Body

FRESNO, CA - Grape polyphenols helped offset some of the adverse health consequences of consuming a high fat diet rich in saturated fat, according to two laboratory studies [1][2] conducted at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and published recently in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

Conservation and management efforts rely on clear definitions of populations, subspecies, and species. A new study uses digital imaging, state-of-the-art genetic analyses, archives of historical literature, and other methods to resolve the origin and whereabouts of a more than 200 year old grey seal specimen held in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and to prove that this was the lost type specimen of the species.

One of the long-standing goals being pursued by chemists has been to succeed in following and directly visualising how the structures of molecules change when they undergo complex chemical transformations. Reaction intermediates, which are highly unstable substances that form in different steps in a reaction before the products are obtained, are particularly difficult to identify and characterise owing to their short lifetimes.

Millions of people around the world use herbal health remedies, following a tradition that began millennia ago. Many believe that herbs are safe because they have been used for many years, but researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Stony Brook University are raising awareness that long-term use of herbal remedies is no guarantee of their safety. The invited commentary appears in EMBO reports.

Long before there were fish swimming in the oceans, tiny microorganisms were using long slender appendages called cilia and flagella to navigate their watery habitats. Now, new research reveals that species of single-celled algae coordinate their flagella to achieve a remarkable diversity of swimming gaits.

In some animals, the same species can occur in two or more color types, or morphs. New research may help solve the mystery of how this can occur despite the pressures of evolution.

With only three living individuals left on this planet, the northern white rhinoceros could be considered doomed for extinction. But now researchers have proposed a road map for preserving such endangered species through techniques that use stem cells and assisted reproduction technology.

Researchers know that several proteins are involved in oyster shell formation, but how expression of these proteins is controlled is not well understood. Now investigators report that they have identified a protein called Pf-POU3F4 that promotes expression of two of these proteins, called Aspein and Prismalin-14.

The work is important for understanding the genetics of biomineralization, the process by which living organisms produce minerals to harden existing tissues.

Autism and cancer share more than 40 risk genes, suggesting that common mechanisms underlying the functions of some of these genes could conceivably be leveraged to develop therapies not just for cancer but for autism as well, an extensive assessment by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute and Comprehensive Cancer Center has found.

The authors identified 43 specific genes with autism susceptibility that also have an association with cancer.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Researchers have shown how controlling cholesterol metabolism in pancreatic cancer cells reduces metastasis, pointing to a potential new treatment using drugs previously developed for atherosclerosis.

Just as a person's skin indicates if s/he has a healthy diet, colored satellite images of forests in the Smithsonian's Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) indicate if a forest has a healthy diet. Information about the trees' access to nutrients based on its relationships with two different types of underground fungi is now detectable from space, making it possible for scientists to measure ecosystem productivity and responses to environmental change on vast scales.

NEWPORT, Ore. - Although sperm whales have not been driven to the brink of extinction as have some other whales, a new study has found a remarkable lack of diversity in the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA within the species.

In fact, the mitochondrial DNA from more than a thousand sperm whales examined during the past 15 years came from a single "Eve" sperm whale tens of thousands of years ago, the researchers say.

Results of the study are being published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology.

University of California San Diego bioengineers have created what they believe to be the first online search engine for functional genomics data. This work from the Sheng Zhong bioengineering lab at UC San Diego was just published online by the journal Nucleic Acids Research. This new search engine, called GeNemo, is free for public use at: http://www.genemo.org.

The largest risk assessment and management program for cardiovascular disease in the world, England's National Health Service Health Check, had only a modest impact on risk factors for heart disease and did not meet national and international targets, found new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)

Many countries have created programs to assess and manage cardiovascular risk because cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death world-wide.

The largest-ever study to sequence the whole genomes of breast cancers has uncovered five new genes associated with the disease and 13 new mutational signatures that influence tumour development. The results of two papers published in Nature and Nature Communications also reveal what genetic variations exist in breast cancers and where they occur in the genome.