Body

LA JOLLA, CA – June 19, 2013 – Many proteins work like Swiss Army knives, fitting multiple functions into their elaborately folded structures. A bit mysteriously, some proteins manage to multitask even with structures that are unfolded and floppy—"intrinsically disordered." In this week's issue of Nature, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report their discovery of an important trick that a well-known intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) uses to expand and control its functionality.

Gorbunova and Seluanov identified the substance as HMW-HA, which caused them to test its possible role in naked mole rat's cancer resistance.

Risk of heart and blood vessel disease may increase when a particular gene is switched off, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's Emerging Science Series Webinar.

Two known biomarkers are high blood levels of certain fats – low-density lipoproteins ("bad" cholesterol) and high triglycerides. Another recognized biomarker is a protein called adiponectin, which is made in fat tissue and helps regulate the process of turning food into energy. At low levels it is associated with increased disease risk.

A higher strength of cholesterol-lowering drugs, or statins, did not increase the risk of kidney injury among heart attack survivors, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's Emerging Science Series Webinar.

WASHINGTON, Wednesday June 19, 2013 - The Flemish plant scientist Marc Van Montagu (born 1933) is being awarded the "World Food Prize 2013", jointly with the American scientists Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert T. Fraley. This was announced in Washington DC on Wednesday by the US Secretary of State, John Kerry. The World Food Prize - the "Nobel Prize for food and agriculture" - gives the award annually to one or more people whose work has been of exceptional social importance for the quality, quantity or availability of food.

Philadelphia, PA (June 19, 2013) – In early April, senior leaders from medical, law enforcement, military, and fire/rescue agencies met in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss one question: how can first responders improve survival after a mass casualty event?

Species of mammals and birds are threatened with extinction as a result of rising human population density, according to Jeffrey McKee and colleagues from The Ohio State University in the US. Their work is also the first to show that the exponential growth of the human population will continue to pose a threat to other species. In other words, there does not appear to be a threshold above which population growth would cease to have an incremental negative effect. The study is published online in Springer's journal, Human Ecology.

Could drugs that block the body's system for repairing damage to the genetic material DNA become a boon to health? As unlikely as it may seem, those compounds are sparking optimism as potential treatments for ovarian and breast cancers driven by a mutation in BRCA, a gene that made headlines when actress Angelina Jolie revealed she carries the mutation. The compounds, termed PARP inhibitors, are the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News.

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Children had half as many emergency department visits if their primary care office had evening office hours on five or more days a week, according to new research from child health experts at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.

The new study was published online this month in The Journal of Pediatrics and will be presented at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting.

In a scientific paper published in the journal Polar Biology, researchers report using DNA from tissues samples collected in 1955 to study what may be a new type of killer whale (Orcinus orca).

In 1955, a pod of unusual-looking killer whales stranded on a New Zealand beach and a skeleton was saved in a museum in Wellington. Photographs were also taken but it was almost 50 years before this unique form of killer whale, characterized by a very small white eye-patch and bulbous forehead, was documented alive in the wild.

A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh has developed antibacterial compounds, derived from the outer coating of HIV, that could be potential treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections and appear to avoid generating resistance. These new agents are quite small, making them inexpensive and easy to manufacture. The research was published in the June 2013 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The ongoing global growth in the human population will inevitably crowd out mammals and birds and has the potential to threaten hundreds of species with extinction within 40 years, new research shows.

Scientists at The Ohio State University have determined that the average growing nation should expect at least 3.3 percent more threatened species in the next decade and an increase of 10.8 percent species threatened with extinction by 2050.

DETROIT – Insulin is the most potent physiological anabolic agent for tissue-building and energy storage, promoting the storage and synthesis of lipids, protein and carbohydrates, and inhibiting their breakdown and release into the circulatory system. It also plays a major role in stimulating glucose entry into muscle tissue, where the glucose is metabolized and removed from the blood following meals. But gaps exist in understanding the precise molecular mechanisms by which insulin regulates glucose uptake in fat and muscle cells.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at Louisiana State University have developed a method for identifying aggressive prostate cancers that require immediate therapy. It relies on understanding the genetic interaction between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The goal is to better predict a prostate cancer's aggressiveness to avoid unnecessary radical treatment.

Their study was published in the online journal PLOS ONE in April.

A new variety of canary seeds bred specifically for human consumption qualifies as a gluten-free cereal that would be ideal for people with celiac disease (CD), scientists have confirmed in a study published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.