Body

A drug derived from the hydrangea root, used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine, shows promise in treating autoimmune disorders, report researchers from the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and the Immune Disease Institute at Children's Hospital Boston (PCMM/IDI), along with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

A long-standing mystery surrounding a fundamental process in plant biology has been solved by a team of scientists at the University of California, Davis.

The group's ground-breaking discovery that a plant hormone called auxin is responsible for egg production has several major implications.

First, this is the first definitive report of a plant hormone acting as a morphogen, that is, a substance that directs the pattern of development of cells based on its concentration.

Like human infants, young apes are known to hoot and holler when you tickle them. But is it fair to say that those playful calls are really laughter? The answer to that question is yes, say researchers reporting online on June 4th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

"This study is the first phylogenetic test of the evolutionary continuity of a human emotional expression," said Marina Davila Ross of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. "It supports the idea that there is laughter in apes."

Whether baby lizards will turn out to be male or female is a more complicated question than scientists would have ever guessed, according to a new report published online on June 4th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The study shows that for at least one lizard species, egg size matters.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have developed the first mouse model for auto-inflammatory diseases, disorders that involve the over-activation of the body's innate, primitive immune system. Their study, published early on-line in Cell Immunity on June 4, suggests that the innate – not adaptive – immune system drives auto-inflammatory diseases. The findings could open new therapeutic directions for research into disorders such as gout or inflammatory bowel disease.

HOUSTON (June 4, 2009) – A rare, deadly developmental disorder of the lungs called alveolar capillary dysplasia with misalignment of pulmonary veins (ACD/MPV) that usually kills the infants born with it within the first month of life results from deletions or mutations in the FOXF1 transcription factor gene, said a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) in a report that appears in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

SALT LAKE CITY, June 4, 2009 – New research shows that when two species of stickleback fish evolved and lost their pelvises and body armor, the changes were caused by different genes in each species. That surprised researchers, who expected the same genes would control the same changes in both related fish.

Researchers at the University of Leeds have devised a more accurate method of dating ancient human migration – even when no corroborating archaeological evidence exists.

Estimating the chronology of population migrations throughout mankind's early history has always been problematic. The most widely used genetic method works back to find the last common ancestor of any particular set of lineages using samples of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but this method has recently been shown to be unreliable, throwing 20 years of research into doubt.

Scientists at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa have discovered a powerful new way to stimulate muscle regeneration, paving the way for new treatments for debilitating conditions such as muscular dystrophy.

The research, to be published in the June 5 issue of Cell Stem Cell, shows for the first time that a protein called Wnt7a increases the number of stem cells in muscle tissue, leading to accelerated growth and repair of skeletal muscle.

DURHAM, N.C. - More than one kind of stem cell is required to support the upkeep and repair of the lungs, according to a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Scientists at Duke University Medical Center painstakingly followed and counted genetically labeled cells in the mouse lung for over a year, under differing conditions, to learn more about natural renewal and healing processes. This information may shed light on what goes wrong in conditions like lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and asthma.

The laboratory « Structure - Activité of Normal & Pathologic Biomolecules– SANPB », Inserm / UEVE U829 (Genopole Evry, France) in collaboration with the Material Centre of Mines-ParisTech (Evry, France), the NRG - UMR 5060 CNRS / UTBM (Technology University of Belfort-Montbéliard) and the Physic Institute of Stuttgart University (Germany) discovered a novel route to fabricate fluorescent nanoparticles from diamond microcrystals. Results are published in Nanotechnology June10 2009 issue.

Philadelphia, Penn. - June 04, 2009 - Patients with heart attacks and other forms of chest pain are three to five times more likely to experience serious complications after hospital admission when they are treated in a crowded emergency department (ED), according to a new study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.

Paris, France – June 04, 2009 – The cause of Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most frequent neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease, is unknown, but in most cases it is believed to involve a combination of environmental risk factors and genetic susceptibility. Laboratory studies in rats have shown that injecting the insecticide rotenone leads to an animal model of PD and several epidemiological studies have shown an association between pesticides and PD, but most have not identified specific pesticides or studied the amount of exposure relating to the association.

Montreal, June 4th, 2009 – Cigarette smoking induced COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a disease that results in severe breathing difficulty. According to World Health Organization (WHO) it is the fourth leading killer worldwide. However the mechanisms responsible for some smokers developing COPD and others evading the disease have not been well understood.

PHILADELPHIA - After a vaccination or an infection, the human immune system remembers to keep protecting against invaders it has already encountered, with the aid of specialized B-cells and T-cells. Immunological memory has long been the subject of intense study, but the underlying cellular mechanisms regulating the generation and persistence of long-lived memory T cells remain largely undefined. Now, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers have found that a common anti-diabetic drug might enhance the effectiveness of vaccines.