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Scientists at the University of York have uncovered new insights into the way seeds use gene networks to control when they germinate in response to environmental signals.

Timing of seed germination is crucial for survival of plants in the wild and is also important for commercial seed production where there is a need to ensure uniform growth.

LA JOLLA, Calif., June 10, 2013 — Conventional treatments for diseases such as cancer can carry harmful side effects—and the primary reason is that such treatments are not targeted specifically to the cells of the body where they're needed. What if drugs for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases can be targeted specifically and only to cells that need the medicine, and leave normal tissues untouched?

For more than a decade, scientists have suspected that hairpin-shaped chains of micro-RNA regulate wood formation inside plant cells. Now, scientists at NC State University have found the first example and mapped out key relationships that control the process.

Females play a larger role in determining paternity than previously thought, say biologists in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. Their findings are the subject of a new paper titled "Female mediation of competitive fertilization success in Drosophila melanogaster," published this month by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects more than 170 million people worldwide. Approximately 80 percent of infections lead to chronic illness including fibrosis, cirrhosis, cancer and also hepatic iron overload. A new study completed by researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine reveals that HCV not only alters expression of the iron-uptake receptor known as transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) but that TfR1 also mediates HCV entry.

Women with a severe form of morning sickness who take antihistamines to help them sleep through their debilitating nausea are significantly more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes, including low birth weight babies and premature births, a UCLA study has found.

Scientists in Sydney, Australia, have discovered that obesity and type 2 diabetes in pregnancy can program children to develop metabolic problems later in life. The good news is, this legacy is not set in stone—if children of obese mothers are careful about what they eat, it can be overturned. The study, carried out by scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, is published in the June edition of the journal Epigenetics. By using genetically identical mice as a model, the team investigated the effects of having a mother with obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Several years ago, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center became the first center in the United States to test an Israeli-invented device designed to increase the space between the prostate and the rectum in prostate cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. Now, results from the international Phase I clinical trial show that the device has the potential to significantly reduce rectal injury, a side effect caused by unwanted radiation exposure that can leave men with compromised bowel function following treatment.

(Memphis, Tenn. – June 10, 2013) Changes in an epigenetic mechanism that turns expression of genes on and off may be as important as genetic alterations in causing pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), according to a study led by scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and published in the June 10 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Elderly mice suffering from age-related heart disease saw a significant improvement in cardiac function after being treated with the FDA-approved drug rapamycin for just three months. The research, led by a team of scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, shows how rapamycin impacts mammalian tissues, providing functional insights and possible benefits for a drug that has been shown to extend the lifespan of mice as much as 14 percent.

This news release is available in German.

Perennial plants flower only when they have reached a certain age and been subjected to the cold. These two circumstances prevent the plant from starting to flower during winter. George Coupland and his fellow scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne have now discovered that the Alpine rock cress determines its age based on the quantity of a short ribonucleic acid.

Analysis of the damage shows numerous characteristics that are common with a recently identified pathology of tooth enamel that affects roughly 18% of children between the ages of 6 and 8.

These results have been published in the American Journal of Pathology.

A study in Schizophrenia Bulletin is among the first to indicate epigenetic changes related to immune function in schizophrenia. DNA methylation, a process involving the addition of a methyl group to the DNA without changing its sequence, can alter gene expression. Led by Dr. Jingyu Liu, the nine researchers analyzed and verified changes in DNA methylation patterns in people with and without schizophrenia and found significant changes in seven genes that moderate immune responses.

Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug.

The expression of specific genes is partially dictated by the way the DNA is packed into chromatin, a tightly packed combination of DNA and proteins known as histones. HDAC3 is a chromatin-modifying enzyme that regulates gene expression, chromatin structure, and genome instability and it has previously been shown to associate with the oncoproteins that drive leukemia and lymphoma.