Body

Galactan is a polymer of galactose, a six-carbon sugar that can be readily fermented by yeast into ethanol and is a target of interest for researchers in advanced biofuels produced from cellulosic biomass. Now an international collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has identified the first enzyme capable of substantially boosting the amount of galactan in plant cell walls.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University today announced the discovery of an underlying genetic cause of atopic dermatitis, a type of eczema most common in infancy that also affects millions of adults around the world with dry, itchy and inflamed skin lesions.

New York, NY (December 21, 2012) — A study led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers has found that an important branch of the immune system, in reaction to the development of atherosclerotic lesions, mounts a surprisingly robust anti-inflammatory T cell response that helps prevent the disease from progressing. The findings may help inform the design of anti-atherosclerosis vaccines and other therapies that can take advantage of this aspect of the immune system. The study was published today in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Despite more than 25 years of research on antiobesity drugs, few medications have shown long-term success. Now researchers reporting online on December 21 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism say that targeting taste sensors in the gut may be a promising new strategy.

After you eat, your liver switches from producing glucose to storing it. At the same time, a cellular signaling pathway known as the unfolded protein response (UPR) is transiently activated, but it is not clear how this pathway contributes to the liver's metabolic switch.

In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Phillip Scherer at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center report that activation of the UPR triggers the expression of Xbp1s, a protein that regulates genes needed for the metabolic switch.

After you eat, your liver switches from producing glucose to storing it. At the same time, a cellular signaling pathway known as the unfolded protein response (UPR) is transiently activated, but it is not clear how this pathway contributes to the liver's metabolic switch. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Phillip Scherer at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center report that activation of the UPR triggers the expression of Xbp1s, a protein that regulates genes needed for the metabolic switch.

H. pylori frequently causes gastric ulcers and is also one of the greatest risk factors for gastric cancer. H. pylori infection is also associated with another gastric cancer risk factor, iron deficiency. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Richard Peek at Vanderbilt University investigated the influence of iron on H. pylori-induced gastric cancer. Peek and colleagues found that low iron accelerated the development of H. pylori-associated cancerous lesions in gerbils. Further, H.

PHILADELPHIA—Elevated levels of Cyclin D1b could function as a novel biomarker of lethal metastatic disease in prostate cancer patients, according to a pre-clinical study published ahead of print on December 21 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Six weeks of weight training can significantly improve blood markers of cardiovascular health in young African-American men, researchers report in the Journal of Human Hypertension.

The researchers measured blood markers associated with inflammation, immune response or the remodeling of arteries that normally occur after tissue damage, infection or other types of stress. They found that levels of two of these markers dropped significantly in African-American men but not in Caucasian men after six weeks of resistance training.

New Rochelle, NY, December 20, 2012—Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are a potent new drug class that can silence a disease-causing gene, but delivering them to a target cell can be challenging. An innovative delivery approach that dramatically increases the efficacy of an siRNA drug targeted to the liver and has made it possible to test the drug in non-human primates is described in an article in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com).

The climate after the largest mass extinction so far 252 million years ago was cool, later very warm and then cool again. Thanks to the cooler temperatures, the diversity of marine fauna ballooned, as paleontologists from the University of Zurich have reconstructed. The warmer climate, coupled with a high CO2 level in the atmosphere, initially gave rise to new, short-lived species. In the longer term, however, this climate change had an adverse effect on biodiversi-ty and caused species to become extinct.

The putative remains of Carin Göring, wife of Nazi leader and Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe Herman Göring, were found in 1991 at a site close to where she had been buried. In a recently published article, Maria Allen, professor of forensic genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden, and her associates present evidence supporting that it is Carin Göring's remains that have been identified.

Using the world's most powerful X-ray free-electron laser, an international team of researchers, including scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, has obtained new insight into the structure of a medicinally important protein that may serve as a blueprint for the development of drugs to fight sleeping sickness. Science magazine have chosen the experimental study as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year.

In a recent publication, researchers achieved new accuracy in the ability to measure energy differences between states of molecules, thus predicting which states will be observed.

December 21, 2012, Shenzhen, China – A study published online in Cell reports the latest investigation of de novo germline mutation by whole genome sequencing in autism patients. This study provides a global view of the landscape of mutability and its influence on genetic diversity and susceptibility in autism, and its implications on other human diseases. The work was a collaborative effort led by international teams comprised of the University of California, San Diego, BGI, and other institutes.