Mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of the body. The driver for this process is an electrochemical membrane potential, which is created by a series of proton pumps. These complex, macromolecular machines are collectively known as the respiratory chain. The structure of the largest protein complex in the respiratory chain, that of mitochondrial complex I, has been elucidated by scientists from the Frankfurt "Macromolecular Complexes" cluster of excellence, working together with the University of Freiburg, by X-ray diffraction analysis.
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Despite enormous progress in cancer therapy, many patients still relapse because their treatment addresses the symptoms of the disease rather than the cause, the so-called stem cells. Work in the group of Veronika Sexl at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna has given a tantalizing clue to a solution. In the current issue of Blood, the scientists report that the cell-cycle kinase CDK6 is required for activation of the stem cells responsible for causing leukemia.
Swedish studies show that mice that receive a supplement of the "appetite hormone" ghrelin increase their sexual activity. Whether the hormone has the same impact on humans is unknown - but if it does, the researchers may have found the key to future treatments for sex abuse.
Ghrelin is a gastrointestinal hormone that is released from the stomach, and is involved in the stimulation of our appetite by activating the brain's reward system.
In a new study from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), researchers have used human pluripotent stem cells to generate new hair. The study represents the first step toward the development of a cell-based treatment for people with hair loss. In the United States alone, more than 40 million men and 21 million women are affected by hair loss. The research was published online in PLOS One yesterday.
Death rates from lung cancer will exceed those for breast cancer for the first time among European women in 2015, according to new predictions in Annals of Oncology [1].
The study predicts that although the actual number of deaths from all cancers in the European Union will continue to rise due to growing populations and numbers of elderly people, the rate of cancer deaths will continue to decline overall, with some notable exceptions: lung cancer in women and pancreatic cancer in both sexes. [2]
Painful nocturnal leg cramps are about twice as common during summer than in winter, found a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's or Parkinson's are caused by defect and aggregated proteins accumulating in brain nerve cells that are thereby paralyzed or even killed. In healthy cells this process is prevented by an enzyme complex known as the proteasome, which removes and recycles obsolete and defective proteins. Recently, researchers in the team of Wolfgang Baumeister at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich were the first to observe and structurally characterize proteasomes at work inside healthy brain cells.
Cancer uses a little-understood element of cell signaling to hijack the communication process and spread, according to Rice University researchers.
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 which cells communicate with their neighbors as they pass messages to "be like me" or "be not like me."
E. coli usually brings to mind food poisoning and beach closures, but researchers recently discovered a protein in E. coli that inhibits the accumulation of potentially toxic amyloids--a hallmark of diseases such as Parkinson's.
Will extending telomeres lead to longer, healthier lives? Researchers have taken a step toward answering this question by developing a new treatment used in the laboratory that extends telomeres.
Lowering blood pressure and cholesterol saved 20,000 lives in England. The impact of statins, credit with 14 percent of the drop, was greatest among the most affluent in the population, suggesting that these drugs have helped maintain health inequalities between rich and poor, say the researchers.
A new study by researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles has shown that neonatal mouse hearts have varying regenerative capacities depending upon the severity of injury. Using cryoinjury - damaging the heart through exposure to extreme cold in order to mimic cellular injury caused by myocardial infarction - investigators found that neonatal mouse hearts can fully recover normal function following a mild injury, though fail to regenerate after a severe injury.
A team of scientists based at Brown University has found that reducing expression of a fundamentally important gene called Myc significantly increased the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice, the first such finding regarding this gene in a mammalian species.
Upending decades-old dogma, researchers say enzymes long categorized as promoting cancer are, in fact, tumor suppressors and that current clinical efforts to develop inhibitor-based drugs should instead focus on restoring the enzymes' activities.
A study has uncovered several new genetic mutations that could drive testicular cancer - and also identified a gene which may contribute to tumors becoming resistant to current treatments.