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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In the complex genomic and molecular conspiracy that gives rise to ovarian cancer, what if researchers have been missing a whole set of suspects because they've been hiding in plain sight? That's the argument made by Brown University biologists in a new paper that combines evidence from original research and prior studies to raise new suspicions about a set of proteins that assist in regulating gene expression.

The brain drain of educated workers is still felt most severely in China's central and western provinces, since most knowledge-based industries are generally concentrated in its large coastal cities. However, low-educated migrant workers increasingly find jobs in their home provinces in the central and western regions because of changing economic and government policy.

But when Yin and the paper's three lead authors, Ryosuke Iinuma, a former Wyss Institute Visiting Fellow, Yonggang Ke, Ph.D., a former Wyss Postdoctoral Fellow who is now an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, and Ralf Jungman, Ph.D, a Wyss Postdoctoral Fellow, built bigger tripods and tried to assemble them into polyhedra, the large tripods' legs would splay and wobble, which kept them from making polyhedra at all.

A new study investigating racial disparities in birth outcomes shows that contrary to some theories Vitamin D is unlikely to play a role in differences in preterm birth and low birth weight between African-Americans and whites.

MADISON — A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has detected a higher rate of seizures among children with autism who were fed infant formula containing soy protein rather than milk protein.

The study found excess seizures among girls and in the total sample of 1,949 children. The soy-seizure link reached borderline significance among boys, who comprised 87 percent of the children described in the database under study.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell University researchers report they have discovered direct genetic evidence that a family of genes, called MicroRNA-34 (miR-34), are bona fide tumor suppressors.

The study is published in the journal Cell Reports, March 13.

Previous research at Cornell and elsewhere has shown that another gene, called p53, acts to positively regulate miR-34. Mutations of p53 have been implicated in half of all cancers. Interestingly, miR-34 is also frequently silenced by mechanisms other than p53 in many cancers, including those with p53 mutations.

New York, NY – A protein that normally protects cells from environmental stresses has been shown to interact Marburg virus VP24, allowing the deadly Marburg virus to live longer and replicate better, according to a cell culture study led by scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The investigators say that deciphering the molecular details of how Marburg virus and the host protein interact may help in developing inhibitors of the virus. Results from the study are published online March 13 in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports.

Some commonly used drugs that combat aches and pains, fever, and inflammation are also thought to have the ability to kill bacteria. New research appearing online on March 13 in the Cell Press journal Chemistry & Biology reveals that these drugs, better known as NSAIDs, act on bacteria in a way that is fundamentally different from current antibiotics. The discovery could open up new strategies for fighting drug-resistant infections and "superbugs."

Millions of years ago, the coast of California was home to a species of porpoise distinguished from its living relatives by a lower jaw that extended well beyond the upper, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 13. In other words, the long-lost porpoise had a rather distinct and unusual underbite.

Careful analysis of the fossilized Semirostrum ceruttii skull also shows that the porpoise's pronounced beak included innervated jaws, which the animal likely used to feel for prey along the ocean floor.

Most people lose the ability to digest the milk sugar lactose after weaning, but some populations retain high levels of an enzyme called lactase, which allows them to break down lactose in adulthood. In a study published March 13th in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers identified genetic factors associated with lactase persistence in African populations and found that this trait became more prevalent in recent history in conjunction with the introduction and spread of cattle domestication in Africa.

Scientists from the UK and Australia have created a mouse that expresses a fluorescing 'biosensor' in every cell of its body, allowing diseased cells and drugs to be tracked and evaluated in real time and in three dimensions.

This biosensor mimics the action of a target molecule, in this case a protein known as 'Rac', which drives cell movement in many types of cancer. Rac behaves like a switch, oscillating on the molecular level between two states – active or inactive.

Babies are born with the ability to digest lactose, the sugar found in milk, but most humans lose this ability after infancy because of declining levels of the lactose-digesting enzyme lactase. People who maintain high levels of lactase reap the nutritive benefits of milk, however, offering a potential evolutionary advantage to lactase persistence, or what is commonly known as lactose tolerance.

NEW YORK, NY – How does yoga improve your flexibility? In the Mar 13 cover story of Cell, Columbia University biological sciences professor Julio Fernandez and team report the discovery of a new form of mechanical memory that adjusts the elasticity of muscles to their history of stretching. Using highly sensitive atomic force microscopes, the researchers detected a chemical reaction that increases the elasticity of muscle proteins. Crucially, this reaction targets molecules that have been exposed to a stretching force.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Cancer cells undergo extensive genetic alterations as they grow and spread through the body. Some of these mutations, known as "drivers," help spur cells to grow out of control, while others ("passengers") are merely along for the ride.

A portrait of prehistoric parenthood captured deep in the fossil record has been uncovered by an international team of scientists led by University of Leicester geologist Professor David Siveter.

The 'nursery in the sea' has revealed a species new to science – with specimens preserved incubating their eggs together with probable hatched individuals. As a result, the team has named the new species Luprisca incuba after Lucina, goddess of childbirth, and alluding to the fact that the fossils are ancient and in each case the mother was literally sitting on her eggs.