Body

New Haven, Conn.—Dramatic shifts in the planet's climate and geography over millions of years changed the course of evolutionary history for conifer trees, according to a Yale paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yale researchers examined the fossil record and genetic makeup of 489 out of more than 600 living conifer species and discovered that while most conifers belong to ancient lineages, most Northern Hemisphere species, including the majority of pines and spruces, appeared within the past 5 million years.

New Rochelle, NY, October 4, 2012—Essential medications can be delivered as inhaled drugs to critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) who require mechanical ventilation to breathe. Aerosol drug delivery is highly complex, however, and if not done properly the medication will not reach the lungs and therapy will be ineffective.

The body's blood clot-busting enzymes are much busier than previously imagined, with new research showing that they also dispose of every cell that dies prematurely from disease or trauma.

In research published today in Cell Reports, scientists from Monash University have demonstrated for the first time the enzyme t-PA, which plays a vital role in the removal of blood clots, is also a major player in the removal of necrotic, or dead, cells.

There are some genes that are only activated in the very first days of an embryo's existence. Once they have accomplished their task, they are shut down forever, unlike most of our genes, which remain active throughout our lives. EPFL scientists have unveiled part of this strange mechanism. The same process, accidentally initiated later in life, could be responsible for many kinds of cancer. The discovery is described in a recent article in the journal Cell Reports.

BOSTON, MA—Uterine fibroids are the most common type of pelvic tumors in women and are the leading cause of hysterectomy in the United States. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are the first to discover a genetic risk allele (an alternative form of a gene) for uterine fibroids in white women using an unbiased, genome-wide approach. This discovery will pave the way for new screening strategies and treatments for uterine fibroids.

The study will be published online on October 4, 2012 in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Researchers from IMIM, Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute, have succeeded in determining the function of a new variant of enzyme IKKalpha (IKKα) to activate some of the genes taking part in the tumor progressions of colorectal cancer. In the future, this fact will make it possible to design new drugs that inhibit this enzyme specifically and are less toxic for the remaining body cells, hence improving the treatment for this disease.

This press release is available in Spanish.

An international research team led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and researchers from Kiel University revealed the atomic‐level structure of the human peptidase enzyme meprin β (beta). The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Jeff Shields and colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science have succeeded in their 15-year effort to unravel the life history of Hematodinium, a single-celled parasite that afflicts blue crabs and is of growing concern to aquaculture operations and wild fisheries around the world.

A University of Adelaide researcher has published results that suggest a possible new mechanism to control multiple sclerosis (MS).

CHICAGO — Surgeons are making progress toward preventing initial and recurrent episodes of clostridium difficile colitis (C. difficile or C. diff), a vicious bacterial infection that is estimated to affect about 336,000 people each year, typically patients on antibiotics. Using mouse models, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, found that an oral medication may prevent C. difficile infections (CDI).

MAYWOOD – Botox® (onabotulinum toxin-A) injections to the bladder are as effective as medication for treating urinary urgency incontinence in women, but the injection is twice as likely to completely resolve symptoms. These findings were published in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine by a National Institutes of Health clinical trials network including Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM).

Oral medication for treating a type of incontinence in women is roughly as effective as Botox injections to the bladder, reported researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health clinical trials network study, with each form of treatment having benefits and limitations.

After six months, women in both treatment groups said that the average number of daily episodes had declined from about five per day to about 1-2 per day.

HEIDELBERG, 4 October 2012 – Scientists in Canada and the United States have used three-dimensional imaging techniques to settle a long-standing debate about how DNA and structural proteins are packaged into chromatin fibres. The researchers, whose findings are published in EMBO reports, reveal that the mouse genome consists of 10-nm chromatin fibres but did not find evidence for the wider 30-nm fibres that were previously thought to be important components of the DNA architecture.

Researchers from Queen Mary, University of London have developed a new gene test that can detect pre-cancerous cells in patients with benign-looking mouth lesions. The test could potentially allow at-risk patients to receive earlier treatment, significantly improving their chance of survival.

Los Angeles, CA(04 October, 2012) Effective teamwork among an organization's top management makes employees happier and more productive, with positive benefits to the organization.

Despite an abundance of research on teamwork in the workplace, studies of how teamwork right at the top impacts employees lower down the food chain is surprisingly thin on the ground. Now researchers have surveyed business theory and put it to the test empirically, showing that top management's behaviour does trickle down. This new research is published by SAGE in the journal Human Relations.