Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
Researchers at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav) in Mexico have developed a cDNA microarray chip that allows detection of the RNA strand of the dengue fever virus. The genetic information pinpoints the exact serotype of malaria that an infected person or mosquito is carrying and allows analysis of the complementary strand of DNA (cDNA) obtained from the dengue fever virus being carried by the infected patient. The cDNA is covalently linked to a slide (substrate) that can be a glass or paper.
A new study analyzed the long-term effects of psychotherapy on borderline personality disorder. Authors report the effect of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) versus treatment-as-usual (TAU) on inpatient service use, and a follow-up 6 months after the end of treatment.Data on psychiatric hospitalization were collected by interviewing patients at two monthly intervals using the Client Service Receipt Inventory, which was then triangulated with data from electronic patient records. In the year prior to treatment, 24 patients had been hospitalized with the number of inpatient days ranging from 0 to 365 (mean 20.5, SD 63.1).
A breakthrough discovery into how living cells process and respond to chemical information could help advance the development of treatments for a large number of cancers and resistant to therapy.
Researchers have unlocked the secret behind the activation of the Ras family of proteins, one of the most important components of cellular signaling networks in biology and major drivers of cancers that are among the most difficult to treat.
A small tree or shrub found in mountainous Central and South American rainforests has a most unusual relationship with the birds that pollinate its flowers, according to a new study - the plant known as Axinaea offers up its male reproductive organs as a tempting and nutritious food source for the birds.
As the birds seize those bulbous stamens with their beaks, they are blasted with pollen by the flowers' complex "bellows" organs. The birds then deliver that pollen to receptive female floral organs as they forage on.
Food bodies situated on male reproductive organs are otherwise only known from beetle-pollinated flowers. There is no other known example among plants of such a precise and anatomically distinct bellows organ.
A newly discovered planet now named OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb
in a binary star system located 3,000 light-years from Earth is expanding astronomers' notions of where Earth-like—and even potentially habitable—planets can form. And how to find them.
At twice the mass of Earth, the planet orbits one of the stars in the binary system at almost exactly the same distance from which Earth orbits the sun. However, because the planet's host star is much dimmer than the sun, the planet is much colder than the Earth—a little colder, in fact, than Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
Astronomers search for exoplanets by measuring shifts in the pattern of a star's spectrum - the different wavelengths of radiation that it emits as light.
These "Doppler shifts" result from subtle changes in the star's velocity caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets, but Doppler shifts of a star's absorption lines can also result from magnetic events like sunspots originating within the star itself -- giving false clues of a planet that does not actually exist.
Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College have identified a highly specialized ligament structure that is thought to prevent giraffes' legs from collapsing under the immense weight of these animals.
"Giraffes are heavy animals (around 1000 kg), but have unusually skinny limb bones for an animal of this size" explained lead investigator Christ Basu, a PhD student in the Structure&Motion Lab. "This means their leg bones are under high levels of mechanical stress."
Sequences of DNA called enhancers, which control a gene's output, find their targets long before they are activated during embryonic development, according to scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, who write in Nature that the degree of complexity of enhancers' interactions in the 'simple' fruit fly Drosophila is comparable to what is seen in vertebrates.
Whales are relatively rare and so they probably don't make much of a difference in the overall ocean.
A team of biologists disagrees. They reviewed several decades of research on whales from around the world and found that whales make a huge difference and have a powerful and positive influence on the function of oceans, global carbon storage, and the health of commercial fisheries. "The decline in great whale numbers, estimated to be at least 66% and perhaps as high as 90%, has likely altered the structure and function of the oceans," claims University of Vermont conservationist Joe Roman and colleagues in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, "but recovery is possible and in many cases is already underway."
The first molecular characterization of the African elephant's adipose tissue, body fat, will form the basis of future studies aimed at securing the health and future survival of captive elephants.
The population of captive elephants, both Asian and African, in Europe and North America is not self-sustaining, largely due to poor fertility and fewer baby elephants being born. Captive elephants might face demographic extinction in North American zoos within the next 50 years if the reproductive issues aren't solved.
46 years ago, an idea was introduced that the first eggs produced in a female's fetal stage tend to have better connections or "crossovers" between chromosomes and that, as the woman ages and ovulates eggs produced later, her eggs will have more faulty chromosomes, leading to miscarriages and developmental abnormalities.
But after counting the actual chromosome crossovers in thousands of eggs, researchers found those of eggs produced early in the fetal stage were no different from those produced later. This rules out the "Production-Line Hypothesis" as one of the leading ideas on why older women have an increased risk of miscarriages and children with birth defects.
Researchers have found that the loss of a protein called p62 in the cells and tissue surrounding a tumor can enhance the growth and progression of tumors. The study suggests that therapies targeting the tumor micro-envirnonment may be as important as targeting the tumor itself.
The findings contribute to the increasing acknowledgement that the cells and tissue surrounding a tumor, the stroma, are an integral part of cancer initiation, growth, and expansion.
