Protein C News and Research

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How humans make up for an 'inborn' vitamin C deficiency

A new study appears to explain how humans, along with other higher primates, guinea pigs and fruit bats, get by with what some have called an “inborn metabolic error”: an inability to produce vitamin C from glucose.

24 Mar 2008

Children with healthy diets perform better in school

A new study in the Journal of School Health reveals that children with healthy diets perform better in school than children with unhealthy diets.

24 Mar 2008

Tug of war in the cells

Transport processes in the cells of our body resemble the transport of goods on the roads.

20 Mar 2008

Neuronal regulators offer potential targets for cancer

Being too brainy can be a bad thing in a junior high cafeteria, where the social hierarchy favors other traits. "Braininess" also causes problems for cells.

20 Mar 2008

First detailed look at the molecular pathways underlying sleep apnea

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have provided, for the first time, a detailed look at the molecular pathways underlying sleep apnea, which affects more than twelve million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health.

20 Mar 2008

New medical adhesive

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a new medical adhesive (a fibrin sealant) called Artiss for use in attaching skin grafts onto burn patients.

20 Mar 2008

Designer enzymes

Chemists from UCLA and the University of Washington have succeeded in creating "designer enzymes," a major milestone in computational chemistry and protein engineering.

20 Mar 2008

Vegan diet for rheumatoid arthritis patients protects from heart attacks and strokes

A new study suggests that following a gluten-free, vegan diet may offer rheumatoid arthritis patients some protection from heart attacks and strokes.

19 Mar 2008

What change does prokineticin 2/Bv8 have in human hepatocellular carcinoma?

Liver hepatocarcinoma is a highly vascularized cancer, and more and more research is focused on the molecules controlling angiogenesis.

19 Mar 2008

Uric acid in the blood may be an early sign of diabetic kidney disease

For patients with type 1 diabetes, increased levels of uric acid in the blood may be an early sign of diabetic kidney disease appearing before any significant change in urine albumin level, the standard screening test, reports a study in the May 2008 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

19 Mar 2008

Survival mechanism of T lymphocytes uncovered

When an individual is challenged by a virus, a bacterium or any other infectious agent, several classes of white blood cells are being activated in order to fight the invasion.

19 Mar 2008

Research leads to innovative therapies against cystic fibrosis

New U of T research holds promise for developing innovative therapies against cystic fibrosis and may also serve as a model for future therapies against the HIV virus.

19 Mar 2008

Past child abuse plus variations in gene result in potent PTSD risk for adults

A traumatic event is much more likely to result in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults who experienced trauma in childhood - but certain gene variations raise the risk considerably if the childhood trauma involved physical or sexual abuse, scientists have found.

19 Mar 2008

Lithium chloride slows development of inclusion body myositis

A new UC Irvine study finds that lithium chloride, a drug used to treat bipolar disorder, can slow the development of inclusion body myositis, a skeletal muscle disease that affects the elderly.

19 Mar 2008

HDL-associated protein gene linked to heart disease risk

The gene for the HDL-associated protein paraoxonase 1 (PON1) appears to be associated with coronary artery disease and with the risk of developing adverse cardiac events, and variations in both the PON1 gene and its related enzyme activity may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease events, according to a study in the March 19 issue of JAMA , a theme issue on Genetics and Genomics.

19 Mar 2008

New method to determine the “selective signature” of a gene

Scientists at MIT have come up with a mathematical approach for analyzing a protein simultaneously in a set of ecologically distinct species to identify occurrences of natural selection in an organism's evolution.

19 Mar 2008

Discovery alters long standing concept of fixed protein structure

The thousands of proteins found in nature are simply strings of amino acids, assembled by genes, and scientists have long believed that they automatically fold themselves into uniquely fixed, 3-dimensional shapes to fire the engine of life.

19 Mar 2008

Zebrafish enables cell regeneration studies to help understand, treat human disease

One aquarium fish's uncanny ability to regenerate essentially any cell type has given scientists a way to mimic cell loss that occurs in diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes then watch how the fish make more of them.

18 Mar 2008

Uric acid may provide early clues to diabetic kidney disease

For patients with type 1 diabetes, increased levels of uric acid in the blood may be an early sign of diabetic kidney disease - appearing before any significant change in urine albumin level, the standard screening test, reports a study in the May 2008 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

18 Mar 2008

Researchers discover how stealthy HIV protein gets into cells

Scientists have known for more than a decade that a protein associated with the HIV virus is good at crossing cell membranes, but they didn't know how it worked.

18 Mar 2008