Body

It's been more than 20 years since scientists first discovered the gene that causes cystic fibrosis (CF), yet questions about how the mutated gene causes disease remain unanswered.

For worms, choosing when to search for a new dinner spot depends on many factors, both internal and external: how hungry they are, for example, how much oxygen is in the air, and how many other worms are around. A new study demonstrates this all-important decision is also influenced by the worm's genetic make-up.

Paleontologists agree that it's difficult to observe behavior in fossil specimens that are dead – even extinct – and petrified. One method is to find a modern, living, species that has some similarities to the ancient animal.

That's the strategy adopted by David L. Meyer, University of Cincinnati professor of geology and colleagues as they study a group of ancient shellfish known as brachiopods. Although they resemble clams or other shelled mollusks, brachiopods are more closely related to marine worms. Relatively rare today, brachiopods were a dominant species in Paleozoic seas.

HAMILTON, March 16, 2011 -- Children and adolescents growing up with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are less fit than their peers, says a study by researchers at McMaster University and the McMaster Children's Hospital.

The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics online, shows children and youth with the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease have aerobic fitness levels 25 per cent lower than other children their age, and their muscle function is 10 per cent lower.

Using a light-triggered chemical tool, Johns Hopkins scientists report that they have refined a means of moving individual molecules around inside living cells and sending them to exact locations at precise times.

This new tool, they say, gives scientists greater command than ever in manipulating single molecules, allowing them to see how molecules in certain cell locations can influence cell behavior and to determine whether cells will grow, die, move or divide. A report on the work was published online December 13 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Cells, which employ a process called autophagy to clean up and reuse protein debris leftover from biological processes, were the original recyclers. A team of scientists from Paul Greengard's Rockefeller University laboratory have linked a molecule that stimulates autophagy with the reduction of one of Alzheimer's disease's major hallmarks, amyloid peptide. Their finding suggests a mechanism that could be used to eliminate built-up proteins in diseases such as Alzheimer's, Down syndrome, Huntingdon's and Parkinson's.

A research article co-authored by Brenna Anderson, MD, director of Reproductive Infectious Diseases Consultation in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, was included in the recently published special issue of the American Journal of Reproductive Immunology.