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Category: biotech/medical – Page 10

Simple DNA switch helps tropical butterflies change wing patterns with the seasons

Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered a simple DNA “switch” that helps tropical butterflies adjust the size of their wing eyespots in response to seasonal temperatures, shedding light on the evolution of environmental sensitivity. The findings could inform future efforts to understand and potentially bolster adaptation in a changing climate.

Insects often adapt in surprising ways to their surroundings. Some even change their colors with the seasons. This seasonal flexibility, called plasticity, helps them survive but its evolutionary origins have remained a mystery.

A team led by Professor Antónia Monteiro from the NUS Department of Biological Sciences, identified a stretch of DNA that helps certain butterflies switch their wing patterns between wet and dry seasons.

Breastfeeding linked to lasting immune protection against breast cancer

A team of researchers led by Peter Mac’s Professor Sherene Loi has uncovered how having children and breastfeeding reduces a woman’s long-term risk of breast cancer.

Published today in the prestigious journal Nature, the study provides a biological explanation for the protective effect of childbearing and shows how this has a lasting impact on a woman’s immune system. Professor Loi says the findings also offer new insights into breast cancer prevention and treatment.

Mitochondria and lysosomes reprogram immune cells that dampen inflammation

Metabolism guides the activation states of regulatory T cells, the immune cells that prevent inappropriate activation of the immune system. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists recently uncovered how mitochondria, the powerhouse of cells, and lysosomes, cellular recycling systems, work together to activate and deactivate these immune controllers. Their discoveries carry implications from understanding autoimmune and inflammatory diseases to improving immunotherapy for cancer. The findings were published today in Science Immunology.

When the immune system identifies and responds to a threat, it creates inflammation to combat the problem. A subset of immune cells, called regulatory T cells, also become activated and ensure that the inflammation is properly controlled. They return a tissue to normal once the threat is neutralized. Regulatory T cells play such an important role that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in recognition of their original discovery.

When regulatory T cells don’t function properly, people can develop tissue damage from uncontrolled inflammation or autoimmune disorders due to the immune system being inappropriately activated. Despite their importance, the precise molecular process driving regulatory T cell activation has been unclear. This limits the capacity to harness these cells to treat autoimmune or inflammatory disorders.

Nicotinamide Significantly Lowers Skin Cancer Risk

Nicotinamide, a vitamin B3 derivative, could significantly reduce skin cancer risk. The corresponding study was published in JAMA Dermatology.

“There are no guidelines for when to start treatment with nicotinamide for skin cancer prevention in the general population,” said the study’s corresponding author, Lee Wheless, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Dermatology and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in a press release.

“These results would really shift our practice from starting it once patients have developed numerous skin cancers to starting it earlier,” he added.

Astrocyte-derived vesicles could link stress to intestinal inflammation

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, are chronic and autoimmune conditions characterized by the inflammation of the intestinal tract. This inflammation can cause nausea or vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramping, fatigue, fever, and various other debilitating symptoms.

While the underpinnings of IBDs have been widely investigated, the factors that can contribute to its emergence have not yet been clearly elucidated. Past findings suggest that the symptoms of these diseases are often exacerbated by psychological and .

Researchers at Universidad de los Andes and the Center of Interventional Medicine for Precision and Advanced Cellular Therapy (IMPACT) in Chile recently carried out a study aimed at shedding new light on the neurobiological mechanisms via which stress could worsen IBDs. Their findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, hint at the existence of a brain-to-gut communication pathway that is mediated by small communication vehicles known as small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), which are released by astrocytes.

Open-source software reveals complete 3D architecture of brain cells

The neurons in our brain that underlie thought connect to each other using tiny branch-like structures on their surfaces known as dendritic spines. Now scientists at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and their colleagues have come up with powerful new software driven by artificial intelligence that can automatically map these dendritic spines in pictures of neurons, a tool the researchers are making freely available.

A paper detailing the work, “A deep learning pipeline for accurate and automated restoration, segmentation, and quantification of ,” is published in Cell Reports Methods.

“Dendritic spines are usually the first site that are implicated in such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” said Sergio Bernal-Garcia, a graduate student in the lab of Franck Polleux, Ph.D., and lead author of the paper. “So understanding more about them is vitally important.”

Coffee Extracts and Chlorogenic Acid Inhibit the Proliferation of HepG2 Cells and c-Myc Expression Without Significant Modulation of Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer and is associated with poor clinical prognosis and high mortality, despite the advances related to therapeutic options for HCC. Therefore, exploring alternative therapeutic options and their associated mechanisms is relevant and urgently needed. Natural products may be an important source of novel anti-cancer compounds. Coffee consumption is associated with protective effects against liver diseases, but the molecular mechanisms underlying these benefits remain poorly understood. Objectives: In this study, we evaluated the in vitro effects of green (GC) and roasted coffee (RC) extracts, alongside chlorogenic acid (CGA), on the proliferation of HepG2 hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

Study reveals how a stubborn lung infection evolves inside patients over years

Researchers at Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI) and the Irish Mycobacterial Reference Laboratory at St James’s Hospital have uncovered how the bacterium Mycobacterium avium—a leading cause of difficult-to-treat chronic lung infections—changes and adapts inside patients over many years of illness.

Their findings, published in the journal Genome Medicine, could help doctors understand why M. avium infections come back and why antibiotics sometimes fail.

The team undertook this research to understand how M. avium manages to survive for years in people’s lungs, even during long courses of antibiotics. This bacterium causes a type of chronic lung that’s becoming more common around the world.

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