General

Epigenetic clocks are multiplying year by year. Each is a weighted algorithmic combination of the status of various methylation sites on the genome, built by analyzing the epigenome of many different people at different ages in order to arrive at correlations with chronological age, or, more usefully, with metrics such as mortality risk that reflect biological […]

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet led by Professor Erik Melén have together with an international team mapped the relationship between the length of pregnancy and chemical DNA changes in more than 6,000 newborn babies. For each week's longer pregnancy, DNA methylation changes in thousands of genes were detected in the umbilical […]

Scientists have developed a probe named CoxFluor that can distinguish between Cyclooxygenase-2, an enzyme that plays a major role in driving the progression of cancer, and the enzyme Cyclooxygenase-1, which is expressed in all cells. Led by Jefferson Chan, a chemist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a paper detailing […]

In recent years, diet trends such as Intermittent Fasting have popularized the practice of delayed or restricted eating for many individuals looking to manage caloric intake. Still, many people open to restructuring their schedules have the same question: When is the right time to avoid eating? According to a new […]

A new study by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital puts the results of a landmark trial about blood pressure control into terms that may be easier to interpret and communicate to patients. When data from The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) were published in 2015, the medical community responded enthusiastically […]

The death of a spouse often means the loss of intimacy, companionship and everyday support for older adults. A new study finds that widowhood can have another profound effect: It may accelerate cognitive decline. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed older, cognitively normal Americans enrolled […]

Many tests for cytomegalovirus infection are difficult to interpret because most of its DNA fragments are too small to be detected in the blood of infected people through current assays.  Laboratory medicine experts at the University of Washington School of Medicine are looking at this problem to find better ways […]

Scientists from UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz and Duke University synchronized their research watches to study what makes our biological clocks tick. Specifically they set out to understand why some people are what they call extreme “morning larks” who operate on a shorter 20-hour cycle compared to a regular 24-hour pattern. […]

A research project at Linköping University has shown that children whose parents often use digital media develop language more slowly than others. For three years, Associate Professor Anett Sundqvist and her research group in the Child and Infant Lab at Linköping University have studied young children and their development in […]

Our skin protects us from physical injury, radiation, and microbes, and at the same time produces hair and facilitates perspiration. Details of how skin cells manage such disparate tasks have so far remained elusive. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have systematically mapped skin cells and their genetic programs, […]

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are reporting another advance in the understanding and treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, which is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat. Their findings, detailed in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, offer new hope for identifying patients most likely to respond to the latest treatments. “This […]

A followup to a University of Alberta study done in 2016 confirms that pregnant women who eat more fruit during pregnancy may be giving their babies’ cognitive development a boost. “Our research followed up on results from the original CHILD Cohort Study, which found that fruit consumption in pregnant mothers influences […]

Parkinson’s disease researchers have used gene-editing tools to introduce the disorder’s most common genetic mutation into marmoset monkey stem cells and to successfully tamp down cellular chemistry that often goes awry in Parkinson’s patients. The edited cells are a step toward studying the degenerative neurological disorder in a primate model, […]

Without enough sugar in their diets, bumblebee queens can experience difficulty reproducing and shorter lifespans. Hollis Woodard, assistant professor of entomology at UCR, has conducted multiple studies showing how loss of plant availability negatively affects the prolific pollinators. Previous research indicates a queen’s diet can impact how quickly her brood develops, or […]

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research have received a funding boost to help realize their vision of using tiny robots controlled by artificial intelligence to one day find and capture rare stem cells from brain tissue for therapy. Working with Mike Shaw, a machine learning expert […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a molecular pathway that when silenced could restore the normal function of immune cells in people with fatty liver disease. The findings could lead to new strategies for treating the condition, which is a major health risk for people with obesity. The […]

People who have been treated in intensive care commonly suffer from residual cognitive impairment, but the reason for this is unknown. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now link cognitive impairment with lasting inflammation and a potential treatment target. The results are presented in the scientific journal Intensive Care Medicine. Every year, […]

Rare genetic disorders caused by small changes in a person’s genetic make-up affect fewer than 1 in 2,000 people globally – but they are a major cause of developmental and psychiatric conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and intellectual disability. Recent advances in technologies to […]

Administering stem cell or enzyme therapy in utero may be a path to alleviating some congenital diseases that often result in losing a pregnancy, according to a new study in mice by UC San Francisco researchers, who showed that stem cells can enter the fetal brain during prenatal development and make up for cells that fail to make an essential protein. Each year, about 24,000 women […]

The makeup of our microbiomes — the unique communities of bacteria, viruses and other microbes that live in and on us — have been linked, with varying degrees of evidence, to everything from inflammatory bowel disease to athletic performance. But exactly how could such tiny organisms have such immense influences […]

Exotic molecule linked to ozone also at work in chronic diseases and cancers, and even the decomposition of food. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made a surprising discovery that could help explain our risk for developing chronic diseases or cancers as […]

It’s known that genetics, or an inherited genome, is a major determinant of one’s risk for autoimmune diseases, like Type 1 diabetes. In human cells, a person’s genome—about six feet of DNA—is compressed into the micrometer space of the nucleus via a three-dimensional folding process. Specialized proteins decode the genetic […]

Cats share around 250 types of genetic diseases with humans, and they are seen as a next-generation animal model for diseases. During his days as a veterinarian, Project Professor Watanabe saw many animals succumb to diseases, including genetic diseases which were incurable. He presses forward with his research on cat […]

Researchers have converted human stem cells into insulin-producing cells and demonstrated in mice infused with such cells that blood sugar levels can be controlled and diabetes functionally cured for nine months. The findings, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are published online in the journal […]

The Alberta government’s plan for many arthritis, diabetes, and Crohn’s disease patients to switch to less expensive medications by July 1 could create legal challenges for doctors, say two researchers at the University of Alberta. “If a physician has concerns about switching, there may be a legal obligation as a […]

Development of a novel technology to generate maps of interaction between RNA and genomic DNA reveals that different classes of transcripts play a significant role in chromatin organization and regulation of gene expression. The results are published in Nature Communications by an international collaboration lead by researchers at RIKEN in […]

While many of us worry about proteins aggregating in our brains as we age and potentially causing Alzheimer’s disease or other types of neurodegeneration, we may not realize that some of the same proteins are aggregating in our muscles, setting us up for muscle atrophy in old age. University of […]

To improve how broken bones heal in people with diabetes, the School of Dental Medicine’s Henry Daniell, Sheri Yang, and colleagues are leading work to develop an affordable oral therapy—grown in plants. People with diabetes are at a higher risk of fracturing a bone than the general population. And if […]

X-ray studies reveal atomic-level distortions that enhance generation of heat for killing tumor cells or improving response to chemotherapy/radiation Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered key details of magnetic nanoparticles that may improve their use in an innovative treatment known as magnetic hyperthermia—literally […]

Researchers said the wavelengths at sunrise and sunset have the biggest impact to brain centers that regulate our circadian clock and our mood and alertness. Their study, “A color vision circuit for non-image-forming vision in the primate retina,” published in Current Biology Feb. 20, identifies a cell in the retina, which […]