http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. For Popeye, spinach was the key to extra muscle. For the mice in a new University of Iowa study, it was apples, or more precisely a waxy substance called ursolic acid that's found in apple peel. http://phys.org/news226672993.html Biology Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:30:02 EST news226672993 In flowering plants, the beginning of embryogenesis is almost exclusively governed by maternal gene activity. Maternal factors regulate the development of the embryo and silence paternal genes during early stages of development. This finding – obtained using next generation sequencing technology – was reported by an international team of researchers including plant geneticists from the University of Zurich. This newly uncovered mechanism may be involved in the maintenance of species boundaries and could play an important role in the development of novel crop varieties. http://phys.org/news226056293.html Biology Tue, 31 May 2011 10:25:08 EST news226056293 For more than 20 years, theoretical mathematical models have predicted that a delay built into a negative feedback system is at the heart of the molecular mechanism that governs circadian clocks in mammalian cells. Now, the first experimental proof of this theory has been provided by an international research team led by molecular biologists and information scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. The demonstration of the feedback delay should lead to a better understanding of how cellular clocks function, and therefore how mammals adjust to the regular daily and seasonal changes in their environment. The work could also open the way to the development of treatments for circadian disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and even bipolar disorder. http://phys.org/news220262088.html Biology Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:55:08 EST news220262088 (PhysOrg.com) -- How do organs "know" when to stop growing? The answer could be useful in regenerative medicine, and also in cancer - where these "stop growing" signals either aren't issued or aren't heeded. Researchers in the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston have now found a regulator of gene activity that tells epidermal stem cells when it's time to grow more skin, as well as a "crowd control" molecule that can sense cell crowding and turn the growth off. http://phys.org/news218869700.html Medicine & Health Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:10:01 EST news218869700 There's more than one way to silence gene activity, according to a Michigan State University researcher. http://phys.org/news217780841.html Biology Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:41:26 EST news217780841 A research team led by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has developed a powerful method that allows them to sift through thousands of candidate hairpin-shaped RNA molecules at a time and pull out only those RNAs that potently shut down the activity of a target gene. This accomplishment will now allow biologists to fully exploit RNA interference (RNAi), a natural cellular mechanism that has already been co-opted by scientists for myriad purposes such as hunting for cancer genes, stopping viral infections and more recently, treating diseases in clinical trials. http://phys.org/news217773693.html Biology Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:10:03 EST news217773693 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have pinpointed a key cancer-causing gene that, when overactive, triggers a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer to develop. http://phys.org/news217237464.html Medicine & Health Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:44:58 EST news217237464 Plant biologists have discovered the last major element of the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell's nucleus. Although many steps of the pathway were already known, new research from a team including Carnegie's Ying Sun and Zhiyong Wang fills in a missing gap about the mechanism through which brassinosteroids cause plant genes to be expressed. Their research, which will be published online by Nature Cell Biology on January 23, has implications for agricultural science and, potentially, evolutionary research. http://phys.org/news215010600.html Biology Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:10:14 EST news215010600 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a proof of principal study in mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) have shown that a set of genetic instructions encased in a nanoparticle can be used as an "ignition switch" to rev up gene activity that aids cancer detection and treatment. http://phys.org/news211636106.html Nanotechnology Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:00:02 EST news211636106 A genomic study of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has added a new gene to the list of potential genetic contributors to Alzheimer's disease, a national research team led by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has reported. http://phys.org/news211541840.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:38:06 EST news211541840 (PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, scientists have discovered that a poorly understood class of RNA produced in a mammal's cells during a respiratory virus attack may affect the outcome of the infection. Their findings are reported today in mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. http://phys.org/news207301756.html Biology Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:49:42 EST news207301756 Antigene therapy is a promising new treatment strategy that uses a DNA-based drug to pinpoint light energy to a target gene shutting down its activity. A review article published online ahead of print in Oligonucleotides, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., details the possibilities and challenges for the clinical application of this novel photo-activated DNA modulating approach. http://phys.org/news206886017.html Medicine & Health Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:20:38 EST news206886017 In the quest to arrest the growth and spread of tumors, there have been many attempts to get cancer genes to ignore their internal instruction manual. In a new study, a team led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists has created the first molecule able to prevent cancer genes from "hearing" those instructions, stifling the cancer process at its root. http://phys.org/news204556365.html Medicine & Health Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:13:03 EST news204556365 Stress has become one of the major disease states in the developed world. But what is stress? It depends on from where you look. You may experience stress as something that affects your entire body and mind, the causes of which are plentiful. But if we zoom in on the building bricks of the body, our cells, stress and its causes are defined somewhat differently. Stress can arise at the cellular level after exposure to pollution, tobacco smoke, bacterial toxins etc, where stressed cells have to react to survive and maintain their normal function. In worst case scenario, cellular stress can lead to development of disease. http://phys.org/news204549612.html Medicine & Health Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:20:24 EST news204549612 Plant scientists at the John Innes Centre have provided a new solution to an old debate on why species hybrids can be more vigourous than their parents. In a study to be published online next week in the online open access journal PLoS Biology, the researchers found a type of genetic "noise" caused by a surprising degree of variation in gene activity even for highly similar traits in closely related species. They found that when species hybridise, some of the variation in gene activity may be cancelled out, leading to greater vigour. http://phys.org/news198830172.html Biology Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:00:27 EST news198830172 A protein that helps pack DNA into the cell nucleus has an important role in regulating gene activity, scientists report. The researchers found that the protein, histone H1, also takes part in the formation of ribosomes, the cellular workbenches on which all proteins are made. http://phys.org/news197201698.html Biology Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:15:32 EST news197201698 Health conscious consumers have long known that virgin olive oil is a good choice when it comes to preparing meals and dipping breads. Now, a team of researchers, including one with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), has found that phenolic components in olive oil actually modify genes that are involved in the inflammatory response. http://phys.org/news196958725.html Medicine & Health Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:10:03 EST news196958725 For a plant, light is life. It drives everything from photosynthesis to growth and reproduction. Yet the chain of molecular events that enables light signals to control gene activity and ultimately a plant's architecture had remained in the dark. Now a team of researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Duke University have identified the courier that gives the signal to revamp the plant's gene expression pattern after photoreceptors have been activated by light. http://phys.org/news196603773.html Biology Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:09:58 EST news196603773 (PhysOrg.com) -- The architect Mies van der Rohe is famous for promoting the slogan "less is more." But if Venkat Chandrasekaran, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, had a slogan for his own work, it might be "more is less." http://phys.org/news194713274.html Other Sciences Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:01:50 EST news194713274 The Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today that it has launched the Allen Human Brain Atlas, a publicly available online atlas charting genes at work throughout the human brain. The data provided in this initial data release represent the most extensive and detailed body of information about gene activity in the human brain to date, documenting which genes are expressed, or "turned on" where. In the coming years, the Atlas will be expanded with more data and more sophisticated search, analysis and visualization tools to create a comprehensive resource useful to an increasingly wide range of scientists and research programs worldwide. http://phys.org/news193913029.html Medicine & Health Mon, 24 May 2010 09:45:56 EST news193913029 Social status in paper wasps is established earlier in life than scientists thought, says a study published this month in the journal PLoS ONE. http://phys.org/news193508913.html Biology Wed, 19 May 2010 18:20:01 EST news193508913 The most comprehensive analysis yet of the genetic imbalances at the heart of childhood brain tumors known as high-grade gliomas (HGGs) identified a cancer gene that is unusually active in some tumors and is now the focus of a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital clinical trial. http://phys.org/news193333725.html Medicine & Health Mon, 17 May 2010 16:50:01 EST news193333725 DNA replication, the process by which a strand of DNA is copied during cell proliferation , and DNA transcription, the process by which the message in the DNA is translated into messenger RNA, involve the same "track" or DNA template. What happens when the two mechanisms are on the same track at the same time? Baylor College of Medicine researchers have identified the director -- the transcription factor DksA. A report appears in the current issue of the journal Cell. http://phys.org/news192976344.html Biology Thu, 13 May 2010 13:32:41 EST news192976344 Chronic pain severely limits patients' quality of life and is among the cost drivers in U.S. health care. Patients can suffer pain without an apparent cause and often fail to respond to available treatments. Mayo Clinic researchers and collaborators now report that chronic pain may be caused by the inadvertent reprogramming of more than 2,000 genes in the peripheral nervous system. The research findings appear in the current issue of the journal Genome Research. http://phys.org/news192372198.html Medicine & Health Thu, 06 May 2010 17:00:03 EST news192372198 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Yale University scientists has discovered a previously unknown type of molecular scissors that can tailor micro-RNAs, tiny snippets of genetic material that play a key role in regulating many of life's functions. http://phys.org/news192380732.html Biology Thu, 06 May 2010 16:06:10 EST news192380732 They are both nest-building social insects, but paper wasps and honey bees organize their colonies in very different ways. In a new study, researchers report that despite their differences, these insects rely on the same network of genes to guide their social behavior. http://phys.org/news191586697.html Biology Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:31:59 EST news191586697 Scientists have developed a new computational model to uncover gene regulation, the key to how our body develops - and how it can go wrong. http://phys.org/news191236908.html Medicine & Health Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:22:05 EST news191236908 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Aalto University (Finland), European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg (Germany) and the University of Manchester (UK) have developed a new computational method to identify targets of regulator genes. The method is presented in the Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). http://phys.org/news190386090.html Biology Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:20:01 EST news190386090 Researchers in Manchester have successfully carried out the first rewire of genetic switches, creating what could be a vital tool for the development of new drugs and even future gene therapies. http://phys.org/news183653104.html Medicine & Health Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:05 EST news183653104 Studying genes that regulate early heart development in animals, scientists have solved a puzzle about one gene's role, finding that it acts in concert with a related gene. Their finding contributes to understanding how the earliest stages of heart development may go awry, resulting in congenital heart defects in humans. http://phys.org/news182519519.html Medicine & Health Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:52:37 EST news182519519