancer is the challenge of many researchers. A challenge that has been successfully met by a team from Inserm led by Stéphane Rocchi (Inserm Unit 1065, "Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine"), which has just synthesised and developed new drugs for melanoma. One of them, known as HA15, reduces the viability of melanoma cells without being toxic for normal cells. This work has just been published in the journal Cancer Cell.
LAWRENCE -- A golfer, a banker and a gambler linked in an insider trading case make for a great headline and provocative news.
That was true last week when it was disclosed that as chairman of Dean Foods, Thomas C. Davis reportedly repaid gambling debts by feeding boardroom secrets to sports bettor William T. Walters. Throw in pro golfer Phil Mickelson -- who was not accused of wrongdoing but was "unjustly enriched" -- and you've got a sensational insider trading story.
Researchers can build complex, nanometer-scale structures of almost any shape and form, using strands of DNA. But these particles must be designed by hand, in a complex and laborious process.
This has limited the technique, known as DNA origami, to just a small group of experts in the field.
Now a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has developed an algorithm that can build these DNA nanoparticles automatically.
Research from North Carolina State University and Ohio University finds that having an "alcohol identity" puts college students at greater risk of having drinking problems - and that posting about alcohol use on social media sites is actually a stronger predictor of alcohol problems than having a drink.
People have always wondered why many birds lay bright blue eggs. David Lahti of the City University of New York and Dan Ardia of Franklin & Marshall College tested the hypothesis that pigmentation might help an egg strike a balance between two opposing and potentially damaging effects of the sun: light transmission into light-colored eggs, and heating up of dark-colored eggs.
Why do animals migrate? Explanations behind the evolution of such a costly, yet common behavior are varied. However, rarely do parasites and pathogens figure into the story. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Neuchâtel think this is an important oversight, and have worked out the math to prove it.
Garbage, nutrients and tiny animals are pushed around, suspended in the world's oceans by waves invisible to the naked eye according to a new 3-D model developed by mathematicians at the University of Waterloo.
David Deepwell, a graduate student, and Professor Marek Stastna in Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics have created a 3-D simulation that showcases how materials such phytoplankton, contaminants, and nutrients move within aquatic ecosystems via underwater bulges called mode-2 internal waves.
The toxic dinoflagellate, Alexandrium fundyense, is a photosynthetic plankton--a microscopic organism floating in the ocean, unable to swim against a current. New research by scientists at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) suggests that ingestion of this dinoflagellate changes the energy balance and reproductive potential of a particular copepod--a small crustacean--in the North Atlantic, which is key food source for young fishes, including many commercially important species.
The pyran ring is present in so many useful compounds, such as pharmaceuticals (antibiotics, anti-infectives, cardiovascular agents, neurological modulators, anti-allergic, anti-asthmatic, anti-inflammatory agents, reproductive and genitourinary agents, growth promoters and antidiabetic agents), veterinary products, agrochemicals, toxins, polymers and additives, photosensitizers and photoinitiators, surfactants, food products, dyes and pigments, This fact keeps motivating synthetic organic chemists to develop newer facile synthetic methods to make these compounds accessible in high enantiom