Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania have discovered that the Opioid Growth Factor (OGF, [Met5]-enkephalin) and its receptor, OGFr, a clinically important system with potent antitumor properties, has controlled entry from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. The nucleocytoplasmic passage of OGF-OGFr is critical to cell proliferation and suggests that there are hierarchical levels of nuclear import.
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BOSTON, Aug. 23, 2010 — After decades of dreaming the drug developer's impossible dream, scientists finally are reporting progress in making drugs that target the "untouchables" among the body's key players in health and disease. They are the hundreds of thousands of proteins that many scientists considered to be "undruggable," meaning that previous efforts to develop a drug against them had failed.
Genes reside along long chains of DNA called chromosomes. UCLA researchers have found that a variation in a gene on the sex chromosome X may enhance an immune response that leads to lupus in men.
MADISON — In a study that promises to fill in the fine details of the plant world's blueprint for surviving drought, a team of Wisconsin researchers has identified in living plants the set of proteins that help them withstand water stress.
The new study, published today (Aug. 23) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies the protein targets in cells of a key hormone that controls how plants respond to environmental stresses such as drought, excessive radiation and cold.
The protein Hsp90 plays a significant role in the survival of cells that are exposed to stress. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) uncovered this protein's mode of operation some time ago – but now Hsp90 has surprised even the experts with an unexpected pattern of motion. The results are published in the current online issue of the renowned science journal PNAS and may help researchers discover specific cancer medication.
University Park, Pa. — Health benefits from polyphenol antioxidants — substances found in many fruits and vegetables — may come at a cost to some people. Penn State nutritional scientists found that eating certain polyphenols decreased the amount of iron the body absorbs, which can increase the risk of developing an iron deficiency.
A new fact sheet from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research provides detailed county-by-county estimates of the number of California residents who have lost health insurance during the economic downturn.
Following on a statewide estimate published earlier this year, the new analysis finds that the number of Californians without health insurance grew in all counties and that 37 counties — from Imperial to Kern to Shasta — saw uninsured rates increase to nearly one-third of their total non-elderly population (ages 0-64) for all or part of 2009.
Canada needs a new vision for health at the federal level, writes Dr. Paul Hebert, Editor-in-Chief, CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and Matthew Stanbrook, Deputy Editor, in an editorial http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.101207 published today.
If you had a dinner invitation in Utah's Escalante Valley almost 10,000 years ago, you would have come just in time to try a new menu item: mush cooked from the flour of milled sage brush seeds.
CINCINNATI—A University of Cincinnati (UC) analysis of 10 years of data from local kidney transplant patients shows that patients removed from a corticosteroid regimen shortly after surgery have better graft survival rates, better survival rates and fewer cardiovascular events than patients kept on the traditional regimen of long-term steroids.
How should a country respond to a biological invader that reaches its shores via cargo shipped as international trade?
Pesky invaders like Zebra mussels, Asian Longhorned Beetles, Kudzu, Triffid weed and others have wreaked billions of dollars in economic damage, destroying agriculture, harming human health and threatening biodiversity.
AMARILLO – A microscopic look into the genes of a Colorado wheat variety has allowed Texas AgriLife Research scientists to identify a wheat streak mosaic virus-resistance gene.
Wheat streak mosaic virus is one of the most common wheat viruses found in the 75 million acres of wheat across the U.S. – 3.3 million acres in Texas, said Dr. Charlie Rush, AgriLife Research plant pathologist in Amarillo.
University of Cincinnati researchers are reporting on the discovery of a bug with bifocals – such an amazing finding that it initially had the researchers questioning whether they could believe their own eyes. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of truly bifocal lenses in the extant animal kingdom," the researchers state in the Aug. 24 cover feature of the premier life-science journal, Current Biology.
In prehistoric times farmers across the world domesticated wild plants to create an agricultural revolution. As a result the ancestral plants have been lost, causing problems for anyone studying the domestication process of modern-day varieties, but that might change. A team led by Fabiola Parra at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) has managed to trace a domesticated cactus, the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe (Stenocereus pruinosus) to its living ancestor that can still be found in the Tehuacán Valley in Mexico.