Category Health/Medical

Highlights •The cancer drug Taxol is a fungicide against wood-decaying fungi (WDF) in yew trees •Inside yew, a fungal endophyte produces Taxol and migrates to pathogen entry points •The endophyte sequesters Taxol in hydrophobic bodies (HBs); WDF induce their release •The HBs can coalesce to form extracellular barriers laced with fungicidal Taxol

The researchers found naturally occurring fungi in the yew’s vascular system act like an immune system to swarm a wound site and protect against invading pathogens. Taxol is harvested from yew bark for use as an important cancer-fighting drug, but efforts to make synthetic taxol in the lab have been unsuccessful.

Raizada said the findings might point drug makers to a less expensive synthetic process for making more of the substance...

A breakthrough study shows that fat tissue is innervated and that direct stimulation of neurons in fat is sufficient to induce fat breakdown. These results set up the stage for developing novel anti-obesity therapies. Fat tissue constitutes 20 – 25% of human body weight being an energy store in the form of triglycerides. 20 yrs ago Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified the hormone leptin, which is produced by fat cells in amounts that are proportional to the amount of fat, and informs the brain about how much fat is available in the body. Leptin functions as an “adipostat” neuro-endocrine signal that preserves body’s fat mass in a relatively narrow range of variation...

In an advance that helps clarify the role of a cluster of neurons in the brain, researchers have found that these neurons not only control hunger and appetite, but also regulate bone mass. “We have found that the level of your hunger could determine your bone structure,” said Prof Tamas L. Horvat

“The less hungry you are, the lower your bone density, and surprisingly, the effects of these neurons on bone mass are independent of the effect of the hormone leptin on these same cells.”

Horvath and his team focused on agouti-related peptide (AgRP) neurons in the hypothalamus, which control feeding and compulsive behaviors...

DNA-Based Nanodevices for Molecular Medicine

A new article discusses how DNA molecules can be assembled into tailored and complex nanostructures, and further, how these structures can find uses in therapeutics and bionanotechnological applications. The researchers outline the superior properties of DNA nanostructures. Moreover, these DNA nanostructures provide new applications in molecular medicine, such as novel approaches in tackling cancer. Tailored DNA structures could find targeted cells and release their molecular payload selectively into the cells.

The big boom in the field of structural DNA nanotechnology happened in 2006, when Paul Rothemund introduced a technique dubbed ‘DNA origami’...