Better diet and glucose uptake in the brain lead to longer life in fruit flies
Research News Release
EurekAlert! provides eligible reporters with free access to embargoed and breaking news releases.
Eligibility GuidelinesEurekAlert! offers eligible public information officers paid access to a reliable news release distribution service.
Eligibility GuidelinesEurekAlert! is a service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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.
Scientists have identified the presence of a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers for the first time. The researchers detected Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from 14 miniature Maya ceramic vessels. The vessels also contain chemical traces present in two types of dried and cured tobacco.
Using data from RNA-folding experiments, the researchers generated the first-ever data-driven movies of how RNA folds as it is made by cellular machinery. By watching their videos of this folding occur, the researchers discovered that RNA often folds in surprising, perhaps unintuitive ways, such as tying itself into knots.
Scientists from Osaka University, The University of Queensland, and the Faculty of Engineering at the National University of Singapore have created polymer-coated nanodiamonds that can be absorbed into cells. Based on changes in their fluorescence properties, the internal thermal conductivity of the cell can be measured, which may lead to new heat treatments that attack cancer cells.
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.