HOUSTON -- (June 25, 2010) – Ronin, crucial to the self-renewal of embryonic stem cells, and a co-regulator called Hcf-1, binds to a small strand of DNA called a hyperconserved enhancer element to control a gene "program" that stimulates growth of the stem cells and may even play a role in cancer, said a group of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine in a current report in the journal Genes and Development.
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Resveratrol — found in red wine, grapes, blueberries, peanuts and other plants — stops out-of-control blood vessel growth in the eye, according to vision researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Copenhagen, Denmark – Researchers from the Danish Cancer Society and the Herlev University Hospital of Copenhagen have developed a novel assay to test for multiple tumor markers in bladder cancer. The related report by Serizawa et al, "Custom-designed MLPA using multiple short synthetic probes: application to methylation analysis of five promoter CpG islands in tumor and urine specimens from patients with bladder cancer," appears in the July 2010 issue of The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
Some of the molecular machinery that governs flower formation has been uncovered in the daisy-like Gerbera plants. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Plant Biology have published a pair of articles detailing how the complex Gerbera inflorescence is formed and how this process differs from other model plants, such as the more simple flowers of Arabidopsis species.
Radical cuts to social welfare spending to reduce budget deficits could cause not just economic pain but cost lives, warn experts in a study published on bmj.com today.
While there is a major debate under way about the potential economic impacts of radical budget cuts in Europe, David Stuckler from the University of Oxford and his colleagues dissect the effect of public spending on people's health.
Polarised arguments about the benefits and harms of breast screening are not helping women to make an informed decision, argues a senior doctor on bmj.com today.
Klim McPherson, Professor of Public Health Epidemiology at the University of Oxford looks at the evidence and calls for dispassionate analysis of all available data.
For patients with kidney disease on dialysis, the widely used heart medication digoxin may lead to an increased risk of premature death, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).
In a novel mathematical model that reproduces sleep patterns for multiple species, an international team of researchers has demonstrated that the neural circuitry that controls the sleep/wake cycle in humans may also control the sleep patterns of 17 different mammalian species.
We've all experienced the strong heartbeat that accompanies emotions such as fear and rage. But can the body's natural response to these emotions be used to combat heart failure? Results of a study published online today in the journal Circulation Research present a strong case.
In the study, scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that two experimental drugs have the potential to restore pumping strength to failing hearts in part by harnessing the fight-or-flight response that makes hearts beat stronger.
This is a tutorial on how tissue-engineered rat lung is transplanted.
(Photo Credit: Yale University, Yale School of Medicine)
This video shows how lung tissue is engineered.
Through textures, shapes, weights and temperatures, the sense of touch influences both our thoughts and behavior.
In a series of six experiments documented in the June 25 issue of the journal Science, a Yale-led team of psychologists demonstrated how dramatically our sense of touch affects how we view the world.
Retinitis pigmentosa affects over one million people worldwide and is manifested by a progressive loss of sight, eventually leading to blindness. Retinitis pigmentosa is a form of inherited retinal degeneration that affects the light-sensitive cells : photoreceptors. Photoreceptors are a special type of neuron which convert light into nervous impulses. These impulses are then processed by the retina and transmitted along the nerve fibres to the brain. There are two types of photoreceptors: rods and cones.