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Researchers identify protein structure linked to pain and heat perception

Touch a hot stove, and your fingers will recoil in pain because your skin carries tiny temperature sensors that detect heat and send a message to your brain saying, "Ouch! That's hot! Let go!"

19 Jan 2016

Omnicell's revolutionary medication automation cabinet system saves cost, increases efficiency

An 18-month trial in the trust which opened England’s first hospital dedicated to emergency care, Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, has found that significant cost-savings and efficiencies can be made by installing a revolutionary medication automation cabinet system provided by Omnicell Ltd, a leading provider of medication adherence packaging and automated healthcare solutions.

19 Jan 2016

Researchers reveal secondary structure of Lewy bodies in the brain of Parkinson's disease patients

Lewy bodies had been considered to be a key element of pathogenesis for Parkinson's disease. Although structural analysis for Lewy bodies with an electron microscope had been performed, it had no secondary structural information of proteins, which is important for the development of drugs.

13 Jan 2016

Mechanical properties of bone revealed through micro-indentation testing

Unravelling the mechanical properties of bone with micro-indentation testing has significance in both health and disease. At the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Dr. Björn Busse and his research group have advanced their micro-indentation testing technique using an Olympus industrial inspection digital light microscope, as an alternative to electron microscopy. The cutting edge research is described in a new application note from Olympus, available online.

From Evident Corporation - Life Sciences 12 Jan 2016

JGU employs new particle accelerator to enhance research into radiopharmaceutical chemistry

A new particle accelerator will further enhance the research landscape at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It is to be employed to conduct research into potential applications of medical relevance.

5 Jan 2016

Boston College researchers develop new type of 'cross coupling' chemical reaction

By employing a third reactant, researchers at Boston College have developed a new type of 'cross coupling' chemical reaction, building on a Nobel Prize-winning technique that is one of the most sophisticated tools available to research chemists, the team reports in the journal Science.

4 Jan 2016

ORNL's cell-free protein synthesis system can help save lives of soldiers injured in remote locations

Lives of soldiers and others injured in remote locations could be saved with a cell-free protein synthesis system developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

30 Dec 2015

CMU researchers develop new method to survey learning-related changes in synapse properties

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new approach to broadly survey learning-related changes in synapse properties. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and featured on the journal's cover, the researchers used machine-learning algorithms to analyze thousands of images from the cerebral cortex. This allowed them to identify synapses from an entire cortical region, revealing unanticipated information about how synaptic properties change during development and learning.

29 Dec 2015

Certain gut bacteria linked to type 2 diabetes, reveal Russian scientists

A group of Russian scientists, including Dr Elena Kostryukova, the Head of the Laboratory of Postgenomic Research in Biology of the Scientific Research Institute of Physical-Chemical Medicine and a researcher at MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology), and Maria Vakhitova, an MIPT postgraduate student, has discovered that the presence of certain bacteria in the gut may be linked to the development of type 2 diabetes.

21 Dec 2015

Scientists outline molecular blueprints of tiny cellular 'nanomachine'

Scientists have drawn up molecular blueprints of a tiny cellular ‘nanomachine’, whose evolution is an extraordinary feat of nature, by using one of the brightest X-ray sources on Earth.

21 Dec 2015

Researchers elucidate structure of mTORC1 protein

For a long time it has been known that the protein TOR - Target of Rapamycin - controls cell growth and is involved in the development of diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Researchers at the University of Basel's Biozentrum together with scientists from ETH Zurich have now examined the structure of mammalian TOR complex 1 (mTORC1) in more detail.

18 Dec 2015

Diamonds may hold key to the future for NMR and MRI technologies

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley have demonstrated that diamonds may hold the key to the future for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies.

17 Dec 2015

Study offers new view of how cancer cells transform normal cells through 'metastatic hijacking'

Metastasis - or the spread of cancer from one part of the body to other parts - accounts for more than 90 percent of cancer-related deaths. Although the cells that seed metastasis and the sites that they tend to travel to have been increasingly studied over the years, little has been known about how cancer migrates from a primary site, such as breast tissue, to a secondary site, such as the brain or bone marrow.

16 Dec 2015

TSRI scientists track how HIV-fighting antibodies develop over time

In a new study, a team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute tracked how a family of these HIV-fighting antibodies develops over time. The research shows how a future vaccine might trigger the immune system to produce these antibodies more effectively.

16 Dec 2015

Antibiotic resistance may help find drugs to combat amyloid formation

Amyloid diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and type-2 diabetes pose a particular problem for drug designers because they do not present a clear target structure to aim at.

15 Dec 2015

Rutgers scientists uncover biological pathways that provide insight into tiny cell bubbles

Rutgers scientists have uncovered biological pathways in the roundworm that provide insight into how tiny bubbles released by cells can have beneficial health effects, like promoting tissue repair, or may play a diabolical role and carry disease signals for cancer or neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

12 Dec 2015

New artificial muscle imitates macroscopic movement of human muscles

The macroscopic movement of our muscles is caused by the collective movement of “biomolecular motors”. Scientists and engineers have long been trying to imitate this process.

10 Dec 2015

Scientists decipher details of cloaking proteins that protect the toxin that causes botulism

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Stony Brook University and the Institute of Advanced Sciences in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, have discovered new details about how "cloaking" proteins protect the toxin that causes botulism, a fatal disease caused most commonly by consuming improperly canned foods.

7 Dec 2015

New model of arterial thrombus formation is similar to popular video game

A group of biophysicists, including representatives from MIPT, has developed a mathematical model of arterial thrombus formation, which is the main cause of heart attacks and strokes.

1 Dec 2015

Researchers use magic-angle-spinning NMR to unveil structure of CAP-Gly protein

A latticework of tiny tubes called microtubules gives your cells their shape and also acts like a railroad track that essential proteins travel on. But if there is a glitch in the connection between train and track, diseases can occur.

26 Nov 2015