Category Health/Medical

These images show a reduction in the number of macrophages infiltrating atherosclerotic plaques (in green) in animals treated with the IRE1 inhibitor. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California – Santa Barbara

Proteins begin life as long strings of amino acids that must fold into the 3D shape prescribed for their biological function. When proteins don’t fold as expected the cells activate stress responses meant to mitigate the problem. But severe or prolonged stress produces an acute response: Cell death is triggered to protect the organism.

Sustained activation of one such reaction – the unfolded protein response, or UPR – has been implicated in a number of diseases...

(a) Schematic demonstration of the system and the lifting process. The force and energy change involved are highlighted). (b) Hierarchical structure of silk fibers. The single silk fiber consists of tiny silk threads.

Spider silk offers new inspiration for artificial muscle technology. The silk of the Ornithoctonus Huwena spider demonstrates impressive weight-lifting abilities with efficient, water-driven actuation. The triggered stretching behavior of muscle is inherently based in geometry, characterized by a decrease in length and increase in volume (or vice versa) in response to a change in local environment, eg humidity or heat.

“Spider silk is a natural biological material with high sensitivity to water, which inspires us to study about the interaction between spider silk and water,” ...

Distinct sets of genetic defects in a single neuronal protein can lead either to infantile epilepsy or to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), depending on whether the respective mutations boost the protein’s function or sabotage it, according to a new study by UC San Francisco researchers.

Distinct sets of genetic defects in a single neuronal protein can lead either to infantile epilepsy or to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), depending on whether the respective mutations boost the protein’s function or sabotage it, according to a new study by UC San Francisco researchers. Tracing how these particular genetic defects lead to more general changes in brain function could unlock fundamental mysteries about how events early in brain development lead to autism, the authors say.

The findings are...

This image is a mouse intestinal organoid, or “mini-gut,” used to study epithelial cell barrier function in ongoing inflammatory bowel disease and cancer studies. Photo courtesy of Coy Allen. Credit: Virginia Tech

Could inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer be prevented by changing the shape of a single protein? There is an intimate link between uncontrolled inflammation in the gut associated with inflammatory bowel disease and the eventual development of colon cancer. This uncontrolled inflammation is associated with changes in bacteria populations in the gut, which can invade the mucosal tissue after damage to the protective cellular barrier lining the tissue.
But Virginia Tech researchers found that modifying the shape of IRAK-M, a protein that controls inflammation, can significa...