Body

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—June 18, 2013—Inside each of us is our own internal timing device. It drives everything from sleep cycles to metabolism, but the inner-workings of this so-called "circadian clock" are complex, and the molecular processes behind it have long eluded scientists. But now, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered how one important protein falls under direct instructions from the body's circadian clock.

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Like a stealthy enemy, blast disease invades rice crops around the world, killing plants and cutting production of one of the most important global food sources.

Now, a study by an international team of researchers has shed light on how the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, invades plant tissue. The finding is a step toward learning how to control the disease, which by some estimates destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people annually.

Recent research has shown that cancer cells have a much different – and more complex – metabolism than normal cells. Now, scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas have found that exploiting these differences might provide a new strategy to combat lung cancer.

In an article published online May 21 in the journal PLOS ONE, UT Dallas researchers compared the metabolic characteristics of non-small-cell lung cancer cells with normal lung cells taken from the same patient.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks identified a new tool that can dramatically improve the notoriously inaccurate surveys of what and how much an individual eats and drinks. Their research is published in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

Scientists at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine have discovered a mechanism that is used to protect the body from harmful bacteria. Platelets, a component of blood typically associated with clotting, were discovered to actively search for specific bacteria, and upon detection, seal it off from the rest of the body. The findings, which were published in Nature Immunology this week, provide the science community with a greater understanding of immunity.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the site of injection of a contaminated lot of a steroid drug to treat symptoms such as back pain resulted in earlier identification of patients with probable or confirmed fungal spinal or paraspinal infection, allowing early initiation of medical and surgical treatment, according to a study in the June 19 issue of JAMA.

The majority of children at risk of type 1 diabetes who developed 2 or more diabetes-related autoantibodies developed type 1 diabetes within 15 years, findings that highlight the need for research into finding interventions to stop the development of multiple islet autoantibodies, according to a study in the June 19 issue of JAMA.

HOUSTON – Researchers have discovered and mapped the signaling network between two previously unconnected proteins, exposing a link that, if broken, could cut off cancer cell growth at its starting point.

A team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported the tie between epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a well-known cancer drug target, and MCM7, a protein vital to the first step in DNA replication, in the June issue of Cancer Cell.

Glycoproteins are an essential part of our body: These sugar-protein hybrid molecules are what makes the protective mucus that lines our lungs and stomach. They are also part of the fluid that lubricates our joints, the synovial fluid, and cover all our cells, with the sugar parts, the glycans, sticking out like a tiny forest of antennae. Researchers in the Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology at ETH Zurich and the Laboratories of Nanoscale Materials Science of Empa have identified a surprising effect that glycans have on the water molecules that surround them.

Swainson' s Thrushes, from a local population near Bolinas, CA spend their winters together in Mexico, according to a new tracking study released by Point Blue Conservation Science, (Point Blue, formerly PRBO). This result is important because it shows that the conservation of habitat for these local populations in California is tightly linked with climate and habitat changes in Mexico, where these birds spend their winters, 1,600 miles away.

It's not a hacker lab. At Brandeis University, sophisticated computational models and advances in graphical processing units are helping scientists understand the complex interplay between genomic data, virus structure and the formation of the virus' outer "shell" — critical for replication.

"We hope that some of what we are finding will help researchers alter virus assembly, leaving viruses unable to replicate," says post-doctoral fellow Jason Perlmutter, first author of the scientific paper describing the technique, published in the open access journal eLife.

A research team led by UCSF scientists has found that exposure in infancy to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a component of motor vehicle air pollution, is strongly linked with later development of childhood asthma among African Americans and Latinos.

The researchers said their findings indicate that air pollution might, in fact, be a cause of the disease, and they called for a tightening of U.S government standards for annual exposure to NO2.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Anyone who has ever owned a pet will tell you that it has a unique personality.

Yet only in the last 10 years has the study of animal personality started to gain ground with behavioral ecologists, said Jennifer Verdolin of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, in Durham, NC.

She and a colleague have now found distinct personalities in the grey mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus), the tiny, saucer-eyed primate native to the African island of Madagascar.

SAN FRANCISCO – (June 18, 2013) – Men who lose sleep during the work week may be able to lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by getting more hours of sleep, according to Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) research findings presented today at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Local chemical signals released by fat cells in the mammary gland appear to provide a crucial link between exposure to unrelenting social stressors early in life, and the subsequent development of breast cancer, researchers from the University of Chicago report in the July 2013 issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research.