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    Category Health/Medical

    Gene Switch may Repair DNA and Prevent Cancer

    February 13, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Highlights •5hmC is actively enriched at endogenous DNA damage sites in cancer cell lines •DNA damage induced by aphidicolin or microirradiation increases 5hmC locally •TET2 is required to create damage-associated 5hmC foci in HeLa cells •TET enzymes promote genome integrity under replication stress in mouse ES cells

    Highlights •5hmC is actively enriched at endogenous DNA damage sites in cancer cell lines •DNA damage induced by aphidicolin or microirradiation increases 5hmC locally •TET2 is required to create damage-associated 5hmC foci in HeLa cells •TET enzymes promote genome integrity under replication stress in mouse ES cells

    A team of scientists in Japan has found a DNA modification called 5hmC thought to be involved in turning genes on and off – localizes at sites of DNA damage and repair. They also found that a family of recently discovered enzymes, TETs for short, is important in maintaining 5hmC’s reparative role.

    To turn genes on or off, a methyl group can be added to or removed from DNA. During demethylation, the methyl group is converted to 5hmC as an intermediate step...

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    Gene Signature could lead to a new way of diagnosing Lyme Disease

    February 12, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Longitudinal differential gene expression and pathway analysis of Lyme disease. (A) Bar chart of the numbers of genes found to be upregulated or downregulated at Lyme disease diagnosis (V1), 3 weeks post-treatment (V2, after a standard course of antibiotics), and 6 months post-treatment (V5). (B) Venn diagram representing the number of DEGs between Lyme disease patients and controls at three time points. (C) Principal component analysis (PCA) of Lyme disease patients and controls at three time points on the basis of 1,759 unique DEGs identified at V1, V2, and V5. The asterisk represents a subject in the control group who looks like an outlier in the PCA plot but is not shown to be an outlier by PCA analysis of the control samples (see Fig. S2 in the supplemental material). Note that the PC3 axis in the PCA plot accounts for only 8% of the variance in the data set. (D to F) Top 10 disease and functional categories (D), top 10 canonical pathways (E), and top 10 upstream regulators (excluding drug categories) (F) predicted to be involved in Lyme disease at (V1, V2, and V5) with categories, pathways, and genes ranked by the negative log of the P value of the enrichment score. The color scheme is based on Z scores, with activation in orange, inhibition in blue, and undetermined directionality in gray. The red line represents the designated significance threshold (P < 0.05).

    Longitudinal differential gene expression and pathway analysis of Lyme disease. (A) Bar chart of the numbers of genes found to be upregulated or downregulated at Lyme disease diagnosis (V1), 3 weeks post-treatment (V2, after a standard course of antibiotics), and 6 months post-treatment (V5). (B) Venn diagram representing the number of DEGs between Lyme disease patients and controls at three time points. (C) Principal component analysis (PCA) of Lyme disease patients and controls at three time points on the basis of 1,759 unique DEGs identified at V1, V2, and V5. The asterisk represents a subject in the control group who looks like an outlier in the PCA plot but is not shown to be an outlier by PCA analysis of the control samples (see Fig. S2 in the supplemental material)...

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    Study finds mechanism by which Obesity Promotes Pancreatic and Breast Cancer

    February 12, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    breast cancer

    Micrograph showing a lymph node invaded by ductal breast carcinoma, with extension of the tumour beyond the lymph node. Credit: Nephron/Wikipedia

    MGH team describes finding an association between obesity and an overabundance of a factor called PlGF (placental growth factor) and that PlGF’s binding to its receptor VEGFR-1, which is expressed on immune cells within tumors, promotes tumor progression. Their findings in cellular and animal models, as well as in patient tumor samples, indicate that targeting the PlGF/ VEGFR-1 pathway may be particularly effective in obese patients.

    “We found that obesity increased infiltration of tumor-promoting immune cells and the growth and metastasis of pancreatic cancers,” says Dai Fukumura, MD, PhD...

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    The Sleeping Giant NGC 4889 harbors a Dark Secret

    February 12, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical

    This image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 in front of hundreds of background galaxies, and deeply embedded within the Coma galaxy cluster. Well-hidden from human eyes, there is a gigantic supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Credit: NASA & ESA

    This image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 in front of hundreds of background galaxies, and deeply embedded within the Coma galaxy cluster. Well-hidden from human eyes, there is a gigantic supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Credit: NASA & ESA

    The placid appearance of NGC 4889 can fool the unsuspecting observer. But the elliptical galaxy harbours one of the most supermassive black holes ever discovered. Located ~300 million light-years away in the Coma Cluster, the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4889, the brightest and largest galaxy in this image has a black hole that is 21 billion times the mass of the Sun. The event horizon has a diameter of ~130 billion kilometres. This is about 15X the diameter of Neptune’s orbit from the Sun...

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