oleic acid tagged posts

For decades, the relationship between fat and cancer has been treated as a question of quantity: Eat less fat, reduce your risk of developing cancer. But new research published April 29 in Cancer Discovery shows that for pancreatic cancer, the type of fat you consume matters more than the amount.

“It’s really the type of fat that you’re consuming, not just total fat content,” says Christian Felipe Ruiz, Ph.D., an associate research scientist in YSM’s Department of Genetics and lead author of the study. “Depending on the type of fat that you consume, it can go completely different ways. We found that some fats promote cancer, as we would expect, while other fats are really good at suppressing cancer.”

One fat in particular—oleic acid, the primary fatty acid in olive oil—may be ac...

Highlights
•OA inhibits the binding of proteins containing RRM.
•OA rescues processing of pri-miR-7 in vitro.
•OA induces mature miR-7 production in HeLa cells.

A compound found in olive oil may help to prevent cancer developing in the brain, a study shows. Research into oleic acid – the primary ingredient in olive oil – has shown how it can help prevent cancer-causing genes from functioning in cells. The oily substance – a fatty acids – stimulates the production of a cell molecule whose function is to prevent cancer-causing proteins from forming.

The study team says it is too soon to say whether dietary consumption of olive oil may help prevent brain cancer. Their findings, however, point towards possible therapies based on the oil to prevent brain cancer from occurring...

Microscopy of self-oscillation of the crystalline assembly. A crystalline assembly of azobenzene derivative and oleate showed oscillatory bending-unbending motion under continuous 435-nm light irradiation. The frequency of oscillation increased with increasing light intensity. Credit: Copyright Ikegami T. et. al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition, May 19, 2016

Scientists have developed light-powered molecular motors that repetitively bend and unbend, bringing us closer to molecular robots. Researchers are working on mimicking cellular systems to develop molecular motors that can move or even deliver drugs to target tissues. Engineering such motors may ultimately lead to molecular robots that can execute more complex tasks...

Illustration depicting semiconductor nanocrystal to molecule triplet energy transfer and established subsequent reactions. Credit: Image generated by Dr. Cedric Mongin

It extends the lifetime of originally prepared excited state by 6 orders of magnitude. This has implications for solar energy conversion to photochemical synthesis to optoelectronics to light therapy for cancer Rx. Excitons are the electron/hole pairs formed in semiconductor nanocrystals upon absorption of light, temporarily storing it as chemical energy. In solar cells, for example, excitons transport energy through the material so that it can be collected and converted into electricity.

In terms of photochemistry, the major drawback to using most semiconductor nanocrystals as photosensitizers lies in their short excited st...