Body

Since scientists have begun sequencing the genome of cancer cells, they have noticed a curious pattern. In many different types of cancers, there are cells in which a part of a chromosome looks like it has been pulverized, then put back together incorrectly, leading to multiple mutations. For years, this phenomenon puzzled scientists. But new research from The Rockefeller University suggests an explanation for this strange molecular explosion that serves as a precursor to cancer.

Ever imagined you could eat all the mouthwatering, festive food during winter holidays and never worry about an expanding waistline?

KANSAS CITY, MO -- With its abundance of stem cells known as neoblasts, and remarkable abilities to restore body parts lost to injury, the humble flatworm, or planaria, has become an exciting model organism to study the processes of tissue and organ regeneration.

In two new studies, researchers in the laboratory of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Ph.D., at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research explore the intricate processes at work when stem cells differentiate into planarian skin cells.

Cleveland Clinic researchers have demonstrated - for the first time -- that targeting microbes in the gut may prevent heart disease brought on by nutrients contained in a diet rich in red meat, eggs and high-fat dairy products.

A streamlined protocol for an alternative gene insertion method using genome editing technologies, the PITCh (Precise Integration into Target Chromosome) system, has been reported in Nature Protocols by Specially Appointed Lecturer Tetsushi Sakuma, Professor Takashi Yamamoto, Specially Appointed Associate Professor Ken-Ichi T Suzuki, and their colleagues at Hiroshima University, Japan.

Genetically identical cells do not always behave the same way. According to the accepted theory, the reason are random molecular processes - known as random noise. For decades this view has been underpinned by numerous experiments and theoretical models. Now the system biologists of the University of Zurich have made a momentous discovery: The spatial separation of human cells into a nucleus and cytoplasm creates some kind of passive filter. This filter suppresses the random noise and enables human cells to precisely regulate the activity of individual genes.

Stem cells can be protected from the effects of ageing by a drug currently used to treat patients with osteoporosis, a breakthrough study has found.

Scientists from the University of Sheffield discovered the drug zoledronate is able to extend the lifespan of mesenchymal stem cells by reducing DNA damage.

DNA damage is one of the most important mechanisms of ageing where stem cells lose their ability to maintain and repair the tissues in which they live and keep it working correctly.

Pancreatic cancer tumors spill their molecular secrets into the blood stream, shedding their complete DNA and RNA wrapped inside protective lipid particles that make them ripe for analysis with a liquid biopsy, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report online at the Annals of Oncology.

The team conducted whole genome, whole exome and gene expression analysis of tumors in three patients using DNA and RNA found inside exosomes circulating in their blood or other liquid biospecimens.

Measures instituted in recent years to encourage the sharing of scientific information appear to have reduced the overall level of withholding of data and materials among academic life science researchers. In their follow up to an earlier study that documented the extent of data withholding in 2000, a multi-institutional research team describes the results of a 2013 survey of investigators at top research institutions. Their report has been published online in Academic Medicine.

Each year, about 1.38 million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer. Advances in treatment have facilitated a 90% five-year survival rate among those treated. Given the increased rate and length of survival following breast cancer, more and more survivors are facing life-time risk of developing late effects of cancer treatment that negatively impact long-term survival. In particular, Breast cancer-related lymphedema is one of the most distressing and feared late effects.

Managers of wildlife conservation programmes are being helped by a method commonly encountered in industrial and service industries.

Dr Simon Black, of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), has developed a number of techniques that are more commonly seen in business settings to encourage improvements in conservation management.

If you want to get a real feel for what was happening during a certain period in history, how people really felt about the issues of the day, take a look at the media coverage.

For example, a recent study of how historically black newspapers covered the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, found their coverage not that much different from their mainstream counterparts.

For many of us, the bodies of moving snakes look like little more than wiggly strands of spaghetti.

However, Bruce Jayne, University of Cincinnati professor of biology in the McMicken College of Art and Sciences, sees a wide variety of anatomy and behavior that allows diverse snake species to crawl and climb almost anywhere, including tree branches with variable bark texture.

Using three different species to test their tree-worthy talents, Jayne and his students studied stout and heavy boa constrictors, medium-weight corn snakes and the slender and agile brown tree snakes.

BOSTON -- Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in younger patients is a distinct disease, genetically and biologically, from NSCLC in older patients and may require a different treatment approach, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have found.

In a study published online today by JAMA Oncology, investigators scanned the DNA of thousands of NSCLC tumor samples for abnormalities and found that younger patients were more apt to have genetic subtypes of the disease that can be treated with available targeted therapies.

(SALT LAKE CITY)--Cancer usually begins in one location and then spreads, but in 3 percent to 5 percent of cancer patients, the tissue where a cancer begins is unknown. In these individuals a cancer diagnosis is made because it has metastasized to other sites. Patients with these so-called "cancers of unknown primary," or CUP, have a very poor prognosis, with a median survival of three months.