Body

LA JOLLA--(May 26, 2016) At noon every day, levels of genes and proteins throughout your body are drastically different than they are at midnight. Disruptions to this 24-hour cycle of physiological activity are why jet lag or a bad night's sleep can alter your appetite and sleep patterns for days--and even contribute to conditions like heart disease, sleep disorders and cancers.

Among the valuable holdings in London's Wellcome Library is a rough pencil sketch made in 1953 by Francis Crick. The drawing is one of the first to show the double-helix structure of DNA--Nature's blueprint for the design of sea snails, human beings, and every other living form on earth.

Few could have predicted however, that DNA's simple properties of self-assembly, and its versatile information-carrying capacity, could be put to many uses never imagined by Watson and Crick, (or indeed, by Nature herself).

Melbourne researchers have discovered a new way of triggering cell death, in a finding that could lead to drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune disease.

Programmed cell death, also called apoptosis, is a natural process that removes unwanted cells from the body. Failure of apoptosis can allow cancer cells to grow unchecked or immune cells to inappropriately attack the body.

The protein known as Bak is central to apoptosis. In healthy cells Bak sits in an inert state but when a cell receives a signal to die, Bak transforms into a killer protein that destroys the cell.

Researchers at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) at Umeå University in Sweden participated in the discovery of a unique system of acquisition of essential metals in the pathogenic bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. This research was led by scientists at the CEA in France, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pau, the INRA and the CNRS. It represents a new potential target for the design of antibiotics. These results are being published in the journal Science on Friday 27 May.

First-time parents are only somewhat satisfied with their sex lives according to Penn State health researchers who checked in with parents regularly after their baby was born. And one factor that appears to be reducing their sexual satisfaction is mothers' stress as a new parent.

New research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that the world's estimated 60 million refugees, displaced from their homes due to conflict, persecution or human rights violations, may need at least 2.78 million surgeries a year, something thought to be very difficult to arrange in the midst of their upheaval.

When nerve cells have to communicate with each other in our brains, it involves release of small signal molecules, the so-called neurotransmitters, which act as chemical messengers in specific points of contact between nerve cells, called synapses. Here the released neurotransmitter is bound and registered by receptors at the surface of the receiving nerve cell. This will, in turn, trigger a signal which is sent on to other nerve cells.

PITTSBURGH, May 26, 2016 - Cardiac arrhythmia is a common complication following lung transplantation, and one that has a significant negative impact on long-term patient survival, reports a team of UPMC researchers in the largest study of its kind to date. The results, published online this week in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, provide critical information that will hopefully lead to better care of transplant recipients.

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology (EIMB RAS), the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (IBCh) and a number of other Russian research centers have developed a new method of diagnosing colorectal cancer. The results of the study have been published in Cancer Medicine.

Researchers at MIT are seeking to redesign concrete -- the most widely used human-made material in the world -- by following nature's blueprints.

Gene transcription is the process by which DNA is copied and synthesized as messenger RNA (mRNA) -- which delivers its genetic blueprints to the cell's protein-making machinery.

Now researchers at MIT and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) have identified a hidden, ephemeral phenomenon in cells that may play a major role in jump-starting mRNA production and regulating gene transcription.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Surrogate endpoints used to support the majority of new cancer drugs approved in the U.S. often lack formal study, according to the authors of a study published in the June issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. This analysis questions whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is adhering to standards that demand that surrogates be "reasonably likely to predict" or "established" to be used to grant approvals.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A Mayo Clinic-led study found that obese teenagers have lower levels of a hormone potentially tied to weight management than teens of normal weights. The study is published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

NASA's Human Research Program is releasing "Metabolomics: You Are What You Eat" video to highlight its Twins Study which uses omics to study Mark and Scott Kelly's metabolites. Omics is an evolving field integrating collections of measurements, biomolecules and sub-disciplines to provide a more complete picture of health. It includes the studies of DNA, RNA, proteins, your environment, microbiome and metabolites, to name a few. This is the sixth video in the omics miniseries of eight videos.

Washington -- A scientist from the PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. is the lead author of a review on pulmonary fibrosis that results from inhaling nanomaterials, which has been published in Archives of Toxicology. The coauthors are scientists from Health Canada, West Virginia University, and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.