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Berkeley Lab Startup Wants to Know How Damaged Your DNA Is

By Guest PostMarch 6, 2014Health, Technologyaging, berkeley lab startup, cancer, chemical spill, damage, DNA, dna damage, dna repair, double strand breaks, elk river, environmental event, exogen, genetics, immunity, jonathan tang, NASA, repair, scid, severe combined immunodeficiency, steve yannone, sylvain costes, west virginia

Exogen can check the DNA health not only of an individual but that of an entire region, thus answering questions on the impact of environmental events.

Currently if a scientist or doctor wanted to measure the level of a person’s DNA damage, they would have to look at some cells in a fluorescent microscope and manually count the number of DNA breaks. This kind of counting is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and a highly subjective process. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Sylvain Costes, who has spent over a decade studying the effects of low-dose radiation on cellular processes, came up with a way to automate the job using a proprietary algorithm and a machine to scan specimens and objectively score the damaged DNA. (more…)

Study Explains Skin’s Response to UVA Light

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2013Healthdna damage, melanin production, phototransduction pathway, skin cells, ultraviolet light, uva exposure, uva light

Researchers have strengthened their understanding of how skin cells called melanocytes sense ultraviolet light and act to protect themselves with melanin. In a new study, they report experiments showing that an ion channel well-known elsewhere in the body for its chemical sensitivity, plays a central role in this process. (more…)

Nutrition Tied to Improved Sperm DNA Quality in Older Men

By Guest PostAugust 28, 2012Healthdna damage, dna strand damage, intake of micronutrients, sperm dna, sperm dna fragmentation, sperm dna quality

Berkeley Lab study links healthy micronutrient intake with reduced DNA fragmentation

A new study led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that a healthy intake of micronutrients is strongly associated with improved sperm DNA quality in older men. In younger men, however, a higher intake of micronutrients didn’t improve their sperm DNA. (more…)

Low Quality Genes May Cause Mutational Meltdown

By Guest PostApril 19, 2012Scienceaneil agrawal, chromosome, DNA, dna damage, drosophila melanogaster, eeb, environmental stress, evolutionary biologist, extinction, fruit fly, genetic deficiencies, high quality gene, low quality gene, mammal, mutation, nathaniel sharp, poor genetic quality, repairing dna, species, university of toronto

Deficiencies compound over time, researchers say

Evolutionary biologists at the University of Toronto have found that individuals with low-quality genes may produce offspring with even more inferior chromosomes, possibly leading to the extinction of certain species over generations.

Their study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, predicts that organisms with such genetic deficiencies could experience an increased number of mutations in their DNA, relative to individuals with high-quality genes. The research was done on fruit flies whose simple system replicates aspects of biology in more complex systems, so the findings could have implications for humans. (more…)

Radiation Generates Cancer Stem Cells From Less Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells

By Guest PostFebruary 19, 2012Healthbreast cancer, cancer cell, chemotherapy, dna damage, frank pajonk, ibcsc, induced pluripotent stem cells, ips, kim irwin, oncologist, radiation therapy, radiation treatment, regenerative medicine, stem cell, tumor, tumor recurrence

Breast cancer stem cells, thought to be the sole source of tumor recurrence, are known to be resistant to radiation therapy and don’t respond well to chemotherapy.

Now, researchers with the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report for the first time that radiation treatment, despite killing half of all tumor cells during every treatment, transforms other cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells. (more…)

Tiny Amounts of Alcohol Dramatically Extend A Worm’s Life, But Why?

By Guest PostJanuary 21, 2012Science1 millimeter, alcohol, alcohol consumption, alcoholic beverages, beer, biochemistry of aging, brian young, c elegans, caenorhabditis elegans, cardiovascular, cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, dna damage, effect, ethanol, health benefit, human aging, larval stage, longevity, minuscule, neurological effects, novartis research foundation, paola castro, protein repair enzyme, san diego, shilpi khare, steven clarke, stuart wolpert, tiny worm, trivial explanation

Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which is used frequently as a model in aging studies, UCLA biochemists report. The scientists said they find their discovery difficult to explain.

“This finding floored us — it’s shocking,” said Steven Clarke, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the senior author of the study, published Jan. 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science. (more…)

Solving The Mystery of An Old Drug That May Reduce Cancer Risk

By Guest PostJanuary 19, 2012Health, Scienceanti diabetic drug, anti diabetic function, antioxidant, breast, cancer, cancer risk, carcinogenesis, cellular mutation rate, colon, diabetics, dna damage, gerardo ferbeyre, mcgill university, metformin, michael pollak, mitochondria, nutrient, rates of cancer, reactive oxygen species, reduction in risk, ros, scotland, type ii diabetes, université de montréal, university of montreal

In 2005, news first broke that researchers in Scotland found unexpectedly low rates of cancer among diabetics taking metformin, a drug commonly prescribed to patients with Type II diabetes. Many follow-up studies reported similar findings, some suggesting as much as a 50-per-cent reduction in risk. How could this anti-diabetic drug reduce the risk of developing cancer and what were the mechanisms involved?

In a paper published today in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, researchers from McGill University and the University of Montreal reported an unexpected finding: they learned that exposure to metformin reduces the cellular mutation rate and the accumulation of DNA damage. It is well known that such mutations are directly involved in carcinogenesis, but lowering cancer risk by inhibiting the mutation rate has never been shown to be feasible. (more…)

New 3-D Model of RNA ‘Core Domain’ of Enzyme Telomerase May Offer Clues to Cancer, Aging

By Guest PostNovember 6, 2010Health, Scienceaging, cancer, cells, chromosomes, DNA, dna damage, enzyme, helical extension, juli feigon, medicine, nmr, nobel prize, nuclear magnetic resonance, physiology, proteins, pseudoknot, qi zhang, rna, spectroscopy, telomerase, telomeres, virus

A model representation of telomerase's RNA "core domain," determined by Juli Feigon, Qi Zhang and colleagues in Feigon's UCLA laboratory. Image credit: Juli Feigon, UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry/PNAS

Telomerase is an enzyme that maintains the DNA at the ends of our chromosomes, known as telomeres. In the absence of telomerase activity, every time our cells divide, our telomeres get shorter. This is part of the natural aging process, as most cells in the human body do not have much active telomerase. Eventually, these DNA-containing telomeres, which act as protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, become so short that the cells die.

But in some cells, such as cancer cells, telomerase, which is composed of RNA and proteins, is highly active and adds telomere DNA, preventing telomere shortening and extending the life of the cell.

UCLA biochemists have now produced a three-dimensional structural model of the RNA “core domain” of the telomerase enzyme. Because telomerase plays a surprisingly important role in cancer and aging, understanding its structure could lead to new approaches for treating disease, the researchers say. (more…)

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