Body

Researchers at Warwick Medical School have identified the key role played by a team of proteins in the process of mitosis. Working out how to control them may give scientists a way to destroy cancerous cells.

The study, led by Professor Steve Royle and published in The Journal of Cell Biology, highlights the role of a newly identified team of proteins, TACC3-ch-TOG-clathrin, in forming inter-microtubule bridges that stabilise the kinetochore fibres (K-fibres) used in mitosis.

Breast cancer survivors who have extensive surgery are four times more likely to develop the debilitating disorder arm lymphoedema, a QUT study has found.

The findings in a new paper Incidence of unilateral arm lymphoedema after breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Oncology, reveal the invasiveness of surgery to treat breast cancer increases the risk of developing arm lymphoedema.

Griffith University researchers have taken part in an international study which has discovered a fast but accurate means of identifying changes to the biodiversity of a region.

And the secret lies in crushed up insect "soup".

Traditionally, many thousands of hours have been spent by researchers gathering, classifying and recording insects and animals in order to understand the natural ecology of a region. Any changes to the biodiversity of that area could then be determined only by more labour-intensive collecting and recording.

A Penn State-led research team has found that changes to proteins called histones, which are associated with DNA, can control whether or not a gene is allowed to function. The changes may be important in maintaining the genes' "expression potential" so that future cells behave as their parent cells did. The discovery, which may have implications for the study of diseases such as cancer, will be published in a print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The global study was led by University of Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology today.

The study involved about 2,500 women from Europe, North America and Australia who have inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2, the breast cancer susceptibility genes, and who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. About one-third of these women were placed on tamoxifen.

Tamoxifen has been used for decades to treat breast cancer and has recently been shown to prevent breast cancers in many women.

Everyone knows all about the epic breeding journey taken each year by generations of monarch butterflies between Mexico and Canada, right? Not so fast, say researchers including University of Guelph biologists.

Until now, linking adult butterflies and their birthplaces during a complicated annual migration spanning all of eastern North America and involving up to five generations of the iconic insects had eluded scientists.

Penile cancer is rare, with an average of 1,200 new cases per year in the United States, but it can be debilitating and lethal. Without evidenced-based treatment approaches, outcomes have varied widely. Philippe E. Spiess, M.D., an associate member in the Department of Genitourinary Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, presented new National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology to standardize care for penile cancer in an article that appeared in the July issue of the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Research to be published Aug. 7 in the highly respected international journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B clearly demonstrates that at least five and as many as nine species of tropical fruit flies, including the infamous Medfly, are permanently established in California and inexorably spreading, despite more than 30 years of intervention and nearly 300 state-sponsored eradication programs aimed at the flies.

The first report of probable person to person transmission of the new avian influenza A (H7N9) virus in Eastern China is published on bmj.com today.

The findings provide the strongest evidence yet of H7N9 transmission between humans, but the authors stress that its ability to transmit itself is "limited and non-sustainable."

Avian influenza A (H7N9) virus was recently identified in Eastern China. As of 30 June 2013, 133 cases have been reported, resulting in 43 deaths.

The length of a human pregnancy can vary naturally by as much as five weeks, according to research published online today (Wednesday) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction [1].

Normally, women are given a date for the likely delivery of their baby that is calculated as 280 days after the onset of their last menstrual period. Yet only four percent of women deliver at 280 days and only 70% deliver within 10 days of their estimated due date, even when the date is calculated with the help of ultrasound.

A new study of cancer patients indicates that certain patient groups have unmet needs for greater involvement in decisions about their treatment.

Cancer patients under 55 and those with some rarer types of cancer want more of a say in the decisions made about their treatment, according to new research being published in the British Journal of Cancer today (Wednesday). Recently, several US states have introduced legislation or other policies supporting share-decision making.

In the development of animals, which is closely controlled by diverse pathways, the regulation of organ size has been a long-standing puzzle. How does an organ ascertain its optimum size? What are the molecular mechanisms that stop organ growth at an appropriate point during development or regeneration? Almost a decade ago, the discovery of the Hippo signaling pathway provided an important starting point for answering these questions.

Researchers in the University of Arizona's department of ecology and evolutionary biology have found that despite differences in appearance, trees across species share remarkably similar architecture and can tell scientists a lot about an entire forest.

Just by looking at a tree's branching pattern, it turns out, scientists can gather clues about how it functions – for example how much carbon dioxide it exchanges with the atmosphere or how much water transpires through its leaves – regardless of the tree's shape or species.

A Penn State-led research team has found that changes to proteins called histones, which are associated with DNA, can control whether or not a gene is allowed to function. The changes may be important in maintaining the genes' "expression potential" so that future cells behave as their parent cells did. The discovery, which may have implications for the study of diseases such as cancer, will be published in a print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New Johns Hopkins research suggests that people who undergo minimally invasive placement of stents to open clogged leg arteries are significantly less likely than those who have conventional bypass surgery to need a second treatment for the condition within two years.

For now, bypass surgery remains the gold standard for treating symptoms of peripheral artery disease (PAD), but the Johns Hopkins researchers are hopeful that further study will confirm the advantage their study shows for the stents.