Category Health/Medical

Average changes in GLUT4 protein in the plantaris (PLT), soleus (SOL), and ECL muscles of rhesus macaques. Protein expression is shown as a multitude of the control value. There were no age-related statistical differences detected between young and old groups and, therefore, values were combined into a single control (Con) group. Values are means ± S.E.M. HFS, high fat/high sugar; HFSR, high fat/high sugar with resveratrol supplementation.

Resveratrol found in red wine could help counteract the negative impact of high fat/high sugar diets. Red wine lovers have a new reason to celebrate. Researchers have found a new health benefit of resveratrol, which occurs naturally in blueberries, raspberries, mulberries, grape skins and consequently in red wine.

While studying the effects of resveratr...

Dreaming. REM sleep is understood to be a critical component of sleep in all mammals, including humans. Credit: © Anton Maltsev / Fotolia

For decades, scientists have fiercely debated whether rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – the phase where dreams appear – is directly involved in memory formation. Now researchers provide evidence that REM sleep does, indeed, play this role – at least in mice. “We already knew that newly acquired information is stored into different types of memories, spatial or emotional, before being consolidated or integrated,” says Sylvain Williams, a researcher and professor of psychiatry at McGill.

“How the brain performs this process has remained unclear – until now...

rs10830963 is an eQTL in human islets conferring increased MTNR1B mRNA expression • Melatonin inhibits cAMP rises in mouse islets and clonal insulin-secreting cells • Melatonin blocks insulin release in mouse islets and clonal insulin-secreting cells • Melatonin’s inhibition of insulin release is stronger in risk allele carriers

A sleeping pancreas releases less insulin, but how much insulin drops each night may differ from person to person. Up to 30% of the population may be predisposed to have a pancreas that’s more sensitive to the insulin-inhibiting effects of melatonin, a circadian rhythm hormone. People with this increased sensitivity carry a slightly altered melatonin receptor gene that is a known risk factor for type 2 diabetes.

Large-scale studies have identified over 100 ...

Autophagy is required for the migration and invasion of metastatic tumor cells •Autophagy promotes the degradation of paxillin and focal adhesion turnover •Paxillin interacts with LC3B through a conserved LIR in a Src-regulated manner •Autophagy is required for Src-regulated tumor cell motility

Inhibiting autophagy effectively blocks tumor cell migration and breast cancer metastasis in tumor models. They demonstrate that the process is essential for tumor metastasis and describe the mechanisms that connect autophagy to cell migration. Metastasis is responsible for 90% of cancer deaths.

2 MD/PhD students working in MacLeod’s laboratory, Marina Sharifi and Erin Mowers, noticed that when they placed metastatic breast cancer cells on a dish and monitored them with time-lapse microscopy, ...