Switching Off Muscular Dystrophy
A group of compounds can switch off the genes responsible for adult-onset muscular dystrophy. This is one of the first times scientists have been able to turn off a genetic, hereditary disease. Chemists screened more than 300,000 small molecules from a previous NIH-funded study and isolated compounds that bind to and inhibit an RNA complex critical to the disease’s progression. When other scientists on the team introduced the compounds into in vitro muscle tissue affected by the disease, the RNA complex did not form, allowing the damage to the muscle cells to be reversed. The small molecules will serve as a tool for stud...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Who Benefits from Breast Cancer Prevention Drugs? These Genes Might Tell
Researchers matched two gene variations previously unconnected to breast cancer with a positive response to long-term cancer prevention treatment using tamoxifen or raloxifene. Both medications are sometimes given to women who are at high risk of breast cancer, but the drugs can have side effects, including blood clots and increased risk of endometrial cancers. The variants are present in or nearby to genes that affect expression of the gene BRCA1, which is strongly associated with the development of breast cancer. Women with the beneficial version of the two variants were more than 5 times less likely than other high-risk...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
How a Genetic Disease Makes Itself More Likely to Pass from Father to Child
About 1 in 2,000 children are born with Noonan syndrome, a genetic disease associated with short stature, congenital heart defects and a unique craniofacial structure. Scientists have found why the disorder is more common than expected in children of older dads. Changes in one of the genes for Noonan syndrome give affected stem cells in the fathers’ testes an advantage over other stem cells. As a result, the stem cells and sperm carrying these mutations are found in higher numbers than usual in the testes of older men, increasing the likelihood that they will produce children with Noonan syndrome. This finding may lead t...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
A New Tool to Check Sugar Consumption
Scientists have found a biomarker that can be used to measure a person’s sugar consumption. Corn and sugarcane, which are among the most prominent sources of sugars, have unique ratios of two forms of carbon, carbon-12 and carbon-13, that persist in people after they consume sugars made from the plants. Scientists can estimate the amount of sugar intake by looking for those unique ratios in a small hair or blood sample. The new method can be used to calibrate and increase the accuracy of other measurements of sugar consumption as well as aid other diet-related research. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Cool Image: Making the Ribosome Move
This is the first atomic-resolution image of the protein-building ribosome bound to the protein that controls its motion, EF-G (center of the picture). Using high-energy protein crystallography, researchers obtained the pair’s structure and used it to learn that EF-G moves the ribosome by reshaping itself after interacting with an energy-carrying molecule. EF-G ’s reconfiguration allows the ribosome to manipulate mRNA and tRNA, two molecules needed for protein building in the cell. The finding could lead to better antibiotics that interfere with the ribosome’s movement in bacteria and kills them. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Switching Off Muscular Dystrophy
A group of compounds can switch off the genes responsible for adult-onset muscular dystrophy. This is one of the first times scientists have been able to turn off a genetic, hereditary disease. Chemists screened more than 300,000 small molecules from a previous NIH-funded study and isolated compounds that bind to and inhibit an RNA complex critical to the disease’s progression. When other scientists on the team introduced the compounds into in vitro muscle tissue affected by the disease, the RNA complex did not form, allowing the damage to the muscle cells to be reversed. The small molecules will serve as a tool for stud...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Who Benefits from Breast Cancer Prevention Drugs? These Genes Might Tell
Researchers matched two gene variations previously unconnected to breast cancer with a positive response to long-term cancer prevention treatment using tamoxifen or raloxifene. Both medications are sometimes given to women who are at high risk of breast cancer, but the drugs can have side effects, including blood clots and increased risk of endometrial cancers. The variants are present in or nearby to genes that affect expression of the gene BRCA1, which is strongly associated with the development of breast cancer. Women with the beneficial version of the two variants were more than 5 times less likely than other high-risk...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
How a Genetic Disease Makes Itself More Likely to Pass from Father to Child
About 1 in 2,000 children are born with Noonan syndrome, a genetic disease associated with short stature, congenital heart defects and a unique craniofacial structure. Scientists have found why the disorder is more common than expected in children of older dads. Changes in one of the genes for Noonan syndrome give affected stem cells in the fathers’ testes an advantage over other stem cells. As a result, the stem cells and sperm carrying these mutations are found in higher numbers than usual in the testes of older men, increasing the likelihood that they will produce children with Noonan syndrome. This finding may lead t...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
A New Tool to Check Sugar Consumption
Scientists have found a biomarker that can be used to measure a person’s sugar consumption. Corn and sugarcane, which are among the most prominent sources of sugars, have unique ratios of two forms of carbon, carbon-12 and carbon-13, that persist in people after they consume sugars made from the plants. Scientists can estimate the amount of sugar intake by looking for those unique ratios in a small hair or blood sample. The new method can be used to calibrate and increase the accuracy of other measurements of sugar consumption as well as aid other diet-related research. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Cool Image: Making the Ribosome Move
This is the first atomic-resolution image of the protein-building ribosome bound to the protein that controls its motion, EF-G (center of the picture). Using high-energy protein crystallography, researchers obtained the pair’s structure and used it to learn that EF-G moves the ribosome by reshaping itself after interacting with an energy-carrying molecule. EF-G ’s reconfiguration allows the ribosome to manipulate mRNA and tRNA, two molecules needed for protein building in the cell. The finding could lead to better antibiotics that interfere with the ribosome’s movement in bacteria and kills them. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - July 18, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
New Class of Antibiotics Shows Promise Against Harmful Bacteria
A new type of antibiotic that interrupts protein synthesis in bacteria could be used to create more effective treatments against the bacteria that cause shigellosis, tuberculosis and anthrax. Scientists tested about 650,000 different molecules on a strain of E. coli. Of those, they identified 46 that disrupt a process that bacterial cells use to replicate. The scientists then tested those compounds on several bacteria that can cause lethal infections in people. One of the molecules was 100 times more effective than current treatments for tuberculosis and showed antibiotic activity against a broad spectrum of bacterial spec...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - June 20, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
An Accessible Way of Making Cancer Cells Glow
Scientists have created a method of making cell-cell interactions emit light using chemicals common to many biology laboratories. The researchers injected into mice with advanced tumors a chemical that, through the interaction between cancer and immune cells, can be metabolized into luciferin, a molecule found in fireflies and other light-emitting organisms. Using this chemical, scientists could see where cancer cells had spread within the mouse’s body simply by looking for areas that lit up. The technique may one day be used as a probe for cancer. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - June 20, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Huntington’s Disease Involves Muscle Cell Malfunction, Too
Huntington’s disease, a degenerative genetic disorder that usually emerges in early middle age, has long been considered a neurological disease. Scientists had assumed that the uncontrollable muscle movements associated with the disease were due to brain cells losing function. New research shows that muscle cells in mice carrying the RNA coding error associated with the disease also go awry. Diseased cells responded at a lower threshold than normal muscle cells to electrical pulses similar to a nerve cell firing, and some even responded long after such low-level pulses. The findings may open new lines of research into un...
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - June 20, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Receptor Promotes Cancer Spread in Dense Breast Tissue
It’s long been known that women with denser breast tissue are more likely than others to develop aggressive breast cancers that spread. Cancer cells on the edge of a breast tumor have a receptor called DDR2 that attaches to collagen, the protein associated with dense, fibrous breast tissue. Researchers have found that the interaction of DDR2 with collagen starts a biochemical chain of events that promotes high levels of SNAIL1, a protein associated with the spreading of breast cancer cells to other parts of the body. Scientists will now pursue DDR2 inhibitors as possible cancer drugs. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - June 20, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
Cool Video: HIV’s Inner Shell
This video shows a computer-generated model of the approximately 4.2 million atoms of the HIV capsid, the shell that encloses the virus’s genetic material. Scientists determined the exact structure of the capsid and the proteins that it’s made of using a variety of imaging techniques and analyses. They then entered this data into a supercomputer that produced the atomic-level image of the capsid. This structural information could be used for developing drugs that target the capsid, possibly leading to more effective therapies. (Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat)
Source: NIGMS Biomedical Beat - June 20, 2013 Category: Research Source Type: news
