Body

Researchers at The Wistar Institute announce the release of an online tool that will help scientists find "gene promoters"—regions along a DNA strand that tell a cell's transcription machinery where to start reading in order to create a particular protein. The Mammalian Promoter Database (MPromDb) integrates the genome sequencing data generated at Wistar with publicly available data on human and mouse genomics. MPromDb pinpoints known promoters and predicts where new ones are likely to be found, the researchers say.

Gaithersburg, MD – On December 14-15, 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened an Advisory Panel to discuss several scientific issues that may affect the regulation of dental amalgam. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Panel voted to recommend that the FDA conduct further review of the material's safety.

University Park, Pa. -- A computer program that automatically analyzes mounds of satellite images and other data could help climate scientists keep track of complex, constantly changing environmental conditions, according to an international team of researchers.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (December 22, 2010) – Whitehead Institute researchers have linked hyperactivity in the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) cellular pathway, to reduced ketone production, which is a well-defined physiological trait of aging in mice.

Their results are reported in the December 23 edition of the journal Nature.

SANTA CRUZ, CA--A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives who may have lived throughout much of Asia during the late Pleistocene epoch.

BOSTON, Mass. (December 22, 2010) — The sequencing of the nuclear genome from an ancient finger bone found in a Siberian cave shows that the cave dwellers were neither Neandertals nor modern humans.

Scientists today published catalogs of the fruit fly and roundworm's functional genomic elements: DNA sequences in the genome that carry the instructions and determine which genes are turned on and off at various times in different cells.

In the past decade researchers have made astonishing progress in the rapid and accurate sequencing of genomes from all realms of life. Yet the listing of chemical base pairs has gotten far ahead of understanding how the information they contain becomes functional. Even the best-understood genomes conceal mysteries.

JUPITER, FL, December 22, 2010 – A scientist from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute has discovered a molecular switch that controls the synthesis of ribosomes. Ribosomes are the large machineries inside all living cells that produce proteins, the basic working units of any cell. These new findings offer a novel target for potential treatments for a range of diseases, including cancer.

The study is published in the December 24, 2010 edition of the Journal of Molecular Biology.

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 22, 2010)—A class of drugs thought to kill cancer cells may in fact block "cross talk" between the cancer cell and normal immune cells, resulting in reduced cancer growth and spread—a discovery that could significantly alter the way cancer drugs are evaluated in the future.

Researchers at Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute have revealed multiple genetic discoveries that may permit easier diagnosis and disease management for Cowden syndrome patients who are predisposed to breast and kidney cancer.

The research, which could allow for earlier discovery of cancerous tumors, is published in the Dec. 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

December 21, 2010 — (BRONX, NY) — Two researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that our 98.6° F (37° C) body temperature strikes a perfect balance: warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat nonstop to maintain our metabolism.

The only way to learn if your water source has hexavalent chromium is to check with your public water supplier and request a water quality report, said NJIT Professor Taha Marhaba, a civil/environmental engineer. Most municipal or city engineers should be able to provide such a report upon request. Additional information specifically about hexavalent chromium levels may also be available.

Why do people choose present consumption over their long-term financial interests? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that consumers have trouble feeling connected to their future selves.

"This willingness to forego money now and wait for future benefits is strongly affected by how connected we feel to our future self, who will ultimately benefit from the resources we save," write authors Daniel M. Bartels (Columbia Business School) and Oleg Urminsky (University of Chicago).