Research

‘I will do it tomorrow’ attitude hidden in genes

I-will-do-it-tomorrow-attitude-hidden-in-genes

Is “I will do it tomorrow” is all you hear every time you ask your kid to do homework? The secret of such a trait may well be trapped in his/her genes, a study reveals.

Those who procrastinate are also likely to be more impulsive and both the traits are linked to genes that one inherits, the study has found.

“Everyone procrastinates at least sometimes but we wanted to explore why some people procrastinate more than others and why procrastinators seem more likely to make rash actions and act without thinking,” said psychological scientist Daniel Gustavson of the University of Colorado Boulder in the US.

The researchers found that procrastination is indeed heritable, just like impulsivity.

Not only that, there seems to be a complete genetic overlap between procrastination and impulsivity – that is, there are no genetic influences that are unique to either trait alone, the study found.

For the study, researchers had 181 identical-twin pairs and 166 fraternal-twin pairs complete several surveys intended to probe their tendencies toward impulsivity and procrastination, as well as their ability to set and maintain goals.

The research appeared in the journal Psychological Science.

Source: Business standard

Too much computer time hits bone health in adolescents

Researchers have found that in boys, higher screen time was adversely associated to bone mineral density (BMD) at all sites even when adjusted for specific lifestyle factors.

Results of a study showed that the skeleton grows continually from birth to the end of the teenage years, reaching peak bone mass – maximum strength and size- in early adulthood. Along with nutritional factors, physical activity can also greatly impact on this process.

The Norwegian study explored the hypothesis that greater computer use at weekends is associated with lower BMD. The data was obtained from 463 girls and 484 boys aged 15-18 years in the Tromso region of Norway. The students participated in the Fit Futures study from 2010-2011 which assessed more than 90 per cent of all first year high school students in the region.

BMD at total hip, femoral neck and total body was measured by DXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry). Lifestyle variables were collected by self-administered questionnaires and interviews, including questions on time per day during weekends spent in front of the television or computer, and time spent on leisure time physical activities. The associations between BMD and screen time were analyzed in a multiple regression model that included adjustment for age, sexual maturation, BMI, leisure time physical activity, smoking, alcohol, cod liver oil and carbonated drink consumption.

Source: Business standard

 

The weed that causes cancer may well kill it

Tobacco-Nicotiana-sylvestris--I

Tobacco has been associated with and much maligned for causing cancers. Researchers have now found that the tobacco plant’s defence mechanism could well work in humans to destroy invading cancer cells.

A molecule called NaD1 is found in the flower of the tobacco plant that fights off fungi and bacteria. This compound also has the ability to identify and destroy cancer, the team discovered.

“This is a welcome discovery whatever the origin,” Mark Hulett from La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science in Melbourne was quoted as saying.

The molecule, found in nicotiana sylvestris (flowering tobacco) plant, forms a pincer-like structure that grips onto lipids present in the membrane of cancer cells.

It then effectively rips them open, causing the cell to expel its contents and explode.

According to researchers, this universal defence process could also potentially be harnessed for the development of antibiotic treatment for microbial infections.

The pre-clinical work is being conducted by the Melbourne biotechnology company Hexima. “The preliminary trials have looked promising,” said Hulett.

The study was published in the journal eLife.

Source: Times of India

Scientists Grow Muscles in the Lab That Can Heal Themselves

Biomedical engineers have developed lab-grown skeletal muscles that can flex as strongly as the natural-born items, work the way they’re supposed to when they’re implanted in mice — and even heal themselves if they’re hurt.

“The muscle we have made represents an important advance for the field,” Duke University’s Nenad Bursac said in a news release about the project. “It’s the first time engineered muscle has been created that contracts as strongly as native neonatal skeletal muscle.”

The results were published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have been working on engineered muscle fibers in the laboratory for years, but it’s a challenge to come up with muscles that are as strong and responsive as the real thing. To answer that challenge, the Duke team found a way to create little niches among the fibers where muscle stem cells, also known as satellite cells, could make their home.

When a natural-born muscle is injured, the satellite cells are activated to begin the regeneration process. The researchers found that their lab-grown muscles did likewise when they were damaged with a toxin found in snake venom.

In a more ambitious test, engineered muscles were inserted into a small glass-covered chamber placed on the backs of living mice. These muscles were genetically modified to produce fluorescent flashes when they contracted. Over the course of two weeks, researchers could look through the glass and watch the flashes become stronger as the muscles matured.

Now the team is looking into whether lab-grown muscles can be used to repair actual muscle injuries and diseases. “Can it vascularize, innervate and repair the damaged muscle’s function?” Bursac asked. “That is what we will be working on for the next several years.”

Source: NBC news

Indian-American scientist finds why cholesterol worsens in winter

Cholesterol levels usually go up in colder months – a trend that may be driven by behavioural changes that occur with the changing seasons, new research by an Indian-American researcher shows.

While previous studies have shown that heart attacks and heart-related deaths increase during the winter, researchers at Johns Hopkins’ Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease were interested in finding out whether cholesterol parameters might follow a similar pattern.

They studied a massive data representing 2.8 million adults – the largest study so far to look at seasonal lipid trends in adults.

“We found that people tend to have worse cholesterol numbers on average during the colder months than in the warmer months – not by a very large amount, but the variation is significant,” said Parag Joshi, a cardiology fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“The data instead validates a clear seasonal pattern and underscores the need to pay attention to behaviours that are critical to minimising cardiovascular risk,” Joshi said.

“In the summer, we tend to get outside, we are more active and have healthier behaviours overall,” Joshi added.

“In the colder months, we tend to crawl into our caves, eat fat-laden comfort foods and get less exercise, so what we see is that LDL and non-HDL bad cholesterol markers are slightly worse,” he added.

So you have a lipid signature of higher risk but it is driven by behaviours that occur with the changing seasons.

Researchers speculate the shorter days of winter – and limited time spent outside – also mean less sun exposure and, subsequently, lower concentrations of vitamin D, which has also been associated with the ratio of bad to good cholesterol.

More research is needed to further tease out what might be behind these seasonal variations, Joshi told the gathering at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session recently.

Source: samachar

Stem Cell Research Offers Hope to Bipolar Patients

Brain cells of patients with bipolar disorder act differently than those of people without the mental illness, according to scientists who conducted a stem cell study of the condition.

The investigators said their research might one day lead to a better understanding of bipolar disorder and new treatments for the disease, which causes extreme emotional highs and lows.

About 200 million people worldwide have bipolar disorder. “We’re very excited about these findings. But we’re only just beginning to understand what we can do with these cells to help answer the many unanswered questions in bipolar disorder’s origins and treatment,” said study co-leader

Dr. Melvin McInnis, a professor of bipolar disorder and depression at the University of Michigan Medical School. The study authors took skin stem cells from people with and without bipolar disorder and transformed them into neurons similar to brain cells. It’s the first time that stem cell lines specific to bipolar disorder have been created, the researchers said.

They discovered distinct differences in how the two sets of neurons behave and communicate with each other. The cells also differed in their response to lithium, the most widely used treatment for bipolar disorder.

The study was published online March 25 in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

“This gives us a model that we can use to examine how cells behave as they develop into neurons,” study co-leader Sue O’Shea, a professor in the department of cell and developmental biology and director of the University of
Michigan Pluripotent Stem Cell Research Lab, said in a university news release.

“Already, we see that cells from people with bipolar disorder are different in how often they express certain genes, how they differentiate into neurons, how they communicate, and how they respond to lithium,” O’Shea said.

McInnis said it’s possible the research could lead to new types of drug trials. If it becomes possible to test new drug candidates in these cells, patients would be spared the current trial-and-error approach that leaves many with uncontrolled symptoms, he said.

Source: News max health

Gene linked to deadly breast cancer found

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease.

Their research suggests that targeting the gene may be a new approach to treating the disease.

About 42,000 new cases of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) are diagnosed in the United States each year, about 20 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses. Patients typically relapse within one to three years of being treated.

Senior author Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, wanted to know whether the gene – already understood from her prior work to be a critical regulator of immune and metabolic functions – was important to cancer’s ability to adapt and thrive in the oxygen- and nutrient-deprived environments inside of tumors.

Using cells taken from patients’ tumors and transplanted into mice, Dr. Glimcher’s team found that the gene, XBP1, is especially active in triple negative breast cancer, particularly in the progression of malignant cells and their resurgence after treatment.

“Patients with the triple negative form of breast cancer are those who most desperately need new approaches to treat their disease,” Dr. Glimcher, who is also a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell said.

“This pathway was activated in about two-thirds of patients with this type of breast cancer. Now that we better understand how this gene helps tumors proliferate and then return after a patient’s initial treatment, we believe we can develop more effective therapies to shrink their growth and delay relapse,” the researcher added.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Source: yahoo news

Face-blind people can distinguish shapes: Study

People who are unable to recognise faces owing to face blindness following brain damage can still learn to distinguish between other types of very similar objects, researchers said.

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness following brain damage renders people unable to recognise and distinguish between faces – in some cases, even those of their own family members.

The finding provides fresh support for the idea that the brain mechanisms that process face images are specialised for that task.

“It also offers evidence against an ‘expertise’ hypothesis, in which the same mechanisms are responsible for recognition of faces and other highly similar objects we have learned to tell apart,” said Constantin Rezlescu, a psychologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The team trained two volunteers to recognize greebles – computer-generated objects that differ from one another in similar ways to faces.

The two volunteers spent eight training sessions of up to one hour learning to recognise 20 different greebles.

By the end of the training, they could tell individual greebles apart just as quickly – a sign that they had become experts in recognising them.

The training also enabled the volunteers identify individual greebles with the same ease as volunteers without face blindness who underwent the same training.

“The paper refutes a core prediction of the expertise hypothesis that a brain injury which severely damages face recognition should make it impossible for someone to become very good at telling apart individual members of any other category,” Elinor McKone, a psychologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, told the Nature.

Rezlescu now plans to search for bird watchers, dog trainers and people with other such skills in a database of about 9,000 people who say they have had prosopagnosia from birth.

The study appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.

Source: samachar

Scientists create stem cells from a drop of blood

Scientists at A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) have developed a method to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a single drop of finger-pricked blood.

The method also enables donors to collect their own blood samples, which they can then send to a laboratory for further processing. The easy access to blood samples using the new technique could potentially boost the recruitment of greater numbers and diversities of donors, and could lead to the establishment of large-scale hiPSC banks.

By genetic reprogramming, matured human cells, usually blood cells, can be transformed into hiPSCs. As hiPSCs exhibit properties remarkably similar to human embryonic stem cells, they are invaluable resources for basic research, drug discovery and cell therapy.

In countries like Japan, USA and UK, a number of hiPSC bank initiatives have sprung up to make hiPSCs available for stem cell research and medical studies.

Current sample collection for reprogramming into hiPSCs include invasive measures such as collecting cells from the bone marrow or skin, which may put off many potential donors. Although hiPSCs may also be generated from blood cells, large quantities of blood are usually required.

In a paper published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, scientists at IMCB showed for the first time that single-drop volumes of blood are sufficient for reprogramming into hiPSCs. The finger-prick technique is the world’s first to use only a drop of finger-pricked blood to yield hiPSCs with high efficiency. A patent has been filed for the innovation.

The accessibility of the new technique is further enhanced with a DIY sample collection approach. Donors may collect their own finger-pricked blood, which they can then store and send it to a laboratory for reprogramming.

The blood sample remains stable for 48 hours and can be expanded for 12 days in culture, which therefore extends the finger-prick technique to a wide range of geographical regions for recruitment of donors with varied ethnicities, genotypes and diseases.

By integrating it with the hiPSC bank initiatives, the finger-prick technique paves the way for establishing diverse and fully characterised hiPSC banking for stem cell research.

The potential access to a wide range of hiPSCs could also replace the use of embryonic stem cells, which are less accessible. It could also facilitate the set-up of a small hiPSC bank in Singapore to study targeted local diseases.

Loh Yuin Han Jonathan, principal investigator at IMCB and lead scientist for the finger-prick hiPSC technique, said, “It all began when we wondered if we could reduce the volume of blood used for reprogramming. We then tested if donors could collect their own blood sample in a normal room environment and store it. Our finger-prick technique, in fact, utilised less than a drop of finger-pricked blood. The remaining blood could even be used for DNA sequencing and other blood tests.”

Stuart Alexander Cook, senior consultant at the National Heart Centre Singapore and co-author of the paper, said, “We were able to differentiate the hiPSCs reprogrammed from Jonathan’s finger-prick technique, into functional heart cells. This is a well-designed, applicable technique that can unlock unrealized potential of biobanks around the world for hiPSC studies at a scale that was previously not possible.”

Hong Wanjin, executive director at IMCB, said, “Research on hiPSCs is now highly sought-after, given its potential to be used as a model for studying human diseases and for regenerative medicine. Translational research and technology innovations are constantly encouraged at IMCB and this new technique is very timely. We hope to eventually help the scientific community gain greater accessibility to hiPSCs for stem cell research through this innovation.”

Source: India medical Times

Scientists create stem cells from a drop of blood

Scientists at A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) have developed a method to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a single drop of finger-pricked blood.

The method also enables donors to collect their own blood samples, which they can then send to a laboratory for further processing. The easy access to blood samples using the new technique could potentially boost the recruitment of greater numbers and diversities of donors, and could lead to the establishment of large-scale hiPSC banks.

By genetic reprogramming, matured human cells, usually blood cells, can be transformed into hiPSCs. As hiPSCs exhibit properties remarkably similar to human embryonic stem cells, they are invaluable resources for basic research, drug discovery and cell therapy.

In countries like Japan, USA and UK, a number of hiPSC bank initiatives have sprung up to make hiPSCs available for stem cell research and medical studies.

Current sample collection for reprogramming into hiPSCs include invasive measures such as collecting cells from the bone marrow or skin, which may put off many potential donors. Although hiPSCs may also be generated from blood cells, large quantities of blood are usually required.

In a paper published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, scientists at IMCB showed for the first time that single-drop volumes of blood are sufficient for reprogramming into hiPSCs. The finger-prick technique is the world’s first to use only a drop of finger-pricked blood to yield hiPSCs with high efficiency. A patent has been filed for the innovation.

The accessibility of the new technique is further enhanced with a DIY sample collection approach. Donors may collect their own finger-pricked blood, which they can then store and send it to a laboratory for reprogramming.

The blood sample remains stable for 48 hours and can be expanded for 12 days in culture, which therefore extends the finger-prick technique to a wide range of geographical regions for recruitment of donors with varied ethnicities, genotypes and diseases.

By integrating it with the hiPSC bank initiatives, the finger-prick technique paves the way for establishing diverse and fully characterised hiPSC banking for stem cell research.

The potential access to a wide range of hiPSCs could also replace the use of embryonic stem cells, which are less accessible. It could also facilitate the set-up of a small hiPSC bank in Singapore to study targeted local diseases.

Loh Yuin Han Jonathan, principal investigator at IMCB and lead scientist for the finger-prick hiPSC technique, said, “It all began when we wondered if we could reduce the volume of blood used for reprogramming. We then tested if donors could collect their own blood sample in a normal room environment and store it. Our finger-prick technique, in fact, utilised less than a drop of finger-pricked blood. The remaining blood could even be used for DNA sequencing and other blood tests.”

Stuart Alexander Cook, senior consultant at the National Heart Centre Singapore and co-author of the paper, said, “We were able to differentiate the hiPSCs reprogrammed from Jonathan’s finger-prick technique, into functional heart cells. This is a well-designed, applicable technique that can unlock unrealized potential of biobanks around the world for hiPSC studies at a scale that was previously not possible.”

Hong Wanjin, executive director at IMCB, said, “Research on hiPSCs is now highly sought-after, given its potential to be used as a model for studying human diseases and for regenerative medicine. Translational research and technology innovations are constantly encouraged at IMCB and this new technique is very timely. We hope to eventually help the scientific community gain greater accessibility to hiPSCs for stem cell research through this innovation.”

Source: India medical Times