According to modern biology textbooks, a single genetic mutation is rarely enough to cause cancer. It is generally thought that cells must accumulate a series of mutations that work together to trigger tumor development. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have shown that distinct cancer-causing mutations in neighboring cells can cooperate to produce tumors.
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Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society have discovered for the first time the breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler—dubbed in 2007 as "the world's least known bird species"—in the remote and rugged Wakhan Corridor of the Pamir Mountains of north-eastern Afghanistan.
Using a combination of astute field observations, museum specimens, DNA sequencing, and the first known audio recording of the species, researchers verified the discovery by capturing and releasing almost 20 birds earlier this year, the largest number ever recorded.
Since the time of the earliest humans, people have attempted to understand the natural environment. We have observed our surroundings and searched for explanations for natural phenomena. Yet despite our persistence over thousands of years, many basic questions remain to be answered. Although we understand core processes such as photosynthesis, we do not have a full understanding of issues such as how plants maximize their photosynthetic capacity.
Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate. However, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, going "au natural" may be the best way to capture a potential mate's attention.
The prevalence of high weight for length or high body mass index (BMI) among children and teens in the U.S. (i.e., at or above the 95th percentile), ranges from approximately 10 percent for infants and toddlers, to approximately 18 percent for adolescents and teenagers, although these rates appear to have remained relatively stable over the past 10 years, except for an increase for 6- to 19-year-old boys who are at the very heaviest weight levels, according to a study appearing in the January 20 issue of JAMA.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Jan. 13, 2010 — Researchers for TGen Clinical Research Services at Scottsdale Healthcare (TCRS) have identified a way to predict which patients with small-cell lung cancer may be resistant to first-line chemotherapy.
The study, Tumor MicroRNA Biomarkers Associated with De Novo Chemoresistance in Small Cell Lung Cancer, will be presented today in San Diego at a joint conference of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).
Changing the words used to describe someone struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction may significantly alter the attitudes of health care professionals, even those who specialize in addiction treatment. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have found that health professionals' answers to survey questions about a hypothetical patient varied depending on whether he was described as a "substance abuser" or as "having a substance use disorder." Their study will appear in the International Journal of Drug Policy and has been released online.
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Two scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are part of an international team that has discovered a genetic mutation that causes Joubert Syndrome. JBTS, as it is commonly called, is a devastating inherited neurological disease that is very rare in the general population but found relatively more often among Ashkenazi Jews.
When ribosomes produce protein in all living cells, they do so through a chemical reaction that happens so fast that scientists have been puzzled. Using large quantum mechanical calculations of the reaction center of the ribosome, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden can now provide the first detailed picture of the reaction. The findings are published in the Web edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS.
Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School and the University of Exeter, UK, have found more evidence for a link between Bisphenol A exposure (BPA, a chemical commonly used in plastic food containers) and cardiovascular disease. The team analysed new US population data and their results are published by the online journal, PLoS ONE.
Forensic pathologists have shown that over three per cent of all sudden deaths in south-west Spain are related to the use of cocaine. They believe their findings can be extrapolated to much of the rest of Europe, indicating that cocaine use is a growing public health problem in Europe and that there is no such thing as "safe" recreational use of small amounts of the drug.
Chromosomes move faster than we first thought. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal, Genome Biology, details new findings about the way chromosomes move around the nucleus when leaving the proliferative stage of the cell cycle and entering quiescence – and the unexpected speed at which they move.
Scientists have found what they believe is the "missing link" between heart failure, our genes and our environment. The study could open up completely new ways of managing and treating heart disease.
The Cambridge team compared heart tissue from two groups – patients with end-stage heart failure and those with healthy hearts. The diseased tissue came from men who had undergone heart transplants at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, and the healthy hearts from age-matched victims of road traffic accidents.
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2010 -- An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund "as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal."
Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) have identified the reason a key protein plays a major role in two neurodegenerative diseases. In the current edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers in the laboratory of GIND Associate Director Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD have found how the protein TDP-43 may cause the neurodegeneration associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration with ubiquitin-positive inclusion bodies (FTLDu).