Biosingularity

Life’s smallest motor, a protein that shuttles cargo within cells and helps cells divide, does so by rocking up and down like a seesaw, according to research conducted by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brandeis University. The researchers created high-resolution snapshots of a protein motor, called kinesin, as [...]

Researchers investigating UK samples have found no association between the controversial xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Their study, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Retrovirology, calls into question a potential link described late last year by an American research team.

A rare study that tracked thousands of children through adulthood found the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely as the thinnest to die prematurely, before age 55, of illness or a self-inflicted injury. Youngsters with a condition called pre-diabetes were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those with high [...]

Eyeballs just don’t become toenails — even though the same genome sits in the nucleus of every cell. The difference is in the parts of the genome that are expressed — a cell’s identity is determined by the specific genes that are active within that cell. The differentiation of a cell, and a cell’s commitment [...]

As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of “butterflies” in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”. A deeper understanding of this mass of neural [...]

Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas. To investigate the neural basis of spirituality, Cosimo Urgesi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Udine, and his colleagues turned [...]

Stuttering may be the result of a glitch in the day-to-day process by which cellular components in key regions of the brain are broken down and recycled, says a study in the Feb. 10 Online First issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by researchers at the National Institute on Deafness [...]

Why do people with fragile X syndrome, a genetic defect that is the best-known cause of autism and inherited mental retardation, recoil from hugs and physical touch – even from their parents? New research has found in fragile X syndrome there is delayed development of the sensory cortex, the part of the brain that responds [...]

Humanity’s physical design flaws have long been apparent – we have a blind spot in our vision, for instance, and insufficient room for wisdom teeth – but do the imperfections extend to the genetic level? In his new book, Inside the Human Genome, John Avise examines why – from the perspectives of biochemistry and molecular [...]

UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic “gene” that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and the increased acidity of oceans. “We created three-dimensional, synthetic DNA-like crystals,” said UCLA chemistry and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA [...]

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process. “As we all eventually learn, ageing diminishes our mind, fades our perception of the world and compromises our physical capacity,” says David Rollo, associate professor of biology at McMaster. “Declining physical activity—think of grandparents versus toddlers—is one [...]

Giving chocolates to your Valentine on February 14th may help lower their risk of stroke based on a preliminary study from researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital. The study, which is being presented at the American Academy of Neurology in April, also found that eating chocolate may lower the risk of death after suffering a stroke.

Yale University scientists have streamlined the process for synthesizing a family of compounds with the potential to kill cancer and other diseased cells, and have found that they represent a unique category of anti-cancer agents. Their discovery appears in this week’s online edition of theJournal of the American Chemical Society. The team studied a family [...]

Avoiding potentially dangerous silent strokes may be another health benefit of following a Mediterranean diet. A new study shows people who most closely followed a Mediterranean-style diet were 36% less likely to have areas of brain damage linked to silent strokes than those who least closely followed the diet. These areas of brain damage, called [...]

A new screening tool developed by scientists in Denmark may help detect the earliest stages of cancer by taking advantage of the body’s own defenses. The researchers constructed a microarray system that analyzes patients’ blood for a specific class of immune agents called autoantibodies. These are agents that attack the body’s own tissue, targeting what [...]

Even though nearly 2,000 genetic tests are available today, most Americans have never taken one. (Save, perhaps, for newborn screening.) That may soon change, as the nation’s largest businesses responsible for managing prescription benefits, Medco and CVS Caremark, delve into the DNA testing business. Taken together, the two companies cover more than 100 million Americans. [...]

Swine Flu. Spanish Flu. SARS. Almost every year, it seems, there is a new virus to watch out for. Roughly thirty thousand Americans die annually from a new flu strain — meaning roughly one flu fatality for every two victims of car accidents — and there is always the possibility that we will do battle [...]

Researchers have identified a compound that mimics one of the brains own growth factors and can protect brain cells against damage in several animal models of neurological disease. 7,8-dihydroxyflavone is a member of the flavonoid family of chemicals, which are abundant in fruits and vegetables. The compound’s selective effects suggest that it could be the [...]

Peptides that target blood vessels in fat and cause them to go into programmed cell death (termed apoptosis) could become a model for future weight-loss therapies, say University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers. A research team led by Randy Seeley, PhD, of UC’s Metabolic Diseases Institute, has found that obese animal models treated with proapoptotic peptide [...]

Hepatitis C, a virus that can cause liver failure or cancer, infects about 200 million people worldwide. Existing drugs are not always effective, so many patients end up on long liver-transplant waiting lists. One reason that no better treatment options exist is the lack of a suitable liver tissue model to test new drugs in [...]

Think twice the next time you wipe a few flecks of dandruff from your shoulder. You might be shedding cells that may someday restore human vision. Thomas Reh and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, have generated light-sensing retinal cells, called photoreceptors, from adult human skin cells. They then transplanted the cells into [...]

The Medpedia Project today announced Medpedia Clinical Trials, a platform for patients and physicians to receive information about the thousands of clinical trials that are in process or about to begin. Other online sources already allow for searching clinical trials, but the Medpedia platform allows clinical trial information to be “pushed” or fed automatically to [...]

- A coffee break after an important meeting or class may be just the thing your brain needs to digest new information and improve memory. A new study suggests that resting while awake aids in memory consolidation and improves memory recall, much like getting a good night’s sleep has been shown to do. “Taking a [...]

When it comes to aggressive cancers, in the brain or lung for example, oncologists know that the sooner they can determine whether a treatment is unsuccessful, the sooner they can reevaluate and, if necessary, prescribe a new course of action. But typically, it takes two months or more to do the before-and-after comparisons that help [...]

Subatomic particles do it. Now the observation that groups of brain cells seem to have their own version of quantum entanglement, or “spooky action at a distance”, could help explain how our minds combine experiences from many different senses into one memory. Previous experiments have shown that the electrical activity of neurons in separate parts [...]

Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon. Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while [...]

What if a jury could decide a man’s guilt through mind reading? What if reading a defendant’s memory could betray their guilt? And what constitutes ‘intent’ to commit murder? These are just some of the issues debated and reviewed in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, the latest interdisciplinary project from Wiley-Blackwell, which for [...]

Researchers in Manchester have successfully carried out the first rewire of genetic switches, creating what could be a vital tool for the development of new drugs and even future gene therapies. A team of scientists from the School of Chemistry and the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) at The University of Manchester have found a way [...]

Genetic adaption to meat-rich diets may also lead to high rates of Alzheimer’s and heart disease The same evolutionary genetic advantages that have helped increase human lifespans also make us uniquely susceptible to diseases of aging such as cancer, heart disease and dementia, reveals a study to be published in a special PNAS collection on [...]

Antioxidants increasingly have been praised for their benefits against disease and aging, but recent studies at Kansas State University show that they also can cause harm. Researchers in K-State’s Cardiorespiratory Exercise Laboratory have been studying how to improve oxygen delivery to the skeletal muscle during physical activity by using antioxidants, which are nutrients in foods [...]

Researchers trying to restore vision damaged by disease have found promise in a tiny implant that sows seeds of new cells in the eye. The diseases macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa lay waste to photoreceptors, the cells in the retina that turn light into electrical signals carried to the brain. The damage leaves millions of [...]

Scientists have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network, dubbed AraNet, has over 19,600 genes associated to each other by over 1 million links and can increase the discovery rate of new genes affiliated with a given trait [...]