News by Subject Biology

About three per cent of the world's population is affected by valvular heart diseases. It is also the most common cause of heart surgery, as no drug-based treatment is available. Recent research has shed light on the molecular mechanism on valvular disease that is caused by a genetic mutation in Filamin gene. The result of the research will help to further investigate the mechanism by which the medical condition progress and to develop new treatments.

A study led by Dr. Ravi Muddashetty at InStem, Bangalore identified distinct markers to distinguish ribosomes that are specialized for producing specific sets of proteins and hinted that this specialization could be important for the development of the nervous system.

New research published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics demonstrates that 'good' bacteria in the live probiotic SymproveTM can successfully reach and colonise the gut, where they go on to change the existing gut flora. They are also capable of modifying immune response.

Melanoma skin cancer tumors grow larger and are more likely to metastasize due to interactions between a pair of molecules, according to experiments in mice and human cells. The results may restore the potential for a type of cancer therapy previously abandoned in clinical trials. The results also implicate one molecule already connected to obesity and dementia as a potential cause of metastasis, or spread of cancer cells to other areas of the body.

One of the body's largest macromolecules is the machinery that gloms onto DNA and transcribes it into mRNA, the blueprint for proteins. But the molecule, TFIID, is complex with lots of floppy appendages, which makes it hard to obtain a clear picture of its structure. Using state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy detectors and computer analysis, UC Berkeley scientists have captured unprecedented detail of how TFIID's structure changes as it binds to DNA and recruits other proteins.