Category Health/Medical

Telomeres glow at the end of chromosomes. Credit: Hesed Padilla-Nash and Thomas Ried of the NIH

New method may speed understanding of short telomere diseases and cancer and the new method they used to find it should speed discovery of other proteins and processes that determine telomere length. “We’ve known for a long time that telomerase doesn’t tell the whole story of why chromosomes’ telomeres are a given length, but with the tools we had, it was difficult to figure out which proteins were responsible for getting telomerase to do its work,” saysProf. Carol Greider, Ph.D (winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomerase.)

Figuring out exactly what’s needed to lengthen telomeres has broad health implications as shortened telomeres have been implicat...

Raymond C. Harris, M.D., left, Ming-Zhi Zhang, M.D., M.Sc., and colleagues are investigating why COX-2 inhibitors cause heart problems in some patients. Credit: Photo by John Russell

It’s been about a decade since the promise of COX-2 inhibitors – drugs that relieve arthritis pain and inflammation without the gastrointestinal side effects of other painkillers – was tempered by the realization that they could cause heart problems in some patients. Now a team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists are closer to understanding why. They have found that production of prostaglandins by macrophages may play a role, especially in the kidney and the skin. Their findings could lead to development of a new, better-targeted class of drugs that relieve pain without causing vascular effects.

Highlights • The first crystal structure of the UP1 domain of hnRNP A1 bound to RNA is determined. • The UP1–RNA structure reveals that only the RRM1 sub-domain and inter-RRM linker of UP1 interact with the RNA via a nucleobase pocket; RRM2 does not contact the RNA. • A structural model scored by small-angle X-ray scattering reveals UP1 binds the HIV ESS3 stem loop as a 1:1 complex using its RRM1 domain and inter-RRM linker only. • Structure-guided mutagenesis and molecular dynamics simulations show the RRM1 and RRM2 sub-domains synergize to fold the inter-RRM linker in a conformation that determines specific and high-affinity RNA interactions.

Researchers have produced the first image of an important human protein as it binds with ribonucleic acid (RNA), a discovery that could o...

If you have a well for your drinking water, you might consider testing it for arsenic (regularly). Included as one of the many contaminants that are typically part of a ‘standard’ well water test, arsenic is something that you really want to know about – especially since you ‘might’ be slowly poisoning yourself without even knowing it…

More than 140 million people worldwide and 4 million Americans chronically ingest arsenic in their drinking water. The 21st most abundant metal in Earth’s crust, arsenic is naturally present in soil and bedrock-walled wells and has no odor, color or taste...