Body

New Rochelle, NY, June 26, 2013—Everyone who climbs to high altitude will develop pulmonary hypertension, a temporary constriction of blood vessels that results in increasing strain on the right heart. It is a normal adaptive mechanism but if exaggerated can have serious consequences, resulting in life-threatening disorders and remodeling of the pulmonary circulation.

AMHERST, Mass. – Reporting this month in Molecular Microbiology, Peter Chien and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe using a combination of biochemistry and mass spectrometry to "trap" scores of new candidate substrates of the protease ClpXP to reveal how protein degradation is critical to cell cycle progression and bacterial development. The new understanding could lead to identifying new antibiotic targets.

In stunning color, new biodiversity research from North Carolina State University maps out priority areas worldwide that hold the key to protecting vulnerable species and focusing conservation efforts.

When faced with the choice of sacrificing time and energy for a loved one or taking the self-centered route, people's first impulse is to think of others, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Today, on National HIV Testing Day, the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University launched its annual update of AIDSVu, including new interactive online maps that show the latest HIV prevalence data for 20 U.S. cities by ZIP code or census tract. AIDSVu also includes new city snapshots displaying HIV prevalence alongside various social determinants of health – such as poverty, lack of health insurance and educational attainment.

Understanding how the protein km23-1 enables in the spread of colon cancer may lead to new treatments for the disease, according to researchers at Penn State College of Medicine.

Previous research shows that km23-1 is involved in the movement of cancer cells and in the control of specific proteins at the leading edge of moving cells. Kathleen Mulder, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, who discovered the protein, now says km23-1 is used in the cancer cell's ability to move out of a tumor in the early stages of invasion.

Michael Graner, PhD, is a CU Cancer Center investigator and associate professor of neurosurgery at the CU School of Medicine. So when his 12-year-old Great Dane got sick, he knew what to do.

"We got Star from the Mid-Atlantic Great Dane Rescue," Graner says. "She got her name because she was always smiling, like a movie star waiting for photos. She'd already been to so many shelters, we didn't want to change her name again and so we kept it."

They have also shown that any pancreatic β cells can be regenerated several times and that chemically-induced diabetes in mice can thus be "treated" repeatedly. The challenge for the researchers is now to show that these procedures can be applied to humans.

Their work is published online in the Developmental Cell journal dated 27 June 2013.

"Our study shows that innovations do not just spread randomly in primate groups but, as in humans, are shaped by the monkeys' social networks," Whiten said.

Research focused on the regulation of the adult stem cells that line the gastrointestinal tract of Drosophila suggests new models for the study of Barrett's esophagus. Barrett's esophagus, a risk factor for esophageal cancer, is a condition in which the cells of the lower esophagus transform into stomach-like cells. In most cases this transformation has been thought to occur directly from chronic acid indigestion when stomach contents flow back up into the esophagus.

STANFORD, Calif. — A chemical code scrawled on histones — the protein husks that coat DNA in every animal or plant cell — determines which genes in that cell are turned on and which are turned off. Now, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have taken a new step in the deciphering of that histone code.

A team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered a sensory system in the foreleg of the fruit fly that tells male flies whether a potential mate is from a different species. The work addresses a central problem in evolution that is poorly understood: how animals of one species know not to mate with animals of other species.

People punish generous group members by rejecting them socially — even when the generosity benefits everyone — because the "big givers" are nonconformists, according to a Baylor University study.

The study, published in Social Science Research journal, showed that besides socially rejecting especially generous givers, others even "paid" to punish them through a points system.

Engineers from Queen Mary, University of London have developed the world's most precise computer simulation of how red blood cells might travel around the body to help doctors treat people with serious circulatory problems.

Red blood cells have the important task of carrying oxygen around the body but make up less than half of the total blood volume – 45 per cent in men and 40 per cent in women.

Bethesda, Md. -- The American Physiological Society (APS) issued the following statement today in response to the announcement on the use of chimpanzees in medical research: