http://phys.org/chemistry-news/biochemistry/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on biochemistry Nearly two-thirds of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma —a common tumor that forms in the nerve cells of children—cannot be cured using tumor-killing cancer drugs. A study published by Cell Press in the May 23 issue of Chemistry & Biology reveals a new genomic approach to screen for compounds that could inhibit tumor growth by causing cancer cells to differentiate, or convert from immature cells to more specialized cell types. Using this screening method, the researchers identified a compound that causes neuroblastoma cells to differentiate, uncovering a promising new treatment strategy for this highly malignant pediatric cancer. http://phys.org/news288529682.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 23 May 2013 12:08:20 EST news288529682 Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a powerful new technique for finding antibodies that have a desired biological effect. Antibodies, which can bind to billions of distinct targets, are already used in many of the world's best-selling medicines, diagnostics and laboratory reagents. The newly reported technique should greatly speed the process of discovering such products. http://phys.org/news288529101.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:01 EST news288529101 The tight wrapping of genomic DNA around nucleosomes in the cell nucleus makes it unavailable for gene expression. A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now describes a mechanism that allows chromosomal DNA to be locally displaced from nucleosomes for transcription. http://phys.org/news288527436.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 23 May 2013 11:30:42 EST news288527436 (Phys.org) —In an age when microbial pathogens are growing increasingly resistant to the conventional antibiotics used to tamp down infection, a team of Wisconsin scientists has synthesized a potent new class of compounds capable of curbing the bacteria that cause staph infections. http://phys.org/news288516452.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 23 May 2013 09:20:03 EST news288516452 Re-routing anti-cancer drugs to the "power plants" that make energy to keep cells alive is a promising but long-neglected approach to preventing emergence of the drug-resistant forms of cancer—source of a serious medical problem, scientists are reporting. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology. http://phys.org/news288431184.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:20:01 EST news288431184 (Phys.org) —Adventitious changes in cellular DNA can endanger the whole organism, as they may lead to life-threatening illnesses like cancer. Researchers at LMU now report how byproducts of respiration cause mispairing of subunits in the double helix. http://phys.org/news288432920.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:15:30 EST news288432920 Circular RNAs were recently shown to be abundant in mice and humans where they influence gene expression. http://phys.org/news288430097.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:10:01 EST news288430097 Researchers looking to isolate individual proteins from complex environments usually turn to chromatography, a technique where mobile solutions of biomolecules flow through columns packed with solid, porous particles. Separation occurs when attractive chemical forces cause the molecules to adsorb onto the solid while contaminants pass through. Despite major progress, however, chromatographic purification of viruses and other large biomolecules remains challenging: their spatial heft makes it hard for them to diffuse through columns in a reasonable amount of time. http://phys.org/news288425478.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:01 EST news288425478 A new study of both computer-created and natural proteins suggests that the number of unique pockets – sites where small molecule pharmaceutical compounds can bind to proteins – is surprisingly small, meaning drug side effects may be impossible to avoid. The study also found that the fundamental biochemical processes needed for life could have been enabled by the simple physics of protein folding. http://phys.org/news288270799.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:20 EST news288270799 A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth. Because electron transfer, the moving of an electron from one chemical species to another, is involved in many biological processes – including photosynthesis, respiration and the reduction of RNA to DNA – the study's findings suggest that complex biochemical transformations may have been possible when life began. http://phys.org/news288172502.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00:01 EST news288172502 In the race to protect society from infectious microbes, the bugs are outrunning us. The need for new therapeutic agents is acute, given the emergence of novel pathogens as well as old foes bearing heightened antibiotic resistance. http://phys.org/news288029054.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Fri, 17 May 2013 17:04:38 EST news288029054 New technology offers the promise of reducing billions of dollars of losses that occur each year from the silent, invisible killer of fruits, vegetables and cut flowers—a gas whose effects are familiar to everyone who has seen bananas and other fruit ripen too quickly and rot. That's the conclusion of an article in the ACS journal Chemical Reviews. http://phys.org/news287836831.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 15 May 2013 11:41:26 EST news287836831 For 37 years, Queen's University Biochemistry professor Peter Davies has been unraveling the mystery of why some organisms including insects and fish don't freeze in the winter. His research into insect antifreeze protein (AFP) has shed new light in several areas, including a new paper on longhorn beetles native to Siberia. http://phys.org/news287731672.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Tue, 14 May 2013 06:28:13 EST news287731672 You know that summer is here when juicy red strawberries start to appear on the shelves. In Germany, this seasonal fruit has never been more popular: on average 3.5 kilos per head were consumed in 2012—a full kilogram more than ten years ago. Scientists from the Technische Universität München decided to find out what gives strawberries their characteristic flavor. http://phys.org/news287661169.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Mon, 13 May 2013 10:53:16 EST news287661169 (Phys.org) —3D structures of biological molecules like proteins directly affect the way they behave in our bodies. EPFL scientists have developed a new infrared-UV laser method to more accurately determine the structure of proteins containing thousands of atoms. http://phys.org/news287642915.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Mon, 13 May 2013 05:50:07 EST news287642915 Experiments at Johns Hopkins have unearthed clues about which protein signaling molecules are allowed into hollow, hair-like "antennae," called cilia, that alert cells to critical changes in their environments. http://phys.org/news287575226.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Sun, 12 May 2013 13:00:22 EST news287575226 (Phys.org) —Researchers have made a significant first step with newly engineered biomaterials for cell transplantation that could help lead to a possible cure for Type 1 diabetes, which affects about 3 million Americans. http://phys.org/news287298719.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 09 May 2013 06:12:08 EST news287298719 They're ba-ack! But in a new disease-fighting role. Viruses that infect and kill bacteria—used to treat infections in the pre-antibiotic era a century ago and in the former Soviet Union today—may have a new role in preventing formation of the sticky "biofilms" of bacteria responsible for infections on implanted medical devices. That's the topic of a report in the ACS journal Biomacromolecules. http://phys.org/news287221424.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 08 May 2013 09:00:05 EST news287221424 A team of researchers of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste and of University of Cambridge have devised a method to reduce the time used to simulate how proteins take on their signature three-dimensional shape. Such important information to comprehend their function is usually obtained using often very costly experimental techniques. http://phys.org/news287219332.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 08 May 2013 08:10:31 EST news287219332 Apoptosis is a programmed death mechanism that eliminates unwanted or injured cells from the body. Defects in apoptotic regulation can lead to serious physiological problems such as tissue damage or uncontrolled cancerous growth. Apoptosis is therefore a prominent target for drug development. http://phys.org/news287215861.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 08 May 2013 07:50:01 EST news287215861 The trend towards automated high content assays, particularly for systems biology and drug discovery, has stimulated the development of automated fluorescence microscopy systems to image sample arrays. Today's commercially available high content analysis (HCA) instruments predominantly employ fluorescence intensity imaging to map the relative distribution and colocalization of labelled proteins with subcellular resolution. Although commonplace in biology laboratories, Förster resonant energy transfer (FRET) measurements have not been widely taken up for drug discovery. Conventional (manual) FRET microscopy is too time-consuming and labour-intensive for high throughput applications. One of the most widely used approaches to map FRET is fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). However, a lack of available FLIM instrumentation for automated multiwell plate readouts is constricting its use in drug discovery. http://phys.org/news287135507.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Tue, 07 May 2013 08:51:59 EST news287135507 Professor of Biochemistry Emad Tajkhorshid and colleagues have discovered that membrane transporters help not just sugars and other specific substrates cross from one side of a cellular membrane to the other—water also comes along for the ride. http://phys.org/news286725586.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 02 May 2013 15:00:09 EST news286725586 In an advance toward solving a 50-year-old mystery, scientists are reporting new evidence on how the fluoride in drinking water, toothpastes, mouth rinses and other oral-care products prevents tooth decay. Their report appears in the ACS journal Langumir. http://phys.org/news286624264.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 01 May 2013 10:51:12 EST news286624264 (Phys.org) —While the natural world is replete with compounds that form the basis of many disease-fighting pharmaceuticals, it is also the case that humans and other mammals produce their own host-defense peptide-derived broad-spectrum antibiotics to combat bacterial and fungal infections. By attacking microbial cell membranes, these peptides prevent bacteria from developing rapid antibiotic resistance. While over 1,700 of these peptides are known, the structural and mechanical aspects of their functional activity have remained an unanswered question. Recently, however, scientists at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, The University of Edinburgh, and other instiutions1 determined the X-ray crystal structure as well as solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, electrophysiology, and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations of human dermcidin (DCD), revealing its mechanism at atomic scale. The researchers conclude that their results may lead to the peptide structure-based design of second-generation antibiotics. http://phys.org/news286537497.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:45:17 EST news286537497 (Phys.org) —There's hope for patients with myotonic dystrophy. A new small molecule developed by researchers at the University of Illinois has been shown to break up the protein-RNA clusters that cause the disease in living human cells, an important first step toward developing a pharmaceutical treatment for the as-yet untreatable disease. http://phys.org/news286519256.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:41:04 EST news286519256 (Phys.org) —A combined team of researchers from the U.S. and Slovenia has succeeded in creating "origami" type proteins that assemble themselves into three dimensional shapes. As a proof of concept, the team created, as they describe in their paper published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, a protein with coils that self-formed a true three dimensional tetrahedron. http://phys.org/news286447157.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:39:28 EST news286447157 (Phys.org) —Changes in the bases that make up DNA act as markers, telling a cell which genes it should read and which it shouldn't. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a British team has now introduced a new method that makes it possible to enrich the rare gene segments that contain the modified base hydroxymethylcytosine and to identify individual hydroxymethylcytosine molecules in DNA. Such modifications are associated with autoimmune diseases and cancer. http://phys.org/news286093716.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:28:43 EST news286093716 Life on Earth may have originated not in warm tropical seas, but with weird tubes of ice—sometimes called "sea stalactites"—that grow downward into cold seawater near the Earth's poles, scientists are reporting. Their article on these "brinicles" appears in ACS' journal Langmuir. http://phys.org/news286018459.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:34:25 EST news286018459 In an advance toward coping with bacteria that shrug off existing antibiotics and sterilization methods, scientists are reporting development of a new family of selective antimicrobial agents that do not rely on traditional antibiotics. Their report on these synthetic colloid particles, which can be custom-designed to recognize the shape of specific kinds of bacteria and inactivate them, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. http://phys.org/news286017866.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:24:35 EST news286017866 (Phys.org) —UOW chemistry researchers have revealed what turns free radicals on...and off again in an article recently published in Nature Chemistry. http://phys.org/news285926420.html Chemistry - Biochemistry Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:00:30 EST news285926420