News by Subject Biology

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that fruit flies with genetic modifications to enhance glucose uptake have significantly longer lifespans. Looking at the brain cells of aging flies, they found that better glucose uptake compensates for age-related deterioration in motor functions, and led to longer life. The effect was more pronounced when coupled with dietary restrictions. This suggests healthier eating plus improved glucose uptake in the brain might lead to enhanced lifespans.

A team of neuroscientists and engineers at McMaster University has created a nasal spray to deliver antipsychotic medication directly to the brain instead of having it pass through the body.

The newly published review 'Analytical considerations and plans to standardize or harmonize assays for the reference bone turnover markers PINP and β-CTX in blood' describes the current status of assays for PINP and β-CTX in blood, as well as the plans for and ongoing progress towards the achievement of harmonization or standardization of commercial assays for these reference markers.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire took the novel approach of targeting specific cell proteins that control DNA information using inhibitors, or drugs, that were effective in reducing the growth of the Waldenström macroglobulinemia cancer cells and when combined with a third drug were even more successful in killing the WM cancer cells which could lead to more treatment options.

A team of biophysicists set out to tackle the long-standing question about the nature of force generation by myosin, the molecular motor responsible for muscle contraction. The key question they addressed - one of the most controversial topics in the field - was: how does myosin convert chemical energy, in the form of ATP, into mechanical work? The answer revealed new details into how myosin, the engine of muscle and related motor proteins, transduces energy.

A new computational technique that uses heat map data to reverse engineer highly detailed models of chromosomes and researchers have uncovered new information about the close spatial relationships that chromatin folding creates between genes.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Milan and Google Research have used machine learning techniques to predict how proteins, particularly those implicated in neurological diseases, completely change their shapes in a matter of microseconds.