Category Health/Medical

  
The presence of microbes specifically blocks the immune cells responsible for triggering allergies. It is well known the microbiota is involved in many mechanisms, including digestion, vitamin synthesis and host defense.The hygiene hypothesis suggests a link between a decline in infectious diseases and increase in allergic diseases in industrialized countries. Improvements in hygiene levels lead to reduced contact with microbes that is paralleled by an increased incidence in allergic and autoimmune diseases, eg type 1 diabetes.

Epidemiological studies have substantiated this hypothesis, by showing children living with farm animals – and thus with more microbial agents – develop fewer allergies during their lifetime...

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L1 elements can uproot themselves and move to new areas in the DNA, sometimes accidentally moving into genes that control the cell’s growth. This happened around 100X in each tumour sample, and in some tumours it happened 700X. Cambridge Uni scientists used cutting-edge technology that can read DNA to study the genes of 43 esophageal tumour and blood samples to discover how much these mobile genetic sequences travel.

If a jumping gene lands in or near an important gene that controls cell growth, it can wreak havoc, changing how the gene works so that it inadvertently tells the cell to grow and divide out of control – which could lead to cancer. “Research has shown that this might also happen in lung and bowel cancers...

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“We know from previous research that macrophages are versatile, and signals at the injury site can stimulate repair or destruction–or confusingly, both,” said John Gensel Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Physiology in the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center at the University of Kentucky. “But the mechanisms through which these signals stimulate the good and/or bad functions in macrophages are not known. So the next big question to answer in the efforts to understand and treat SCI was, ‘Why?'”

Gensel and Popovich looked at more than 50 animals with spinal cord injury to try to identify which macrophage receptors promoted neuronal repair and which directed the destructive process...

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Researchers unveil a series of sensors, memory switches, and circuits that can be encoded in the common human gut bacterium. These basic computing elements will allow the bacteria to sense, memorize, and respond to signals in the gut, with future applications that might include the early detection and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease or colon cancer.

Researchers have previously built genetic circuits inside model organisms such as E coli. However, such strains are only found at low levels within the human gut. “We wanted to work with strains like B thetaiotaomicron that are present in many people in abundant levels, and can stably colonize the gut for long periods of time,” Lu says.

METHOD: A series of genetic parts was made th...

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