Mutation News and Research

RSS

New understanding of Leber congenital amaurosis

People suffering from a severe retinal disease will sooner or later lose their eyesight considerably or even become completely blind.

7 Aug 2007

Mechanistic model of DNA repair

Ionizing radiation, toxic chemicals, and other agents continually damage the body's DNA, threatening life and health: unrepaired DNA can lead to mutations, which in turn can lead to diseases like cancer.

6 Aug 2007

New insight into mechanism of DNA-break repair

A new UC Davis study that explains the actions of a gene mutation that causes early onset cancer provides a fundamental insight into the mechanism of DNA-break repair.

6 Aug 2007

LKB1 gene - new lung tumor-suppressor

Collaborating scientists in Boston and North Carolina have found that a particular gene can block key steps of the lung cancer process in mice.

6 Aug 2007

Vomeronasal organ differentiates male and female behavior in some mammals

For years, scientists have searched in vain for slivers of the brain that might drive the dramatic differences between male and female behavior.

6 Aug 2007

Bird flu put 51 in quarantine in Manipur

India's health ministry says 51 people in Manipur have been quarantined following an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of influenza in chickens last month in the northeastern Indian state.

6 Aug 2007

Discovery of molecular pathway that detects and eliminates defective messenger RNAs from red blood cells

Other such pathways - known as surveillance pathways - operate in a more general way, in many cell types. Knowing how this specific surveillance system works can help researchers better understand hereditary diseases, in this case, thalassemia, a form of anemia, which is the most common genetic disorder worldwide.

3 Aug 2007

Colon cancer may benefit from hormone replacement therapy

Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia have found new evidence suggesting that colon cancer is actually a disease of missing hormones that could potentially be treated by hormone replacement therapy.

2 Aug 2007

Aggressive therapy best for certain acute myeloid leukemia patients

A new study suggests that acute leukemia patients whose cancer cells show a genetic change that usually predicts a swift return of the disease following remission may remain disease-free longer when given aggressive therapy.

2 Aug 2007

Fear protein found

A University of Iowa study shows that loss or chemical inhibition of a protein, known as acid sensing ion channel protein (ASIC1a), reduces innate fear behavior in lab animals, making normally timid mice relatively fearless.

2 Aug 2007

Bill Gates digs deep in his pocket for AIDS

The University of Maryland has been awarded a grant worth $15 Million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

1 Aug 2007

Drugs designed to disable enzyme TOPK could have anti-cancer benefits

Working with human colorectal cancer cells, a University of Minnesota team, led by cancer biologists Zigang Dong and Ann Bode, has found the potential culprit among a network of enzymes that relay signals inside cells to regulate such functions as cell growth, cancer development and programmed cell death.

1 Aug 2007

Huntington's disease study shows animal models on target

An international team of researchers has published a benchmark study showing that gene expression in several animal models of Huntington's Disease (HD) closely resembles that of human HD patients.

1 Aug 2007

Discovery of pathway that controls cell size and division

Organisms precisely regulate cell size to ensure that daughter cells have sufficient cellular material to thrive or to create specific cell types: a tiny sperm versus a gargantuan egg for example.

1 Aug 2007

New risk genes for multiple sclerosis

Two new large-scale genomic studies have honed in on the main genetic pathway associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), while also uncovering new genetic variations in the disease and suggesting a possible link between MS and other autoimmune diseases.

1 Aug 2007

Neuroprotectin D1 protects retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells

Two papers to be published in the Early Edition online of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of July 30-August 3, 2007 report findings that demonstrate that neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1) protects against damage to retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and identifies an important trigger for its production and novel molecular mechanisms that support vision.

1 Aug 2007