Health News

Mouse model created to act as biosensor

Date: Mar-17-2014
Scientists from the UK and Australia have created a mouse that expresses a fluorescing 'biosensor' in every cell of its body, allowing diseased cells and drugs to be tracked and evaluated in real time and in three dimensions.This biosensor mimics the action of a target molecule, in this case a protein known as 'Rac', which drives cell movement in many types of cancer. Rac behaves like a switch, oscillating on the molecular level between two states - active or inactive.When Rac is active, the biosensor picks up chemical cues and glows blue.

Reversible mechanism discovered that increases muscle elasticity

Date: Mar-17-2014
How does yoga improve your flexibility? In a recent cover story of Cell, Columbia University biological sciences professor Julio Fernandez and team report the discovery of a new form of mechanical memory that adjusts the elasticity of muscles to their history of stretching. Using highly sensitive atomic force microscopes, the researchers detected a chemical reaction that increases the elasticity of muscle proteins. Crucially, this reaction targets molecules that have been exposed to a stretching force.

Self-assembling DNA cages could one day deliver drugs, or house tiny bioreactors or photonic devices

Date: Mar-17-2014
Move over, nanotechnologists, and make room for the biggest of the small. Scientists at the Harvard's Wyss Institute have built a set of self-assembling DNA cages one-tenth as wide as a bacterium. The structures are some of the largest and most complex structures ever constructed solely from DNA, they report online in Science.Moreover, the scientists visualized them using a DNA-based super-resolution microscopy method - and obtained the first sharp 3D optical images of intact synthetic DNA nanostructures in solution.

How gene activity is inherited

Date: Mar-17-2014
Every cell in our body has exactly the same DNA, yet every cell is different. A cell's identity is determined by the subset of genes that it activates. But how does a cell know which genes to turn off and which to turn on? While the genetic code carried in our DNA provides instructions for cells to manufacture specific proteins, it is a second code that determines which genes are in fact activated in particular cell types.This second code is carried by proteins that attach to DNA. The code-carrying proteins are called histones.

Africans' ability to digest milk likely due to spread of cattle raising

Date: Mar-17-2014
Babies are born with the ability to digest lactose, the sugar found in milk, but most humans lose this ability after infancy because of declining levels of the lactose-digesting enzyme lactase. People who maintain high levels of lactase reap the nutritive benefits of milk, however, offering a potential evolutionary advantage to lactase persistence, or what is commonly known as lactose tolerance.

New ovarian cancer targets proposed

Date: Mar-17-2014
Proteins called TAFs were once thought to be generic cogs in the machinery of gene expression, but in a new study Brown University scientists propose that they may be important suspects in the progression of ovarian cancer that should not continue to be overlooked.In the complex genomic and molecular conspiracy that gives rise to ovarian cancer, what if researchers have been missing a whole set of suspects because they've been hiding in plain sight?

Voluntary fall-prevention program for the elderly found to be effective

Date: Mar-17-2014
A low-cost program reduced falls in the elderly by 17 percent statewide, illustrating the value and effectiveness of using existing aging services, such as senior centers, in preventing falls, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health study determined.Pitt Public Health researchers followed nearly 2,000 older Pennsylvanians between 2010 and 2011 to determine the effectiveness of the state's Healthy Steps for Older Adults, a voluntary fall-prevention program. Results of the study, funded by the U.S.

Movement kicks visual system into higher gear

Date: Mar-17-2014
Whether you're a Major League outfielder chasing down a hard-hit ball or a lesser mortal navigating a busy city sidewalk, it pays to keep a close watch on your surroundings when walking or running. Now, new research by UC San Francisco neuroscientists suggests that the body may get help in these fast-changing situations from a specialized brain circuit that causes visual system neurons to fire more strongly during locomotion.

Better sleep linked with higher omega-3 levels in new study

Date: Mar-17-2014
Omega-3 fatty acids are most commonly derived from fish oils, including tuna and salmon, and they have been linked to numerous health benefits. But now, a new study suggests that having higher levels of omega-3 DHA is associated with better sleep.The researchers, from the University of Oxford in the UK, have published results of their study in the Journal of Sleep Research.They conducted their research in 362 children from the UK between the ages of 7 and 9 years old, who were not recruited based on sleep problems.

Medications that work against each other prescribed to one in five older Americans

Date: Mar-17-2014
About three out of four older Americans have multiple chronic health conditions, and more than 20 percent of them are being treated with drugs that work at odds with each other - the medication being used for one condition can actually make the other condition worse.This approach of treating conditions "one at a time" even if the treatments might conflict with one another is common in medicine, experts say, in part because little information exists to guide practitioners in how to consider this problem, weigh alternatives and identify different options.