Culture
Many important natural products such as antibiotics, immunosuppressants, or cancer drugs are derived from microorganisms. These natural products are often small proteins or peptides which are generated in the cell by NRPS enzymes similar to a modern automobile factory: at each station additional parts are added to the basic structure until finally a completed automobile leaves the factory.
A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital has revealed a connection between mTORC1 and Src, two proteins known to be hyperactive in cancer. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that Src is necessary and sufficient to activate mTORC1 and offers the possibility to develop novel approaches to control cancer growth.
At holiday buffets and potlucks, people make quick calculations about which dishes to try and how much to take of each. Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists have found a brain region that appears to be strongly connected to such food preference decisions.
Teenage girls who were maltreated as children are more likely to entertain suicidal thoughts if the relationship with their mother is poor and the degree of conflict between the two of them high.
Researchers at the University of Rochester's Mt. Hope Family Center found that the quality of the mother-daughter relationship and their level of conflict are two direct mechanisms underlying the association between child maltreatment and suicidal thoughts during adolescence.
Scientists at the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and the Stein Eye Institute have been awarded a $5.1 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to advance the development of a novel therapy for blinding retinal conditions.
A newly discovered toxin that some bacteria deploy to fend off competing bacteria stands out from others in the battle for microbial domination. While many deadly substances have been identified among bacteria, this previously unknown toxin behaves in a familiar way.
"What is special about this toxin," noted UW Medicine microbiologist Brook Peterson, "is that it acts by the same biochemical mechanism as some infamous toxins employed by human pathogens, which evolved much later than the toxins bacteria use against each other."
ESMO 2018 abstract 619PD_PR - Influence of sex on chemotherapy efficacy and toxicity in oesophagogastric (OG cancer): a pooled analysis of 4 randomised trials.
Women may experience certain chemotherapy side-effects including nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, mouth ulceration and hair loss more frequently than men, according to a new analysis of oesophageal and stomach cancer patients.
Investigators from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital will present new findings at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting this week, including study results focused on the benefit of utilizing whole genome, exome and transcriptome sequencing for pediatric cancer patients.
Comprehensive genomic profiling
In January the technology world was rattled by the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre, two major security vulnerabilities in the processors that can be found in virtually every computer on the planet.
Perhaps the most alarming thing about these vulnerabilities is that they didn't stem from normal software bugs or physical CPU problems. Instead, they arose from the architecture of the processors themselves - that is, the millions of transistors that work together to execute operations.
Bottom Line: A statistical method could fill the gaps in the U.S. cancer registry data to estimate the short- and long-term risk of recurrence of hormone receptor (HR)-positive and HR-negative breast cancers.
Philadelphia, October 17, 2018--A new study by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the University of Pennsylvania and six other centers reveals that children with developmental delays, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are up to 50 percent more likely to be overweight or obese compared with the general population.
The findings were published online by The Journal of Pediatrics.
Ecosystems have a variety of benefits: They provide us with food, water and other resources, as well as recreational space. It is therefore even more important that these systems remain functional and stable - especially in view of climate change or environmental pollution. Ecologists at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) have now examined the factors that influence this stability in a unique and comprehensive experiment.
Mini-ecosystems with ciliates
What do watermelons and bacteria have in common? Just like the tasty fruit, microbes can be molded into unusual shapes, a study in Nature Communications has shown. The paper, produced by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), has modified the structure of bacterial cells from simple rods into elaborate shapes not seen in nature, showing just how robust these life forms can be.
DeKalb, IL - A new study finds that over the past four decades, tornado frequency has increased over a large swath of the Midwest and Southeast and decreased in portions of the central and southern Great Plains, a region traditionally associated with Tornado Alley.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Mosquitoes are the world's deadliest animals, killing thousands of people and causing millions of illnesses each year. To be able to reproduce and become effective disease carriers, mosquitoes must first attain optimal body size and nutritional status.