Brains change. They change throughout life, responding to developmental but also environmental cues, like stress. Scientists know of several important proteins that play a role in what brains do with new experience. Now they have identified one, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which must be present at a certain level to enable the brain’s “adaptive plasticity,” particularly in response to stress.
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Research identifies gene that changes the brain’s response to stress
In order to thrive, the human body orchestrates a mass suicide of about 10 billion potentially dangerous cells a day. New research takes a closer look at programmed cell death — called apoptosis — and finds order in this process, once thought to be an erratically timed, sudden collapse.
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Imaging studies reveal order in programmed cell death
Important molecular machines routinely crash into one another while plying their trades on DNA. New research shows that the enzymes that copy DNA before cell division, called replisomes, are the kings of this road, kicking aside machines that are performing less critical tasks, such as transcribing instructions for proteins.
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Scientists crash test DNA’s replication machinery
Some women are especially sensitive to the natural flux of hormones in the menstrual cycle. New research points to a gene that likely influences how women respond to swings in estrogen levels and could help diagnose and treat premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a condition marked by extreme mood swings and irritability. The work also provides insight into the historically understudied area of medically relevant differences between men and women.
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Research identifies gene with likely role in premenstrual disorder
Following the straight and narrow may be good moral advice, but it’s not a great design principle for a distribution network. In new research, a team of biophysicists describe a complex netting of interconnected looping veins that evolution devised to distribute water in leaves. The work, which bucks decades of thinking, may compel engineers to revisit some common assumptions that have informed the building of many human-built distribution networks.
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Leaf veins inspire a new model for distribution networks
Compared to any other liquid on Earth, water behaves in strange and unexpected ways, yet its unusual properties enable and protect life as we know it. By tracking individual water molecules in a “supercooled” state, scientists find what explains one of water’s most notable and life-saving features: its astounding capacity to resist gaining or losing heat.
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By tracking water molecules, physicists hope to unlock secrets of life
Ever since the dawn of time, teenage boys have been defined by their sexual urges. Stereotype or not, the same fate has now befallen male mice. In new research that harkens back to those awkward high school moments and uncomfortable coming-of-age memories, scientists now show that male mice genetically selected for high levels of nervous energy act like sex-crazed teenage boys: highly motivated, but awkward and inefficient.
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Brain arousal heightens sexual activity in male mice
Since their initial discovery in 1973, dendritic cells, the sentinels of the immune system, have turned up in a number of places other than the immune organs. They stand guard in the heart, for instance, and in 2008, the first population native to the brain was identified. New research shows that dendritic cells are not only present in the brain, but active, too. They confront foreign substances and seem to form a barrier between healthy and stricken brain tissue following a stroke.
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First evidence that the brain’s native dendritic cells can muster an immune response
An unusual finding in previous studies of vitamin D-deficient patients has prompted a new clinical study at The Rockefeller University Hospital. Investigator Manish Ponda aims to discover if there is a causative relationship between vitamin D supplementation and elevated levels of small LDL cholesterol. The hospital is currently recruiting subjects for the study.
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Clinical Trial to explore link between vitamin D and cholesterol
If you have dry skin, wet it, if wet skin, dry it. This has been a general rule of dermatology for centuries, but scientists are working to develop more precise treatments for the dozen-plus inflammatory skin diseases that afflict people. New research details the fine genetic and immunological differences between two of the most common skin diseases, psoriasis and atopic eczema, presenting a new way to classify the disorders as well as possible novel therapeutics.
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Genomic differences identified in common skin diseases
Everybody gets sick, but how sick you get is in your genes. New research now reveals a mutation on a gene that makes children susceptible to a severe form of mycobacterial disease. The work not only supports a controversial idea that certain genes evolved to combat specific bacteria but also reveals new mechanistic details of how the immune system fights off one of the planet’s fiercest pathogens.
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Mutation leads to new and severe form of bacterial disease
Bacteria use all sorts of cunning to trick hosts into doing their bidding. One con in their bag of tricks: the molecular mimic. In this ruse, bacteria or their agents look for all purposes like some native molecule in a cell, but then do not behave accordingly. Working with H. pylori, the bacterium responsible for gastric ulcers and cancer, researchers have revealed one way bacteria pull this off, deciphering the structure of a piece of CagA, a bacterial protein that impersonates a human protein in order to disable a key enzyme. 
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Bacterial protein mimics its host to disable a key enzyme
The genesis of one the planet’s most lethal viruses, HIV, has been caught on tape. New imaging experiments show individual HIV genomes — strands of RNA — docking on the inner membrane of an infected cell wall as they are ensconced by HIV structural proteins.
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Imaging study shows HIV particles assembling around its genome
Modern life disrupts our natural sleep cycles with shift-work, jet lag and ubiquitous electric lighting, among other things. New research in mice suggests that the resulting disturbance of nature’s circadian rhythms could have major effects on the body and brain, from a slowing of metabolism to impaired thinking and poor impulse control.
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Disrupting sleep causes problems for the body and brain
The 2009 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize recognizes Suzanne Cory, a world-renowned geneticist and pioneering scientific leader. The first woman to serve as director of Australia’s prestigious Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, she has been an influential force in shaping science policy in her nation.
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2009 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize goes to pioneering geneticist
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