Body

Rice is a staple food for more than 3.5 billion people worldwide. Meeting the demand for high-yielding rice is an urgent task for breeders. Superior, high-yielding hybrid plants are often produced by crossing two diverse parental lines. This task is quite complicated in rice, a self-pollinating plant. One approach to solving this problem originated in the 1970s, when Chinese scientists figured out how to produce male sterile (MS) rice lines. The use of MS lines allows breeders to perform controlled pollination, leading to successful hybrid rice production.

Boston, MA-- Higher levels of blood markers in the umbilical cord indicate that the baby has more fat and may continue having more fat into late childhood and adolescence, new research suggests. The results will be presented in a poster Friday, April 1, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in Boston.

The cord blood markers leptin and adiponectin indicate the degree of fat in the child at birth, but the relationships between these markers and the offspring's risk of obesity in later life is not clear.

A team of researchers from the University at Buffalo in Amherst, NY have successfully engineered a novel variant of streptavidin that forms a stable monomer and is capable of monovalent biotin detection. Streptavidin is broadly used for detection of biotinylated ligands but may cause target crosslinking that can interfere with observations at a molecular level. The engineered streptavidin monomer (mSA) binds biotinylated targets without crosslinking because it has only one biotin binding site.

Boston, MA-- A new study of African-American infants finds that those who feed more vigorously at 1 month of age have higher weight at 4 months, which may be associated with a later risk for obesity. Researchers will present their study findings Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

Boston, MA-- In mildly obese ("class I") patients, sleeve with ileal transposition (sleeve-IT) surgery results in better glycemic control than either gastric bypass or clinical treatment, a new study from Brazil suggests. The results will be presented Friday, April 1, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

(Vancouver - April 1, 2016) - Scientists at BC Children's Hospital and the University of British Columbia have developed a gene therapy that programs a type of immune cell called T regulatory cells (Tregs) to protect transplanted tissues from rejection by the patient's immune system. The proof-of-concept study is published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation print issue.

James Umen, Ph.D., associate member at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and colleagues have discovered a protein that enables the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas to count cell divisions, a process that is critically important for its cells to maintain optimal size. The findings were published March 25, in a paper titled, "A new class of cyclin dependent kinase in Chlamydomonas is required for coupling cell size to cell division," in the open access journal eLife.

Severe obesity can be predicted using a simple body mass index (BMI) measurement as early as 6 months of age, according to a new study. The study is believed to be the first to show that weight gain during infancy differs in those who eventually develop obesity.

The study will be presented April 1 at the national Endocrine Society meeting in Boston.

PHILADELPHIA -- Every cell in the body has two genomes, one from the mother and one from the father. Until now, researchers have lacked the tools to examine -- in a single cell --the exact readout from each genome to make RNA. Using a new technology that allows researchers to do just that, an interdisciplinary University of Pennsylvania team examined a rare disease in which these two genomes are expressed differently throughout the body, even sometimes in the same organ.

Boston, MA--Doctors have devised a test which could help them predict which women going through menopause will lose bone faster than average, new research reports. The results of the study will be presented Friday, April 1, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

The use of peripheral nerve blocks (PNBs) is associated with better outcomes following hip and knee replacement, according to a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). Researchers compiled data on more than one million joint replacement patients who received a PNB in addition to general anesthesia or epidural anesthesia. Those who received the nerve block had fewer complications after surgery.

The study, selected as a "Best of Meeting" winner, will be presented at the Annual Regional Anesthesiology and Acute Pain Medicine Meeting on April 2 in New Orleans.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- A new hybrid molecule developed in the lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering shows promise for treating breast cancer by serving as a "shipping container" for cytotoxic -- or cell-destroying -- chemotherapeutic agents. The protein/polymer-gold nanoparticle (P-GNP) composite can load up with these drugs, carry them to malignant cells, and unload them where they can do the most damage with the least amount of harm to the patient.

They are young and mostly female: with more than 3.2 million reported cases between 2005 and 2014, chlamydia remains the most commonly reported sexually transmitted infection (STI) across Europe. As chlamydia infection often shows no symptoms, these numbers underestimate the true picture.

Philadelphia, PA, April 1, 2013 - One in five children in the U.S. lives below the federal poverty level (FPL) and nearly half of children in America are classified as poor or near poor. Childhood poverty creates long-lasting, often permanent, physiologic changes through constant exposure to threats such as malnutrition, acute and chronic disease, toxic stress, social deprivation, and lack of opportunity.

A new culture system that tests the role of chemical exposure on the developing mammary gland has found that bisphenol A (BPA) directly affects the mammary gland of mouse embryos. The study results, to be presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston, show that these changes to embryonic mammary tissue occur at a dose comparable to that of humans' environmental exposure to BPA.