How does cancer arise? How does cellular composition influence tumor malignancy? These questions are profound and challenging to answer, but are crucial to understanding the disease and finding the right cure. Now, a German-Danish team led by Matthias Mann has developed a ground-breaking technology called ‘Deep Visual Proteomics’. This method provides researchers and clinicians with a...
Category: <span>Proteomics</span>
Post
Sting’ protein’s efforts to clean up brain cell damage may speed Parkinson’s disease progress
In studies with mouse and human tissue, as well as live mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that a snag in the normal process of cleaning up broken DNA in brain cells may hasten the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Specifically, the researchers found that a protein dubbed “STING” responds to clean-up signals in brain cells...
Post
Navigating from the genome to the clinic using ‘cell maps’
by Robin Marks, University of California, San Francisco A generic version of a cellular protein interaction map. The diamond shapes represent proteins of interest, which have been experimentally characterized to participate in certain “protein complexes” in the cell that come together to facilitate a particular cell function. The lines emanating outward show the physical interactions...
Post
Clues from Down syndrome hint at new Alzheimer’s finding
For a long time, common diseases (think Alzheimer’s, cancer and other ailments) were thought to arise mostly from molecular or genetic mishaps. But scientists are finding that there seems to be increased involvement of an unexpected culprit: stem cells. Nine years ago, Stanford oncologist Michael Clarke, MD, made a connection between stem cells and Down syndrome: He...
Post
Protein related to Fragile X syndrome may be a new target for blood pressure medicines
by American Heart Association Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A new study in mice has identified FXR1, a protein in the same family as the one implicated in Fragile X syndrome, as a potential target for creating a new type of blood pressure-lowering medicine, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Vascular Discovery: From...
Post
Cell division finding could lead to new cancer treatments
A protein called CDC7, long thought to play an essential role early in the cell division process, is in fact replaceable by another protein called CDK1, according to a study by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The finding represents a fundamental advance in cell biology and may lead to new cancer therapies...
Post
New study shows how tumor cells use mitochondria to keep growing
by Greg Glasgow, CU Anschutz Medical Campus MIRO1/2 alterations in cancer. A, The TCGA database was interrogated for MIRO1/2 mRNA expression across tumor types. PanCA, PanCancer. B, Relative expression of MIRO1/2 mRNA in cancer versus normal adjacent tissues on the prostate TCGA PanCancer study. C, Kaplan–Meier analyses based on MIRO1/2 mRNA expression in human primary...
Post
A new mutation behind synucleinopathies
ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia belong to a family of neurodegenerative disorders called synucleinopathies because they are caused by the pathological accumulation of protein alpha-synuclein into structures called Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites in the brain. In a healthy brain, alpha-synuclein is found in synapses as distinct proteins called...
Post
Zeroing in on a new treatment for autism and epilepsy
by Francoise Chanut, Gladstone Institutes Scientists at Gladstone Institutes reports new findings that could guide the development of better therapeutic strategies for Dravet syndrome and related conditions. Shown here are the study’s first authors, Eric Shao (left) and Che-Wei Chang (right). Credit: Michael Short / Gladstone Institutes Children with Dravet syndrome, a severe form of...
Post
How it works: The protein that stimulates muscle growth
by Laurie Fickman, University of Houston Credit: CC0 Public Domain In the gym, you are not just pumping iron, you are oxygenating muscle cells which keeps those muscles healthy, strong and growing—a process called hypertrophy, or an increase in muscle mass due to an increase in muscle cell size. Conversely, under the covers, lounging, your...