Culture
Why do genes need to be silenced? The "genes" in question are in fact transposons, selfish genetic elements that seek to self-multiply at the host's expense and that need to be controlled. Julius Brennecke's group at IMBA focuses on lifting the mysteries of a specific type of transposon silencing, namely the piRNA pathway in animal gonads. Understanding this ancient silencing system promises to reveal general mechanistic principles of gene expression and chromatin biology.
Gene silencing: either before they "speak", or right as they attempt to
Combining healthy lifestyle interventions reduces heart disease through beneficial effects on different lipoproteins and associated cholesterols, according to a study published February 9 in eLife.
Having a healthy lifestyle has long been associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease. The new study provides more detailed information on how healthy lifestyles improve cholesterol, and suggests that combining cholesterol-lowering medications and lifestyle interventions may yield the greatest benefits to heart health.
The fact that cells are motile and come into contact with each other is one of biology's fundamental principles. During embryonic development, cells must communicate with their neighbors in order to find their proper place in the differentiating organism. Wound healing is another process in which direct intercellular interactions are essential. In this context, motility enables cells to migrate to the location of the lesion and regenerate lost structures.
Icebergs are melting faster than current models describe, according to a new study by mathematicians at the University of Sydney. The researchers have proposed a new model to more accurately represent the melt speed of icebergs into oceans.
Their results, published in Physical Review Fluids, have implications for oceanographers and climate scientists.
Psychotherapy for panic disorder produces good results, and the effects are lasting. That is the result from a large long-term study from Lund University in Sweden. Two years after treatment were 70 per cent of the patients clearly improved and 45 per cent were remitted.
Following the civil war outbreak in Syria nearly ten years ago, Israel began admitting wounded Syrians into the country for humanitarian medical treatment.
In accordance with the Israeli government's decision, the Israel Defense Forces, medical corps, health care system and hospitals in the north of the country joined together to provide medical treatment to thousands of wounded Syrians. The logistics of evacuating the injured from the battlefield and transferring them to Israeli territory was often prolonged due to the fact that Israel and Syria are defined as enemy countries.
The researchers used a biophysical method called thermal proteome profiling (TPP) to gain a comprehensive overview of which human proteins are functionally altered during SARS-CoV-2 infection. TPP monitors protein amounts and denaturation temperatures - the points at which proteins heat up so much that they lose their 3D structure. A shift in denaturation temperature indicates that a particular protein has undergone a functional change upon infection, possibly due to the virus hijacking the protein for use in its own replication.
Psycholinguists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain found that when reading, people are not only able to predict specific words, but also words' grammatical properties, which helps them to read faster. Researchers have also discovered that predictability of words and grammatical features can be successfully modelled with the use of neural networks. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Nature has its way of maintaining balance. This statement rightly holds true for plants that are eaten by herbivores--insects or even mammals. Interestingly, these plants do not just silently allow themselves to be consumed and destroyed; in fact, they have evolved a defense system to warn them of predator attacks and potentially even ward them off. The defense systems arise as a result of inner and outer cellular signaling in the plants, as well as ecological cues.
It is almost ten years since the scientific journal Science called optogenetics the "breakthrough of the decade". Put simply, the technique makes it possible to control the electrical activity of cells with pulses of light. With its help, scientists can gain new insights into the functioning of nerve cells, for example, and thus better understand neurological and psychiatric diseases such as depression and schizophrenia.
Established procedure on animal cells
PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [February 16, 2021] -- New research in the February 2021 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined body mass index (BMI) data for people with HER2-positive early breast cancer, and found a 5% weight loss in patients over two years in was associated with worse outcomes. Weight gain over the same time period did not affect survival rates.
High levels of public support for strict measures to control COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic did not reflect high levels of public trust in the UK government's honesty, transparency or motives, suggests a new study published in PLOS One.
The 'mixed-methods' project, a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University College London (UCL), involved collecting data from more than 9,000 adults living in the UK using an online survey.
A recent qualitative study sheds light on how people cope with health and financial challenges, highlighting the important role that communication plays in these coping strategies.
By Maria Fernanda Ziegler | Agência FAPESP – The use of cover crops between cotton harvests protects the soil, conserves water, and reduces the risk of erosion. Researchers at the University of Western São Paulo (UNOESTE) and São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil found that application of potassium (K) to a grass cover crop grown before cotton in sandy soil lowered production cost and resulted in cotton with a higher market value.
Scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and SunYat-Sen University in China have set the stage for the development of highly sensitive antibody tests for infection with all known human coronaviruses, including new variants of SARS-CoV-2. These tests should also allow differentiation of immune responses due to infection and vaccination. The research is published in Communications Biology, a Nature journal.