Neuroscience

Researchers identify osteoarthritis 'pain pathway'

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered that a particular molecular signaling pathway plays an important role in producing osteoarthritis (OA) pain. Using a mouse model of painful osteoarthritis, ...

Medical research

The key to proper muscle growth

When a muscle grows, because its owner is still growing too or has started exercising regularly, some of the stem cells in this muscle develop into new muscle cells. The same thing happens when an injured muscle starts to ...

Oncology & Cancer

How a common oral bacteria makes colon cancer more deadly

Researchers at the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine have determined how F. nucleatum—a common oral bacteria often implicated in tooth decay—accelerates the growth of colon cancer. The study was published ...

Medications

The struggle to define psychedelics

Psychoactive drugs include all manner of hallucinogens, deliriants, hypnotics and psychedelics. But what is a psychedelic, really? Insofar as many in the field are now moving toward bringing new molecules with presumably ...

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Signal transduction

In biology, 'signal transduction' refers to any process by which a cell converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another. Most processes of signal transduction involve ordered sequences of biochemical reactions inside the cell, which are carried out by enzymes and activated by second messengers, resulting in a signal transduction pathway. Such processes are usually rapid, lasting on the order of milliseconds in the case of ion flux, or minutes for the activation of protein- and lipid-mediated kinase cascades, but some can take hours, and even days (as is the case with gene expression), to complete. The number of proteins and other molecules participating in the events involving signal transduction increases as the process emanates from the initial stimulus, resulting in a "signal cascade," beginning with a relatively small stimulus that elicits a large response. This is referred to as amplification of the signal.

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