Tag Archives: human

Harmful Protein-Coding Mutations in People arose Largely in the Past 5,000 to 10,000 Years

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2012Sciencea, africa migration, african, age, alzheimer, c, dating, discovery, dna code, dna sequence, Europe, european ancestry, evolutionary geneticist, future generation, g, gene, genetic variants, hardening, harmful, heart arteries, human, human diaspora, joshua akey, mesopotamia, metabolic pathways, middle east, model, mutation, nucleotide, out of africa, paralysis, premature ovarian failure, protein coding gene, protein coding mutation, seattle, single nucleotide, t, tap energy, university, variation, Washington, wenqing fu

A study dating the age of more than 1 million single-letter variations in the human DNA code reveals that most of these mutations are of recent origin, evolutionarily speaking. These kinds of mutations change one nucleotide – an A, C, T or G – in the DNA sequence. Over 86 percent of the harmful protein-coding mutations of this type arose in humans just during the past 5,000 to 10,000 years.

Some of the remaining mutations of this nature may have no effect on people, and a few might be beneficial, according to the project researchers. While each specific mutation is rare, the findings suggest that the human population acquired an abundance of these single-nucleotide genetic variants in a relatively short time. (more…)

Elevated Indoor Carbon Dioxide Impairs Decision-Making Performance

By Guest PostOctober 28, 2012Environmentberkeley lab, brain injury, building, carbon dioxide, CO2, cognitive function, concentration, decline, dimension, dysfunctional, economic consequence, economic impact, energy consumption, energy-efficient, human, indoor, mark mendell, new york, pharmaceutical, pollutant, ppm, primary source, rate, reduction, scenarios, sms, state university, suny, upstate medical university, usha satish, ventilation, william fisk

Berkeley Lab scientists surprised to find significant adverse effects of CO2 on human decision-making performance.

Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can significantly impair people’s decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.

“In our field we have always had a dogma that CO₂ itself, at the levels we find in buildings, is just not important and doesn’t have any direct impacts on people,” said Berkeley Lab scientist William Fisk, a co-author of the study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives online last month. “So these results, which were quite unambiguous, were surprising.” The study was conducted with researchers from State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University. (more…)

Speaking of Ethics

By Guest PostOctober 22, 2012Environmentatmosphere, baby albatross, bird, bottle caps, brown lab, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate crisis, delaware, distribution, earth, Environment, environmental ethics, environmental philosopher, ethical responsibility, extinction, gulf, history, human, human rights, joy, kathleen dean moore, life, Mexico, moral obligation, Nature, notion, ocean, oil companies, oil spill, oregon, organism, planet, plastic, principle, protect, relationship, species, spring creek project, state university, stomach, university, violation, world

Lecturer explores the imperatives of environmental ethics

Speaking to University of Delaware faculty and students and community members in Brown Lab on Monday night, Oct. 15, environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore discussed how important it is for humans to realize their ethical responsibility to save the world from a climate crisis.

In a lecture titled “Why It’s Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and the Moral Obligation to the Future,” Moore reflected on the relationship humans have with the environment and argued that once humans realize the impact of their actions, they will naturally feel a moral obligation to care for the planet. (more…)

New Tool for CSI? Geographic Software Maps Distinctive Features inside Bones

By Guest PostOctober 1, 2012Scienceagricultural tool, amanda agnew, anthropology, arcgis, body size, bones, compression, crime statistics, cross section, david rose, disease, excavation site, flood model, foot bone, geographic, gis, human, human remains, information system, julie field, mapping software, metatarsal, microscope, ohio state, osteons, osteoporosis, pattern, sam stout, scientific criteria, sex, skeletal variation, spatial data, statistical measure, study, tension

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A common type of geographic mapping software offers a new way to study human remains.

In a recent issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, researchers describe how they used commercially available mapping software to identify features inside a human foot bone – a new way to study human skeletal variation. (more…)

What’s that Noise?

By Guest PostSeptember 26, 2012Scienceabhyudai singh, brandon razooky, cell, delaware, expression, gene, hiv, hiv virus, human, immunodeficiency virus, leor weinberger, mrnas, new method, noise, protein level, roy dar, san francisco, source, university, variability

Paper describes new method to understand sources of noise in gene-expression

Abhyudai Singh, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Delaware, describes a new method to understand sources of “noise” in gene-expression that create variability in protein levels in a paper published in Molecular Systems Biology, a publication of Nature, on Aug. 28.

This noise is expressed as variability in the levels of proteins/mRNAs in a cell. (more…)

Mutation Breaks HIV’s Resistance to Drugs, Says MU Researcher

By Guest PostSeptember 22, 2012Health172k, 172k mutation, aids, atsuko hachiya, cellular machinery, drug, hiv, hiv strain, hiv-infected, human, immunodeficiency, inhibitors, missouri, mutation, nnrtis, non nucleoside, nrtis, nucleoside, patient, polymorphism, resistant, reverse, stefan sarafianos, transcriptase, university, virus

Doctors can improve treatment programs using this knowledge

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can contain dozens of different mutations, called polymorphisms. In a recent study an international team of researchers, including University of Missouri scientists, found that one of those mutations, called 172K, made certain forms of the virus more susceptible to treatment. Soon, doctors will be able to use this knowledge to improve the drug regimen they prescribe to HIV-infected individuals.

“The 172K polymorphism makes certain forms of HIV less resistant to drugs,” said Stefan Sarafianos, corresponding author of the study and a researcher at MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center. “172K doesn’t affect the virus’ normal activities. In some varieties of HIV that have developed resistance to drugs, when the 172K mutation is present, resistance to two classes of anti-HIV drugs is suppressed. We estimate up to 3 percent of HIV strains carry the 172K polymorphism.” (more…)

Berkeley Lab Scientists Create First 3-D Model of a Protein Critical to Embryo Development

By Guest PostSeptember 21, 2012Science3d model, aebp2, alessio maiolica, angstroms, arm1, arm2, berkeley lab, birth defect, cancer, chromatin environment, claudio ciferri, complex, complex 2, crystal structure, DNA, electron microscopy, eva nogales, franz herzog, function, gabriel lander, human, mass spectrometry, mechanism, model, molecular architecture, nucleosome, polycomb, prc2, progression, protein, protein biochemistry, repressive, ruedi aebersold, therapeutic drug

The first detailed and complete picture of a protein complex that is tied to human birth defects as well as the progression of many forms of cancer has been obtained by an international team of researchers led by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Knowing the architecture of this protein, PRC2, for Polycomb Repressive Complex 2, should be a boon to its future use in the development of new and improved therapeutic drugs.

“We present a complete molecular organization of human PRC2 that offers an invaluable structural context for understanding all of the previous biochemical and functional data that has been collected on this complex,” says Berkeley Lab biophysicist Eva Nogales, an electron microscopy expert who led this research. “Our model should also be an invaluable tool for the design of new experiments aimed at asking detailed questions about the mechanisms that enable PRC2 to function and how those mechanisms might be exploited.” (more…)

UCLA Engineers Shed New Light on 3-D Motion of Human Sperm Cells

By Guest PostSeptember 20, 2012Health, Scienceaydogan ozcan, biophysics, corkscrew, curved, distance, helical, human, illumination, liang xue, light source, linear, micrometers, microorganism, optical microscope, rotation speed, sperm cell, statistical behavior, swimming pattern, three-dimensional, ting wei su

Using new lensless imaging platform, team observes rare helical movements

A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has, for the first time, directly recorded the three-dimensional helical swimming patterns of human sperm cells.

The team, led by Aydogan Ozcan, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering, developed a novel lensless computational imaging platform that accurately tracked more than 24,000 individual sperm cells in a large volume. This involved observing the individual rotations of each sperm cell, including helical movement patterns, rotation speed, and linear and curved distances traveled. (more…)