Body

Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 28 say that climate change will cause a disproportionate decline in African antelopes with the smallest geographic ranges, placing the most-threatened taxa in "double jeopardy." The findings are the first to suggest that animals already living in the most-restricted areas will be hardest hit as the climate shifts in the coming decades.

If a woman's female relatives have fraternal twins, she is more likely to give birth to twins herself, but the genes behind this phenomenon have remained a mystery. Now, researchers reporting April 28 in the American Journal of Human Genetics have nailed down two genes associated with twinning. They show genetic links between having twins and female production of, and response to, follicle-stimulating hormone, which may help predict how some women respond to infertility treatments.

Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 28 have found a gene that helps explain why some people appear more youthful than others.

The gene in question, known as MC1R, is already well known for producing red hair and pale skin. Now, it appears that variation in this same gene is also related to differences in how old people look to other people--their perceived age. People carrying particular MC1R variants in their DNA look, on average, almost 2 years older than they are.

Age-related changes in the human pancreas govern how our bodies respond to rising and falling blood sugar levels throughout our lifetimes, and could affect whether we develop diabetes as adults. But it's been nearly impossible to study this process in detail because human pancreatic tissue is not readily available.

Instead, most researchers have relied on animal models to learn more about the development and function of the pancreas.

A pair of molecular signals controls skin and hair color in mice and humans -- and could be targeted by new drugs to treat skin pigment disorders like vitiligo, according to a report by scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center.

When it comes to replicating their DNA so they can propagate, normal cells are perfectionists. Cancer cells, on the other hand, have no problem tolerating mistakes while copying their DNA. In fact, messed-up DNA is a big part of what lets them keep changing and eluding the body's efforts to fight them.

Now, University of Minnesota researchers have figured out how some cells do an end-run on replication quality control -- opening the door to developing new cancer-quashing treatments.

Researchers in a USC-led study said they have identified a key action of a watershed gene critical to bone formation and the evolution of vertebrates.

The Sp7 or Osterix gene more than likely emerged from an ancestral gene family about 400 million years ago, expanding the diversity of life and programming the development of bone-secreting osteoblast cells. Bone-forming vertebrates now range from the tiny frog Paedophryne amauensis to the mighty blue whale.

Scientists have announced a major breakthrough in their understanding of how the fungus Aspergillus terreus - the cause of serious illness in humans - can move around the body, rather than remaining in the lungs as with similar fungal infections.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Nottingham and published in the academic journal Cell Chemical Biology, has discovered that infections from A.terreus could hitch a ride on immune cells in order to transport themselves and cause systemic infection.

Twinning has fascinated human beings over the centuries. Twins are relatively common and occur more than 1 time per 100 maternities. Roughly two-thirds of all twin pairs are dizygotic or non-identical and are genetically as alike as other siblings. It has been firmly established that dizygotic twinning has a maternal genetic component, but no one so far has succeeded in identifying the genes for spontaneous DZ twinning after decades of investigations.

When medication is used to shut off the oxygen supply to tumor cells, the cells adapt their metabolism in the medium term -- by switching over to producing energy without oxygen. This observation by biomedical scientists at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel could be used for treatments that can inhibit tumor growth in the long term, as the researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Cell Reports.

JUPITER, FL - April 28, 2016 - Designing effective new drugs, especially drugs to fight cancer, demands that you know as much as you can about the molecular workings of cancer growth. Without that, it's like planning to fight a war against an enemy you've never seen.

Research into bladder tumour surgery has found that using narrow band imaging can significantly reduce the risk of disease recurrence.

The results of the clinical trial, published in European Urology, compared two groups of bladder cancer patients who were due to undergo bladder tumour resection surgery.

Research led by the Babraham Institute with collaborators in the UK, Canada and Japan has revealed a new understanding of how an open genome structure supports the long-term and unrestricted developmental potential in embryonic stem cells. This insight provides new avenues for improving the quality and stability of embryonic stem cells - an essential requirement to fulfil their promise in regenerative medicine.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Only a few cells in a cancerous tumor are able to break away and spread to other parts of the body, but the curve along the edge of the tumor may play a large role in activating these tumor-seeding cells, according to a new University of Illinois study.

HANOVER, N.H. - Surface meltwater draining through and underneath Greenland's tidewater glaciers is accelerating their loss of ice mass, according to a Dartmouth study that sheds light on the relationship between meltwater and subglacial discharge.

The findings appear in the journal Annals of Glaciology. A PDF is available on request.