Protein News and Research

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Proteins are complex molecules that are made up of amino acids. They can be found in every cell in the body, and carry out vital processes that keep human beings alive. Mutations in proteins can lead to a multitude of diseases, the most common being cancer.

Scientists gain better understanding of how repetitive stretching of endothelial cells that line arteries can make them healthy and resistant to vascular diseases

UCSD researchers stretched cells in a workout chamber the size of a credit card to gain a better understanding of how repetitive stretching of endothelial cells that line arteries can make them healthy and resistant to vascular diseases.

24 Oct 2005

St. John's wort plant has the capacity to inhibit expression of the HIV-1 gene

A novel protein, p27SJ, extracted from a callus culture of the St. John's wort plant (Hypericum perforatum) suppresses HIV-1 expression and inhibits its replication, according to researchers at Temple University School of Medicine's department of neuroscience and Center for Neurovirology (CNV).

24 Oct 2005

Blocking a signaling lipid can keep nerves from developing and may even cause neurons to die

Blocking a signaling lipid can keep nerves from developing the arm-like extensions they need to wire the body and may even cause neurons to die, researchers have found.

24 Oct 2005

Faulty gene may identify those at risk of schizophrenia

Scientists believe they have discovered a genetic defect which could help explain the biological basis of schizophrenia.

24 Oct 2005

New treatments suggest that cancer is on the run!

People suffering from cancer will be encouraged by a cluster of recent reports on successful new treatments for several different forms of cancer.

24 Oct 2005

C. elegans, free-living soil nematodes, pave way for better anesthetics

Ten genes that may make patients more or less susceptible to a common anesthetic agent have been identified by researchers using tiny worms and sophisticated technology that eliminates the activity of individual genes.

23 Oct 2005

Dopamine link to psychiatric and neurological disorders

A gene that regulates dopamine levels in the brain is involved in the development of schizophrenia in children at high risk for the disorder, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the University of Geneva.

23 Oct 2005

Natural antifreeze protein may help store human organs

A new antifreeze protein discovered in tiny snow fleas by Queen's University researchers may lengthen the shelf life of human organs for transplantation.

23 Oct 2005

Protein Oct-6 is not a biological marker for schizophrenia

The protein Oct-6 is not a biological marker for schizophrenia. The results of a study published today in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry contradict previous findings and show that Oct-6, a protein involved in neurodevelopment, is normally expressed in the adult brain and cannot be used to identify patients with schizophrenia.

23 Oct 2005

Natural selection has played an important role in patterning the human genome

The most detailed analysis to date of how humans differ from one another at the DNA level shows strong evidence that natural selection has shaped the recent evolution of our species, according to researchers from Cornell University, Celera Genomics and Celera Diagnostics.

23 Oct 2005

Scientists discover molecular structure related to cell growth and cancer

Researchers discovered a special type of molecular structure that helps keep genes properly turned off until the structure is ejected from those genes in a regulated manner to help turn the genes on.

23 Oct 2005

Method to count the absolute number of individual protein molecules inside a living cell

Yale researchers have reported a method to count the absolute number of individual protein molecules inside a living cell, and to measure accurately where they are located, two basic hurdles for studying biology quantitatively.

20 Oct 2005

Diabetes drugs may also prevent nerve degeneration caused by Alzheimer's disease

Recent research has shown a surprising link between Alzheimer’s and diabetes, two of the major health challenges facing society today. According to Dr Holscher modern lifestyle promotes the development of type 2 diabetes, which in turn could drastically increase the number of people to develop Alzheimer’s disease as people with type 2 diabetes are much more likely to develop the disease than healthy people of the same age.

20 Oct 2005

Menin is a key player in the development of some forms of acute leukemia

Tumor-suppressor proteins work to inhibit tumor growth in our bodies and when they win, they spare us a battle with cancer. But one such protein, menin, appears to have a split personality.

20 Oct 2005

Discovery of a new kind of messenger RNA molecule

Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a new kind of messenger RNA molecule that is converted from non-protein coding status to protein coding status in response to cellular stress such as viral infection.

20 Oct 2005

Spliceosome crucial for processing non-coding RNA

The discovery in 1977 that the coding regions of a gene could appear in separate segments along the DNA won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Richard J. Roberts and Phillip A. Sharp. The active segments of a gene were termed exons, separated from each other within the gene by inactive introns.

20 Oct 2005

Diet rich in fruits and vegetables could be a good defense against prostate cancer

Previous studies have suggested that increased intake of flavonoids which are common in fruits and vegetables may be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer, according to Sanjay Gupta, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Case School of Medicine Department of Urology.

20 Oct 2005

Identification of a factor in human milk that can block HIV-1 transmission

Mother to child transmission of HIV accounts for a large proportion of HIV infections in children, with many infected as a result of breastfeeding, which requires transfer of the virus across mucosal barriers. DC-SIGN, a DC lectin receptor, interacts with HIV and is found at high expression levels in tonsillar tissue.

20 Oct 2005

Breast cancer drug Herceptin a 'stunner'

According to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) the first trials of the breast cancer drug, Herceptin, tested on women with early stage disease are "simply stunning".

20 Oct 2005

"Junk" DNA not important to an organism's evolutionary survival

Genetic material derisively called "junk" DNA because it does not contain the instructions for protein-coding genes and appears to have little or no function is actually critically important to an organism's evolutionary survival, according to a study conducted by a biologist at the University of California, San Diego.

19 Oct 2005