Body

HOUSTON – (Dec. 7, 2012) – For much of her professional life, Dr. Susan Rosenberg (www.bcm.edu/genetics/?pmid=11034) has studied the puzzling response of bacteria to stress and the mutations that result.

Severe acute kidney injuries are becoming more common in the United States, rising 10 percent per year and doubling over the last decade, according to a retrospective study at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Johns Hopkins scientists have found a surprising mechanism that gives male sex hormones like testosterone control over the gender-specific absence or presence of mammary gland nerves that sense the amount of milk available in breast milk ducts.

In a Dec. 7 report on their discovery in Science, they say the hormones do the job by altering the availability of a nerve growth factor, called BDNF for short.

Galveston, Texas — Stillbirth is a tragedy that occurs in one of every 160 births in the United States. Compounding the sadness for many families, the standard medical test used to examine fetal chromosomes often can't pin down what caused their baby to die in utero. In most cases, the cause of the stillbirth is not immediately known. The traditional way to determine what happened is to examine the baby's chromosomes using a technique called karyotyping. This method leaves much to be desired because, in many cases, it fails to provide any result at all.

MAYWOOD, Il. - A groundbreaking clinical trial involving the breast cancer drug tamoxifen should prompt certain breast cancer patients to reconsider their treatment options, according to Loyola University Medical Center breast cancer specialist Dr. Kathy Albain.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fit kids aren't only first picked for kickball. New research from Michigan State University shows middle school students in the best physical shape outscore their classmates on standardized tests and take home better report cards.

Published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, it's the first study linking children's fitness to both improved scores on objective tests and better grades, which rely on subjective decisions by teachers.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Media articles and nutritionists alike have perpetuated the idea that for healthy metabolisms individuals should consume small meals multiple times a day. However, new research conducted at the University of Missouri suggests all-day snacking might not be as beneficial as previously thought, especially for obese women.

Researchers from North Carolina State University, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a host of other institutions have developed a safety testing system to help chemists design inherently safer chemicals and processes.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have found that adults with autism, who represent about 1 percent of the adult population in the United States, report significantly worse health care experiences than their non-autistic counterparts.

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Of the two bat species known to visit the flowers of the cardon cactus in Baja California, one depends entirely on nectar and is highly specialized to feed from the flowers, which are adapted for pollination by bats. The other is an insect-eating bat best known for its ability to hear the footsteps of large insects and scorpions and capture them on the ground.

A protein known to regulate how cells process glucose also appears to be a tumor suppressor, adding to the potential that therapies directed at cellular metabolism may help suppress tumor growth. In their report in the Dec. 7 issue of Cell, a multi-institutional research team describes finding that cells lacking the enzyme SIRT6, which controls how cells process glucose, quickly become cancerous.

Despite their modern-day diversity of language, lifestyle, and religion, Europe's widespread Romani population shares a common, if complex, past. It all began in northwestern India about 1,500 years ago, according to a study reported on December 6th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that offers the first genome-wide perspective on Romani origins and demographic history.

Mice living in the high-altitude, oxygen-starved environment of the Andean mountains survive those harsh conditions by fueling their muscles with carbohydrates. The findings, reported online on December 6 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, provide the first compelling evidence of a clear difference in energy metabolism between high- and low-altitude native mammals.

AMHERST, Mass. – Molecular chaperones have emerged as exciting new potential drug targets, because scientists want to learn how to stop cancer cells, for example, from using chaperones to enable their uncontrolled growth. Now a team of biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Lila Gierasch have deciphered key steps in the mechanism of the Hsp70 molecular machine by "trapping" this chaperone in action, providing a dynamic snapshot of its mechanism.

Researchers have discovered an immune system 'kill switch' that destroys blood stem cells when the body is under severe stress, such as that induced by chemotherapy and systemic infections.

The discovery could have implications for protecting the blood system during chemotherapy or in diseases associated with overwhelming infection, such as sepsis.