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Yale Team Discovers How Stress and Depression Can Shrink the Brain

By Guest PostAugust 20, 2012Health, Scienceanimal model, antidepressant therapy, ashley lepack, bhavya voleti, brain, brain cell, brain mass, brain volume, chronic stress, cognitive impairment, depression, emotional, gata1, gene, gene activation, genetic switch, h j kang, mounira banasr, pattern, pawel licznerski, prefrontal cortex, ronald duman, shrink, stress, symptoms of depression, synaptic connection, transcription factor, yale

Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs — a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models.

The findings, reported in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass in the prefrontal cortex. (more…)

Crocodilian Evolution

By Guest PostJune 15, 2012Nature, Scienceadam thomas, alligators, birds, canr, carl schmidt, colin kern, crocodile, crocodilian evolution, crocodilian family, crocodilian native, danielle quigley, david ray, dna sequence, evolution research, extinction, gene, genetic evolution, genome, genomic change, gharials, indian subcontinent, university of delaware, wetlands

UD’s Schmidt studies genome of crocodile family in evolution research

University of Delaware scientist Carl Schmidt is working to identify genes in crocodiles, alligators and gharials as he searches for links between the creatures that could give clues as to how they evolved over the years in relation to one another.

Schmidt’s effort is part of a National Science Foundation-funded project being conducted by a team of researchers assembled by David Ray, an evolutionary biologist at Mississippi State University. (more…)

Study: Heart Damage after Chemo Linked to Stress in Cardiac Cells

By Guest PostMay 22, 2012Healthblocking, breast cancer, cancer cell, cardiac damage, cardiomyocytes, cellular level, chemotherapy, doxorubicin, drug, gene, govindasamy ilangovan, heart, heart muscle cells, heat shock factor 1, hsf 1, karthikeyan krishnamurthy, kaushik vedam, mdr1, multidrug resistance 1, nf kb, ohio state university, protein, ragu kanagasabai

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Blocking a protein in the heart that is produced under stressful conditions could be a strategy to prevent cardiac damage that results from chemotherapy, a new study suggests.

Previous research has suggested that up to a quarter of patients who receive the common chemotherapy drug doxorubicin are at risk of developing heart failure later in life. Exactly how that heart damage is done remains unclear.

In this study, scientists identified a protein called heat shock factor-1 (HSF-1) as a likely source of chemotherapy-related heart damage in mice and cell cultures. Heat shock factor-1 is known to be induced by stress – in this case, the chemotherapy treatment itself. (more…)

Insect Glands May Illuminate Human Fertilization Process

By Guest PostMay 12, 2012Health, Scienceallan spradling, bee, cellular physiology, egg, fertilization, fruit fly, gene, hr39, human, insect glands, jianjun sun, lrh 1, mammals, receptor protein, reproductive glands, secretion, secretion glands, sperm

Baltimore, MD — Insect glands are responsible for producing a host of secretions that allow bees to sting and ants to lay down trails to and from their nests. New research from Carnegie scientists focuses on secretions from glands in the reproductive tract that help sperm survive and guide the sperm on the trip to fertilize an egg. The gene that controls the development of these glands in fruit flies provides important information about gland development in all insects, as well as potential clues to similar human reproductive glands. Their work is published this month in Current Biology.

When a female fruit fly receives sperm from a male fruit fly, lubricating secretions in her reproductive tract activate the sperm, store it, and guide it to fertilization. Without the aid of these secretions, sperm would not make it to the eggs. Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and Jianjun Sun demonstrated that the gene in charge of regulating the development of fruit fly secretion glands is called Hr39. It encodes a steroid receptor protein. (more…)

Promiscuous Queen Bees Maintain Genetic Diversity

By Guest PostApril 18, 2012NatureChina, coast, csds, diploid male, entomologist, female workforce, fertile male, flavor, gene, genetic diversity, hainan island, infertile male, island queen, isolated island, malaysia, Philippines, plos one, promiscuous, queen bees, sex, voila moment, zachary huang

EAST LANSING, Mich. — By mating with nearly 100 males, queen bees on isolated islands avoid inbreeding and keep colonies healthy.

The results, published in the current issue of PLoS ONE, focused on giant honey bee colonies on Hainan Island, off the coast of China. Since these bees have long been separated from their continental cousins, it was thought that the island bees would be prime candidates for inbreeding as well as having very different genes, said Zachary Huang, Michigan State University entomologist. (more…)

International Team Uncovers New Genes That Shape Brain Size, Intelligence

By Guest PostApril 16, 2012Scienceadenine, alzheimer's disease, arthur toga, australia, bad gene, barbara franke, bigger brain, bipolar disorder, brain size, brain study, centers, cytosine, dementia, depression, derrek hibar, disorder, DNA, Europe, gene, genetic variant, geneticist, guanine, hmga2, human gene, intelligence, iq test, jason stein, margaret wright, memory, mental illnesses, neda jahanshad, nick martin, North America, paul thompson, project enigma, rita cantor, rudy senstad, schizophrenia, thymine

*UCLA-launched partnership identifies genes that boost or lessen risk of brain atrophy, mental illness, Alzheimer’s disease*

In the world’s largest brain study to date, a team of more than 200 scientists from 100 institutions worldwide collaborated to map the human genes that boost or sabotage the brain’s resistance to a variety of mental illnesses and Alzheimer’s disease.

Published April 15 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Genetics, the study also uncovers new genes that may explain individual differences in brain size and intelligence. (more…)

Slow Snails, Fast Genes: Predatory Snails Refine Venoms Through Continuous Gene Duplication

By Guest PostApril 3, 2012Natureamerican samoa, cone snail, conotoxins, dan chang, DNA, gene, gene family, genus conus, hawaii, marine, molecular mechanism, neurotoxin, olfactory genes, panama, scorpion, snake, thomas duda, tropical, venoms

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— When tropical marine cone snails sink their harpoon-like teeth into their prey, they inject paralyzing venoms made from a potent mix of more than 100 different neurotoxins.

Biologists have known for more than a decade that the genes which provide the recipes for cone snail toxins are among the fastest-evolving genes in the animal kingdom, enabling these predatory gastropods to constantly refine their venoms to more precisely target the neuromuscular systems of their prey. (more…)

Will a Genetic Mutation Cause Trouble? Ask Spliceman

By Guest PostMarch 5, 2012Scienceaaa, ata, brown university, chimpanzees, david orenstein, dna sequences, gene, genetic mutation, human genome mutation database, humans, kian huat lim, messenger rna, Rhesus monkeys, shamil sunyaev, spliceman, web based program, william fairbrother

New, free Web-based software described in the journal Bioinformatics analyzes DNA sequences to determine if mutations are likely to cause errors in splicing of messenger RNA. When gene splicing goes awry, a wide variety of diseases can result.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In a brief paper in the journal Bioinformatics, Brown University researchers describe a new, freely available Web-based program called Spliceman for predicting whether genetic mutations are likely to disrupt the splicing of messenger RNA, potentially leading to disease.

“Spliceman takes a set of DNA sequences with point mutations and computes how likely these single nucleotide variants alter splicing phenotypes,” write co-authors Kian Huat Lim, a graduate student, and William Fairbrother, assistant professor of biology, in an “application note” published in advance online Feb. 10. It will appear in print in April. (more…)

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