Catarina Amorim

Scientists in the UK, Portugal and Germany solved the structure of kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO), a protein implicated in the neurodegeneration (destruction of nerve cells) seen in diseases associated with old age, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.  It also reveals how to block KMO in a major first step to develop a promising new therapeutic approach for a group of diseases that, despite affecting millions worldwide, remain without cure or treatment. 

Researchers have discovered

new subgroups of stomach cancer patients with different disease characteristics,

information that could help improve the clinical management of a

disease that still kills a dismaying 3 out of 4 patients. 

About 200 million people across 75 of the poorest countries

in the world are now infected by the blood parasite Schistosoma haematobium (S.

haematobium). The infection causes severe urogenital disease, but also causes bladder cancer in a number of

patients and why this occurs is not clear.

Bacteria have lived for millions of years in our planet where,

with an impressive capability to adapt, they now colonize virtually every

environment, including us. But as tiny one-cell organisms they had to learn to work

together to be powerful enough to act on the environment and other organisms. And

now, new research has discovered that their evolution is triggered exactly by

these interactions, as scientists from Centre for Environmental Biology at the

University of Lisbon in Portugal and the Institute Pasteur in Paris show that bacteria’s

genes for secreted proteins - the ones that mediate the interactions with the

outside - evolve faster than any others in the genome. 

Adverse childhood experiences, such as being raised in poverty, can be detrimental for cognitive development often leaving children struggling in school and trapped forever in a cycle of hardship. But a study is now suggesting a innovative (and easy) way to help.

Researchers have discovered that females with multiple sexual partners can be more fertile than those that are monogamous, and this because of an “overproduction” of sons.  The study,  published as a provisional article but already one of the most accessed in BCM Evolutionary Biology, helps to explain a puzzle haunting evolutionary biologist for decades: why so many females chase multiple sexual partners in a mating season, when this is costly and dangerous, and one is enough to fertilize all her eggs.

The recent discoveries that α-Synuclein(α-Syn), a central player in Parkinson´s disease (PD) brain destruction, can not only pass from one neuron to another but also exist outside neuronal cells, has led to a rethink of the disease. A study investigating α-Syn effects out of the cell has found that the protein can interfere with the normal functioning of the hippocampus, the brain area for memory and learning, what might start explaining the cognitive and memory problems seen in so many PD patients. 

A team of Portuguese researchers have developed amathematical tool that can classify any region in the world according to itspattern of development into one of 5 types - each with specific characteristicsand predictable behaviours - that call for different interventions and policymeasures. The discovery, just out  inNature’s Scientific Reports,  representsa major step towards a new type of city planning - objective and, mostimportantly,  independent of the personalvisions, interests and ever changing politics .

A version of this article with less scientific details (so easier to read) can be found here.A team of Portuguese researchers have developed a mathematical tool that can classify any region in the world according to its pattern of development into one of 5 types, each with specific characteristics and predictable behaviours that call for different interventions and policy measures. The discovery, just out in Nature’s Scientific Reports,  represents a major step towards a new type to city planning - objective and most importantly,  independent of personal visions, interests and politics.

Researchers have moved a step closer to find a treatment for the fatal neurodegenerative disorder Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) after a Portuguese team from the Centre for Neurosciences at the University of Coimbra was able to halt the brain degeneration in mice, by blocking a molecule called calpain. Calpain are known to cut ataxin-3 (the mutant protein behind MJD) into fragments, and the study proves that these fragments are crucial to trigger the neurodegeneration. 

Badly controlled diabetes are known to affect the brain, causing memory and learning problems and even increased incidence of dementia. How this occurs is not clear but a study in mice with type 2 diabetes has discovered how diabetes affects the hippocampus, causing memory loss, and also how caffeine can prevent this. Curiously, the neurodegeneration that Rodrigo Cunha,  from the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, sees as result of  diabetes is the same that occurs at the first stages of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, suggesting that caffeine (or drugs with similar mechanisms) could help them too.

 Our ancestors might have started walking on two feet in order to carry food more efficiently suggests new research in the journal Current Biology.

Bipedalism (walking on two feet) is one of the key features that distinguishes us from chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives, but it is also an adaptation that radically changed our evolution when it released our ancestors’ hands to all kind of jobs.