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Hacking Into Cells' Communications System Could Lead to New Drugs to Tackle Neurodegeneration


ScienceDaily
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Mathias Wilmanns/EMBL
This image shows the three-dimensional structure of Death-Associated Protein Kinase (green and yellow) when bound to calmodulin (violet and blue). It was obtained by X-ray crystallography.
Cells rely on a range of signalling systems to communicate with each other and to control their own internal workings. Scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, have now found a way to hack into a vital communications system, raising the possibility of developing new drugs to tackle disorders like neurodegeneration, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

In a study published in Science Signaling, they have pieced together the first snapshot of what two of the system's components look like while interacting.

One way these signalling systems work is by triggering a flood of calcium ions inside the cell. These get picked up by a receiver, a protein called calmodulin which turns this calcium signal into action by switching various parts of the cell's machinery on or off. Calmodulin regulates a set of proteins called kinases, each of which controls the activity of specific parts of the cell, thus altering the cell's behaviour.
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How to Measure Attention Span of a Fly: Implications for ADHD, Autism in Humans


ScienceDaily
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© iStockphoto
Common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster).
An Australian-German team of scientists at Freie Universität and the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia, has found a way to measure the attention span of a fly. The findings could lead to further advances in the understanding of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism in humans.

Associate Professor Bruno van Swinderen at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane and Dr. Björn Brembs at Freie Universität combined genetic techniques with brain recordings and behavioral testing. They found different mutations that either increase or decrease a fly's attention span.

Using the genetic fruit fly model, Drosophila melanogaster, van Swinderen found that a fly's level of distractibility is finely tuned to allow "normal" behavioral responses to a constantly changing environment. He said, "We now have the two ends of an attention spectrum in our model. We have a fly memory mutant that is hard to distract and another fly memory mutant that's too distractible. They both have the same result -- they don't learn well but for completely different reasons, not unlike human patients afflicted with autism and ADHD."
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Pope asks priests to become more Web savvy

Lance Whitney
CNet
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:40 UTC
The pope is asking priests to become more media savvy by preaching to the faithful from the Internet as well as the pulpit.

In his message for the Catholic Church's 2010 World Day for Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI called on the ministry to use the latest technologies, such as Web sites and blogs, to preach the gospel and encourage a dialogue with their practitioners.

Scheduled for May 16, the theme of the World Day will be "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word." In his message released Sunday, Pope Benedict told people that church communities have traditionally relied on modern media to open the lines of communication. And as the culture changes, the church needs to use the latest technologies, especially if it wants to reach younger people.
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Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

Adam Sage
Timesonline
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:30 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The amputation is evidence of medical knowledge in the Stone Age
The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient.

The operating theatre was not exactly Harley Street - more probably a wooden shelter - but the intervention was a success, and it has shed light on the medical talents of our Stone Age ancestors.

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago - suggesting that the true Flintstones were more developed than previously thought.

The patient seems to have been anaesthetised, the conditions were aseptic, the cut was clean and the wound was treated, according to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).
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Telescope

Report Examines Options for Detecting and Countering Near-Earth Objects

Sara Frueh
National Academy of Sciences
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:09 UTC
Washington - A new report from the National Research Council lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) - asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard if they cross Earth's orbit. The report says the $4 million the U.S. spends annually to search for NEOs is insufficient to meet a congressionally mandated requirement to detect NEOs that could threaten Earth.

Congress mandated in 2005 that NASA discover 90 percent of NEOs whose diameter is 140 meters or greater by 2020, and asked the National Research Council in 2008 to form a committee to determine the optimum approach to doing so. In an interim report released last year, the committee concluded that it was impossible for NASA to meet that goal, since Congress has not appropriated new funds for the survey nor has the administration asked for them.
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Scientists crack 'entire genetic code' of cancer

Michelle Roberts
BBC News
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:35 UTC
Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.

Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.

The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.

China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.




Comment:
Nicotine DOUBLES the efficiency of our thinking. Hmmm... I think that makes it pretty clear why the PTB (Powers That Be) wish to stamp out smoking. After all, as one comment to the article mentioned, "if our immunity to emotional manipulation and psychopathic propaganda is directly proportional to the cortical control we can exert over the knee-jerk emotional reactions programmed into the amygdala. If smoking can DOUBLE the effective communication between the cortex and other parts of the brain, then what does that say about efforts to do away with smoking in the general population? Can't have any of the hysterical sheeple accidentally waking up and thinking rationally about their actions."

How true.

One only has to consider the History of Smoking Bans;


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Meteor

U.S. Scientists Call for the Creation of an International Asteroid Defense Agency

Jeremy Hsu
Popular Science
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:08 UTC
Russia's proposal for an Armageddon-style mission to deflect the space rock Apophis seemed bold, but it's not the only one fretting about a catastrophic impact on Earth. The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) released a new report that calls for an international asteroid defense agency that can organize a proper mission to counter possible asteroid threats, New Scientist reports.

The NRC repeats some grim facts about Earth's current lack of readiness to deal with giant space rocks flying at it. Current sky surveys will not be able to find 90 percent of near-Earth objects that are 460 feet (140 m) or larger by 2020, as the U.S. Congress instructed NASA in 2005 to ensure they could. As always, a lack of funding has proved the main problem here.
Image
© NASA/Don Davis
Asteroid Defense Let's not keep the proposals too long in committee, yeah?
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Studies Shed New Light on Early Transmembrane Signaling


ScienceDaily
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Two new studies by researchers at the University of Washington further our understanding of the molecular steps in the PLC cascade, a G protein-coupled receptor signaling mechanism that underlies a wide variety of cellular processes, including egg fertilization, hormone secretion, and the regulation of certain potassium channels.

The studies appear online January 25 in the Journal of General Physiology.

Falkenburger et al. take advantage of recent progress in fluorescence technology -- which allows for analysis of biochemical events in single living cells -- to perform a systematic analysis of the PLC signal transmission process.

According to Tamas Balla (National Institutes of Health) in a Commentary accompanying the articles, the new studies extend the kinetic model of the signaling cascade to cover the entire process, from the activation of the M1 muscarinic receptors to the regulation of the potassium channels.
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Sherlock

Discovery of Epigenetic Memory During Breast Cancer


ScienceDaily
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have determined how the TGFβ-Smad signaling pathway, which is over activated in late-stage cancers, is responsible for the "epigenetic memory" that maintains unique patterns of regulatory DNA hypermethylation causing silencing of critical genes that facilitate breast cancer progression.

The findings, which appear online in Cancer Research, may lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies for late stage breast and other cancers.

According to the researchers, it is becoming increasingly accepted that changes that do not affect the genetic blueprint or DNA sequence, known as the epigenetic landscape, play a major role in defining the properties of normal as well as the cancer cells. While specific epigenetic alterations have been associated with cancer progression, the molecular mediators that ensure transmission of these reversible alterations to successive tumor cells has been elusive.
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Grey Alien

Aliens are likely to look and behave like us

Richard Alleyne
The Telegraph
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:20 UTC
Alien life, if it exists at all, is likely to be just like us, a leading scientist has claimed. He also believes aliens would also share our human weaknesses for greed, violence and the exploitation of others.

The evolutionary paleobiologist's beliefs mean that science fiction films such as Star Wars and Star Trek could be more accurate than they ever imagined in depicting alien life.

Prof Conway Morris believes that extraterrestrial life is most likely to occur on a planet similar to our own, with organisms made from the same biochemicals. The process of evolution will even shape alien life in a similar way, he added.
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