Category Health/Medical

dsx genomic structure and RNAi phenotypes.

1st-of-its-kind study helps answer major question about development and evolution in males versus females. New details about the behavior of the gene called “doublesex,” or dsx have been found. ” How do animals with similar genomes – such as males and females of the same species – produce different versions of the same trait? And why do some traits, like ornamental features that attract mates, vary so widely, while others, like legs, don’t?” said Cris Ledón-Rettig, a postdoctoral researcher in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology, who led the study.

The study is significant because it’s the first to look at the effect of dsx across the whole genome...

Bromodomain-protein inhibition significantly extends survival of DIPG xenograft model.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have found a molecule that stops the growth of an aggressive pediatric brain tumor. Every year, about 300 children < 10 years old in the U.S. develop a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). “This tumor kills every single kid who gets DIPG within 1 year. No one survives,” said Andrea Piunti, a postdoctoral fellow in Shilatifard’s lab in biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Radiation therapy only prolongs patients’ survival by a few months, he noted.

Shilatifard’s lab previously identified the pathway via which a mutation causes cancer in studies with fruit flies, which was published in Science a few years ago...

Credit: NASA JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata sits in the chin rest during an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) session on ISS.

Many astronauts who come back from space experience poorer vision after flight, some even years after, and researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are working to see why. Brian Samuels, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, and his fellow collaborators from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University recently received a grant to study computational modeling as a method of determining why astronauts who are in space for extended periods of time are experiencing eye pathologies...

The amount of harmful nerve connections is significantly lower (far right, arrows) when treating with bumetanide after a prolonged convulsive seizure. Credit: Nazin Kourdougli

Prolonged epileptic seizures may cause serious problems that will continue for the rest of a patient’s life. As a result of a seizure, neural connections of the brain may be rewired in an incorrect way. This may result in seizures that are difficult to control with medication. Mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are not entirely known, which makes current therapies ineffective in some patients...