News by Subject Medicine & Health

Despite dramatic reductions in the death rate from cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, it remains the leading causes of death, and experts have expressed concern that the number of new therapies coming to market has lagged.

Researchers from Kumamoto University in Japan have found that the compound folic acid-conjugated methyl-BETA-cyclodextrin (FA-M-BETA-CyD) has significant antitumor effects on folate receptor-ALPHA-expressing (FR-ALPHA (+)) cancer cells. The compound significantly reduced ATP production while simultaneously increased the production of reactive oxygen species. Side effects in animal models were minimal but further testing is still required to determine its safety.

Discovering the function of a gene requires cloning a DNA sequence and expressing it. Until now, this was performed on a one-gene-at-a-time basis, causing a bottleneck. Scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School have invented a technology to clone thousands of genes simultaneously and create massive libraries of proteins from DNA samples, potentially ushering in a new era of functional genomics.

For the first time, scientists have visualized the fine details of bacterial microcompartment shells -- the organisms' submicroscopic nanoreactors, which are comprised completely of protein.

In a study published in Current Biology on June 22, the lab of Professor John Werren at the University of Rochester describes how four closely related species of parasitic wasps change their venoms rapidly in order to adapt to new hosts, and proposes that co-option of single copy genes may be a common but relatively understudied mechanism of evolution for new gene functions, particularly under conditions of rapid evolutionary change.