Body

BOSTON -- Investigators at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School have published the most thorough description of gene expression in the human retina reported to date. In a study published today in the journal BMC Genomics, Drs. Michael Farkas, Eric Pierce and colleagues in the Ocular Genomics Institute (OGI) at Mass. Eye and Ear reported a complete catalog of the genes expressed in the retina.

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The sounds of success are ringing at Kansas State University through a research project that has potential to treat human deafness and loss of balance.

Philine Wangemann, university distinguished professor of anatomy and physiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and her international team have published the results of their study in the July issue of the journal PLOS Genetics: "SLC26A4 Targeted to the Endolymphatic Sac Rescues Hearing and Balance in SLC26A4 Mutant Mice."

Philadelphia, Pa. (July 18, 2013) - For patients with cancer, "prehabilitation"— interventions given between the time of diagnosis and the start of treatment—has the potential to reduce complications from treatments and improve physical and mental health outcomes, according to a report in the August American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (AJPM&R).

Scientists in Granada, Spain, have patented a new biomaterial that facilitates generating bone tissue—artificial bones in other words—from umbilical cord stem cells . The material, consisting of an activated carbon cloth support for cells that differentiate giving rise to a product that can promote bone growth, has recently been presented at a press conference at the Biomedical Research Centre, Granada.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — They say a good man is hard to find. Were it not for a newly discovered protein, the X chromosome of a male fruit fly could never be found by a gene-regulating complex that male flies need to develop and survive. And that case is just one example of what the new finding means. More generally, the research provides biologists with a model of how proteins that govern gene transcription find their targets on chromosomes, a process that's essential to healthy cell function and sometimes implicated in disease.

Bacteria of the genus Legionella have evolved a sophisticated system to replicate in the phagocytic cells of their hosts. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have now identified a novel component of this system.

Beetles with unusual "green thumbs" for growing fungi are threatening avocado crops and could transform into a more destructive pest, according to an international team of researchers.

The plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s lives on today with a different genetic blueprint and an even larger arsenal of weaponry to harm and kill plants.

Researchers from the University of York have demonstrated that the change in cannabis declassification in 2009 has coincided with a significant increase in hospital admissions for cannabis psychosis - rather than the decrease it was intended to produce.

The UK Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) divided controlled drugs into three groups – A, B and C – with descending criminal sanctions attached to each class. Cannabis was originally assigned to Group B, but in 2004, it was transferred to the lowest risk group, Group C.

The search for new drugs, including those for cancer, is set to speed up thanks to a new research technique invented by scientists at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Named the "Cellular Thermal Shift Assay" (CETSA), scientists can now know for sure if a drug had reached its target protein in the body, which is a critical step in determining the effectiveness of most medicines.

IFR microbiologists are reinvigorating a way of battling C. difficile infections that they hope will help overcome the growing problem of antibiotic resistant superbugs in hospitals.

A new computational method for working out in advance whether a chemical will be toxic will be reporting in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics.

Persons with Alzheimer's disease are able to manage their everyday activities longer and they suffer from less psychological and behavioural symptoms if the diagnosis is made and treatment begun at a very early phase of the disease, indicates a recent study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland.

The study followed persons with Alzheimer's disease over a course of three years. The study participants were diagnosed either at the very mild or mild phase of the disease and treated within the standard healthcare system.

University of Adelaide research has shown new evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded like birds and mammals, not cold-blooded like reptiles as commonly believed.

In a paper published in PLoS ONE, Professor Roger Seymour of the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, argues that cold-blooded dinosaurs would not have had the required muscular power to prey on other animals and dominate over mammals as they did throughout the Mesozoic period.

Cancer survivors were twice as likely to experience severe menopausal symptoms compared to women who have not had cancer, a new Australian study has found.

The study was led by the University of Melbourne and the Royal Women's Hospital Melbourne, with the King Edward Memorial Hospital and the University of Western Australia.

The study was published in Menopause, the Journal of the North American Menopause Society.