Category Biology/Biotechnology

A protein that masterminds the way DNA is wrapped within chromosomes has a major role in the healthy functioning of blood stem cells, which produce all blood cells in the body, according to a new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The protein, known as histone H3.3, organizes the spool-like structures around which DNA is wrapped in plants, animals and most other organisms. Histones enable DNA to be tightly compacted, and serve as platforms for small chemical modifications – known as epigenetic modifications – that can loosen or tighten the wrapped DNA to control local gene activity.

The study, which appeared Dec. 27 in Nature Cell Biology, examined H3...

A University of South Florida Health (USF Health) preclinical study offers molecular insight into how activated protein C (APC) may improve aging patients’ tolerance to reperfusion injury — a potentially adverse effect of treatment for ischemic heart disease.

The research, published online Dec. 21 in Circulation Research, suggests that drugs derived from APC may limit ischemia and reperfusion-induced heart damage (reperfusion injury for short) and thereby help preserve cardiac function in older hearts.

Advanced age is a major risk factor for ischemic heart disease, often caused by a buildup of plaques in coronary arteries that narrows the vessels and restricts the supply of oxygenated blood to the heart. This “hardening of the arteries” can eventually trigger a heart attack.

An international research team has established a link between gut microbiota and chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. The team led by Éric Boilard of Université Laval has discovered that a protein naturally present in the gut acts on the microbiota and causes the formation of molecules that exacerbate the symptoms of these diseases. The details of this finding are published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation — Insight.

The protein in question, phospholipase A2-IIA, was discovered several years ago in the fluid that surrounds the joints of people with arthritis according to Dr. Boilard, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval and a researcher at CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Centre...

Astronomers have presented a new explanation for the mysterious downward-moving dark voids seen in some solar flares. In January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare.

Unlike typical flares that showed bright energy erupting outwards from the Sun, this solar flare also displayed a downward flow of motion, as if material was falling back towards the Sun. Described as “downward-moving dark voids,” astronomers wondered what exactly they were seeing.

Now, in a study published today in Nature Astronomy, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) offer a new explanation for the poorly understood downflows, now referred to as supra-arcade downflows (SADs) by the scientific community.

“We wanted to know how these struc...