STANFORD, Calif. — Human skin cells can be converted directly into functional neurons in a period of four to five weeks with the addition of just four proteins, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is significant because it bypasses the need to first create induced pluripotent stem cells, and may make it much easier to generate patient- or disease-specific neurons for study in a laboratory dish.
Body
Tacrolimus, a drug that is commonly used to prevent organ transplantation rejection, inhibits breast cancer growth in pre-clinical studies. The finding from UNC scientists was reported in the May 26th PLoS ONE.
WASHINGTON — Despite being used for several decades, test-based incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report examines evidence on incentive programs, which impose sanctions or offer rewards for students, teachers, or schools on the basis of students' test performance. Federal and state governments have increasingly relied on incentives in recent decades as a way to raise accountability in public education and in the hope of driving improvements in achievement.
SAN ANTONIO (May 26, 2011) — Community-acquired pneumonia is the leading cause of infectious death among the elderly. Newly published research from The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio suggests why older people are vulnerable and offers a possible defense.
HOUSTON -- (May 27, 2011) – The genes of a cell are like the 88 keys of a piano. To play chords and music, however, the keys must be activated in exact combinations by a pianist's hands. Those hands represent the coregulators of a cell that simultaneously and precisely activate genes to produce all of the cell's functions.
Snug inside a human red blood cell, the malaria parasite hides from the immune system and fuels its growth by digesting hemoglobin, the cell's main protein. The parasite, however, must obtain additional nutrients from the bloodstream via tiny pores in the cell membrane. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found the genes that malaria parasites use to create these feeding pores.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Using a tiny bloodless worm, University of Maryland Associate Professor Iqbal Hamza and his team have discovered a large piece in the puzzle of how humans, and other organisms safely move iron around in the body. The findings, published in the journal Cell, could lead to new methods for treating age-old scourges - parasitic worm infections, which affect more than a quarter of the world's population, and iron deficiency, the world's number one nutritional disorder.
Researchers have discovered a tiny protein without which the soil and lab-dwelling worm C. elegans can't deliver iron-rich heme taken in from their diets to the rest of their bodies or to their developing embryos. The finding reported in the May 27th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, offers important insight into the transport of the essential ingredient in worms and other animals, including humans.
Unlocking the mechanisms that cause neurodegenerative prion diseases may require a genetic key, suggest new findings reported by University of Illinois at Chicago distinguished professor of biological sciences Susan Liebman.
Prions can turn a normal protein into a misfolded form. One prion in mammals promotes progressive neurodegenerative disorders like "mad cow" disease that often prove fatal. But how this process happens remains an open question for scientists.
Multitasking meds: Scientists discover how drug for leukemia, psoriasis, may tackle vascular disease
A drug that has been on the market for decades to treat leukemia and skin disorders such as acne and psoriasis may be a possible therapy for vascular diseases, including atherosclerosis and hypertension, which can lead to heart attack or stroke.
Previously, researchers discovered that retinoids – commonly used natural or man-made drugs related to vitamin A – blunted experimental vascular disease by spurring into action a very particular segment of a gene known for its ability to curb cancer cell growth.
The age-specific blood levels of the Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) can predict when women will reach menopause. This makes family planning easier, say fertility researchers from the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. Their findings were published online May 26 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
»Medicines from plants« – one thinks of herbal teas or valerian drops. However, that has nothing in common with what the researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Aachen, Germany, are doing. They use plants to produce biopharmaceuticals. Those are proteins that, unlike many other medications, cannot be chemically produced.
"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." . . . Wes "Scoop" Nisker
For cooperation to persist in the often violently competitive realm of bacteria, cheaters must be kept in line.
Two Indiana University Bloomington biologists have learned that in one bacterium, at least, bacterial cooperators can evolve to "police" the cheaters and arrest their bids for dominance.
"Even simple organisms such as bacteria can evolve to suppress social cheaters," said Gregory Velicer, who with Ph.D. student Pauline Manhes has reported the policing behavior in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.