Body

Pathogenic bacteria typically elicit a host immune response; however, each of us lives with millions of strains of friendly bacteria (known as commensals) that do not activate the immune system or cause any symptoms.

In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Catharina Svanborg at Lund University in Sweden propose that commensal bacteria act as guardians of their host environment, controlling the quantity and quality of host gene expression in order to prevent an immune response.

Within the genome of each species, there are thousands of stretches of DNA that undergo little change in position and sequence over millions of years, but do not code for any proteins. Some of these evolutionarily stable sequences, so-called conserved noncoding sequences (CNSs), are known to regulate the expression of other genes or the condensation of chromosomes, but the function of many CNSs remains unknown.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have made an advance in breast cancer research which shows how some enzymes released by cancerous cells could have a protective function.

New research published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals that an enzyme called MMP-8 (matrix metalloproteinase-8) could be acting as a locator to the immune system, which then becomes activated to attack tumors.It was originally thought that the production of MMPs by breast cancer cells worked to promote cancer growth.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have used next generation genomic analysis to determine that some of the more aggressive prostate cancer tumors have similar genetic origins, which may help in predicting cancer progression. The findings appear online today in the journal Cancer Research.

"This is the first study to examine DNA alterations using next generation sequencing in adjacent Gleason patterns in the same tumor allowing us to correlate genomics with changes in pathology," saysJohn Cheville, M.D., Mayo Clinic pathologist and one of the authors on the paper.

Lisbon, 25 May 2013: Heart failure accelerates the aging process and brings on early andropausal syndrome (AS), according to research presented today at the Heart Failure Congress 2013. AS, also referred to as male 'menopause', was four times more common in men with heart failure.

The Heart Failure Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology and is being held 25-28 May in Lisbon, Portugal (1).

PERTH, AUSTRALIA — 9 May 2013 — Research conducted at Curtin University in Perth has enabled significant increases in image quality in a widely used 3D printing technique that is more than 100 years old.

Anaglyph printing — think of the red-and-blue 3D glasses used to transform 2D images to 3D images in comics, magazines, books, and newspapers — came into being when the continuous-tone printed anaglyph was invented by French physicist Louis Ducos du Hauron in 1891.

Things not always run smoothly. It may happen, actually, that when an object slides on another, the advancement may occur through a 'stop and go' series in the characteristic manner which scientists call "stick-slip", a pervasive phenomenon at every scale, from earthquakes to daily-life objects, up to the "nano" dimension.

Two mutations central to the development of infantile myofibromatosis (IM)—a disorder characterized by multiple tumors involving the skin, bone, and soft tissue—may provide new therapeutic targets, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The findings, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, may lead to new treatment options for this debilitating disease, for which the only current treatment option is repeated surgical removal of the tumors.

Giardia is a common parasite that frequently infects young children in the developing world. It is commonly encountered through contaminated food, soil, or water.

The parasite lives inside the intestines and can cause severe diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems and Giardia infection has been associated with developmental growth delays. Because the majority of infected individuals do not experience symptoms and frequently are infected with other pathogens, it is unclear if endemic Giardia directly stunts growth.

Cancer cells spread and grow by avoiding detection and destruction by the immune system. Stimulation of the immune system can help to eliminate cancer cells; however, there are many factors that cause the immune system to ignore cancer cells. Regulatory T cells are immune cells that function to suppress the immune system response. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Ronald Levy at Stanford University found that regulatory T cells that infiltrate tumors express proteins that can be targeted with therapeutic antibodies.

In recent years, microRNAs (miRNAs) and other non-coding RNAs are small molecules that help control the expression of specific proteins. In recent years they have emerged as disease biomarkers. miRNA profiles have been used to establish tissue origin for cancers of unknown primary origin, determine prognosis, monitor therapeutic responses and screen for disease, but clinically tractable, diagnostic methods for monitoring miRNA expression in patient samples are not currently available.

SAN ANTONIO (May 24, 2013) — The news about youth and diabetes keeps getting worse. The latest data from the national TODAY diabetes study shows that children who develop Type 2 diabetes are at high risk to develop heart, kidney and eye problems faster and at a higher rate than people who acquire Type 2 diabetes as adults.

PORTAND, Ore. – A new discovery at Oregon Health & Science University highlights an ingenious method to ensure the body effectively reacts when infected with the highly evasive HIV virus that causes AIDS. The same team of researchers has been utilizing this unique approach to develop its own HIV vaccine candidate, which has so far shown promising results in animal studies. This latest research finding will be published in the May 24, 2013, edition of the journal Science.

The British Menopause Society and Women's Health Concern have today released updated guidelines on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to provide clarity around the role of HRT, the benefits and the risks. The new guidelines appear in the society's flagship title, Menopause International, published by SAGE.

Most modern human mothers wean their babies much earlier than our closest primate relatives. But what about our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals?

A team of U.S. and Australian researchers reports in the journal Nature May 22 that they can now use fossil teeth to calculate when a Neanderthal baby was weaned. The new technique is based in part on knowledge gained from studies of teeth from human infants and from monkeys at the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis.