Body

NEW YORK, NY (October 23, 2015) --Inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state restores hair growth, a new study from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center has found. The research was published today in the online edition of Science Advances.

In experiments with mouse and human hair follicles, Angela M. Christiano, PhD, and colleagues found that drugs that inhibit the Janus kinase (JAK) family of enzymes promote rapid and robust hair growth when directly applied to the skin.

Most pharmaceutical drugs consist of tiny molecules, which target a class of proteins found on the surfaces of cell membranes. Studying these subtle interactions is essential for the design of effective drugs, but the task is extremely challenging.

Now, Nongjian (NJ) Tao and his colleagues at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute describe a new method for examining small molecules and their communication with membrane proteins. The research will allow scientists and clinicians to study these interactions at an astonishingly minute scale with unprecedented precision.

Washington, DC -- A phage showed strong anti-microbial activity against a type of food-borne bacterium that often kills infants after infecting them via infant formula. Phages are viruses that infect only bacteria. The research is published Oct. 23 online in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have located a previously unknown function in the so-called histones, which allows for an improved understanding of how cells protect and repair DNA damages. This knowledge may eventually result in better treatments for diseases such as cancer.

The researchers have discovered a hitherto unknown function in the so-called histones, which can contribute to better treatments for diseases caused by cellular changes.

New research has shed light on the molecular changes that occur in our bodies as we age.

In the largest study of its kind, an international group of researchers, including experts from the University of Exeter's Medical School, examined expression of genes in blood samples from 15,000 people across the world.

They found 1,450 genes that are linked to ageing, and also uncovered a link between these genes and factors such as diet, smoking and exercise.

Yuri Lvov and Rawil Fakhrullin of Bionanotechnology Lab, Kazan Federal University, in cooperation with Wencai Wang and Liqun Zhang of State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology have recently presented in Advanced Materials a broad scope of application of halloysite clay tubes .

Researchers from the Structural Biology Computational Group of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Alfonso Valencia, in collaboration with a group headed by Francesco Gervasio at the University College London (UK), have developed the first computational method based on evolutionary principles to predict protein dynamics, which explains the changes in the shape or dimensional structure that they experience in order to interact with other compounds or speed up chemical reactions.

Plants adapt their flowering time to the temperature in their surroundings. But what exactly triggers their flowering at the molecular level? Can this factor switch flowering on or off and thus respond to changes in the climate? In a study currently published in PLOS Genetics, a team headed by Professor Claus Schwechheimer from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) describes a molecular mechanism with which plants adapt their flowering time to ambient temperatures and thereby indicate ways in which the flowering time can be predicted on the basis of genetic information.

Luminol gets trotted out pretty frequently on TV crime shows, but a new technique might someday compete with the storied forensics tool as a police procedural plot device and, perhaps more importantly, as a means of solving real crimes. Recently published work from the University of South Carolina is showing that what the researchers term "steam thermography" has the ability to spot blood spots in all kinds of spots--even in spots where luminol can't.

Food waste is today's hot topic. In fact, according to scientific surveys in Switzerland, 300 kg of perfectly good food ends up in the bin per person each year. However, this number encompasses the entire shopping basket, from yoghurt to drinkable leftover wine and two-day-old bread.

From this basket, scientists at the research institute Agroscope and ETH Zurich have now identified one product that is discarded disproportionately often: the potato.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Oct. 23, 2015 -- Basic research into the mechanisms of cell division, using eggs and embryos from frogs and starfish, has led researchers to an unexpected discovery about how animal cells control the forces that shape themselves.

During a key point in cytokinesis -- the process in which a cell divides its cytoplasm to create two daughter cells -- a cell's cortex becomes an excitable medium, the researchers report in a paper placed online ahead of print by the journal Nature Cell Biology.

Textbooks on methane-metabolising organisms might have to be rewritten after researchers in a University of Queensland-led international project today announced discovery of two new organisms.

Deputy Head of UQ's Australian Centre for Ecogenomics in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Associate Professor Gene Tyson said these new organisms played an unknown role in greenhouse gas emissions and consumption.

Mini-kidney organoids have now been grown in a laboratory by using genome editing to re-create human kidney disease in petri dishes.

The achievement, believed to be the first of its kind, resulted from combining stem cell biology with leading-edge gene-editing techniques.

The journal Nature Communications reports the findings today, Oct. 23. The work paves the way for personalized drug discovery for kidney disease.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital (UH Rainbow) found injuries related to legal interventions, or contact with law enforcement, involving male teenagers is not an uncommon occurrence in the United States.

WASHINGTON, DC - As an increasing number of states legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use, health officials expect consumption of tetrahydrocanabis (THC) during pregnancy to increase. A new study suggests a mother's use of marijuana while pregnant could indicate other drug use as well.

An Arizona study found that 26 percent of mothers or their newborns who tested positive for THC also had drugs such as opiods, amphetamines and cocaine in their systems.