http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection. The system's two vital components are high levels of a molecule that becomes embedded in viral DNA like a code written in invisible ink, and an enzyme that, when it reads the code, switches from repairing the DNA to chopping it up into unusable pieces. The researchers, who report the find in the Jan. 21 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say the discovery points toward a new approach to eradicating HIV from the body. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-cells-dna-machinery-viruses.html Medical research Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:00:07 EST news277986010 A new study published November 20 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology has identified hundreds of small regions of the genome that appear to be uniquely regulated in human neurons. These regulatory differences distinguish us from other primates, including monkeys and apes, and as neurons are at the core of our unique cognitive abilities, these features may ultimately hold the key to our intellectual prowess (and also to our potential vulnerability to a wide range of 'human-specific' diseases from autism to Alzheimer's). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-evolution-human-intellect-human-specific-neuronal.html Genetics Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:00:03 EST news272647874 A new discovery from researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah concerning a fundamental understanding about how DNA works will produce a "180-degree change in focus" for researchers who study how gene packaging regulates gene activity, including genes that cause cancer and other diseases. The discovery, by Bradley R. Cairns, PhD, Senior Director of Basic Science at HCI and a professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences, is reported in this week's online issue of the journal Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-dna-packaging-discovery-reveals-principles.html Genetics Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:35:15 EST news272316905 Researchers from Inserm and CNRS from the Institute for genetics and molecular and cellular biology (IGBMC) and from the Research Institute at the Strasbourg school of biotechnology (Irebs) have focussed their efforts on PARG, currently thought to be a promising new therapeutic target in the treatment of cancer. Their work has revealed the role of this molecule in regulating gene expression. The results were published on 25 October 2012 in the on-line Molecular Cell review. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-reveal-molecule-function-terms-cancer.html Cancer Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:10:02 EST news270815672 Artificial muscles and self-propelled goo may be the stuff of Hollywood fiction, but for UC Santa Barbara scientists Omar Saleh and Deborah Fygenson, the reality of it is not that far away. By blending their areas of expertise, the pair have created a dynamic gel made of DNA that mechanically responds to stimuli in much the same way that cells do. The results of their research were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-scientists-mechanically-dna-material.html Medical research Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:23:07 EST news270177763 Better diagnosis and treatment of a crippling inherited nerve disorder may be just around the corner thanks to an international team that spanned Asia, Europe and the United States. The team had been hunting DNA strands for the cause of the inherited nerve disorder known as spinocerebellar ataxia, or SCA. The disease causes progressive loss of balance, muscle control and ability to walk. Thanks to their diligence and detective work they have discovered the disease gene in a region of chromosome 1 where another group from the Netherlands had previously shown linkage with a form of SCA called SCA19, and the Taiwanese group on the new paper had shown similar linkage in a family for a form of the disease that was then called SCA22. The international team, from France, Japan, Taiwan and the USA have published their discovery in the Annals of Neurology. The Dutch group has also published results in the same issue of the journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-dna-track-nerve-disorder.html Neuroscience Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:20:01 EST news264932388 A new approach to investigating hard-to-find chromosomal abnormalities has identified 33 genes associated with autism and related disorders, 22 for the first time. Several of these genes also appear to be altered in different ways in individuals with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, symptoms of which may begin in adolescence or adulthood. Results of the study by a multi-institutional research team will appear in the April 27 issue of Cell and have been released online. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-genes-contributing-autism-links-psychiatric.html Autism spectrum disorders Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:50:02 EST news254058258 Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation - the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT - which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-impacts-dose.html Cancer Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:12:59 EST news243609164 BOSTON--Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have demonstrated a molecular strategy they say could make a much larger variety of tumors treatable with PARP inhibitors, a promising new class of cancer drugs. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-blocking-molecular-cancers-treatable-parp.html Cancer Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:22:50 EST news228579697