Credit: Kim Ratlliff, Augusta University photographer
Young pregnant women, who appear to have fully recovered from an acute injury that reduced their kidney function, have higher rates of significant problems like preeclampsia and low birthweight babies, problems which indicate their kidneys have not actually fully recovered.
Now scientists have developed a rodent model that is enabling studies to better understand, identify and ideally avoid this recently identified association, they report in the
Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. We are talking about a population of young women that we usually think about as protected and healthy, and they are not if they have had a kidney insult, says Dr. Jennifer C. Sullivan, pharmacologist and physiologist in the Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Georgia and interim dean of The Graduate School at Augusta University. We think there is injury, potentially even years later, in some of these young women that we
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IMAGE: The ring gland is the equivalent to the human s prothoracic gland, responsible for steroidal hormone production. view more
Credit: IRB Barcelona
The systemic balance that coordinates the growth of an organism and its progress through the different stages of development occurs across the animal world and is regulated by internal and external signals. Examples of this balance are puberty in humans and metamorphosis in flies. These are transitions characterised by the production of steroid hormones and they mark the turning point that will determine the halting of growth and entry into the adult state. Certain human diseases, such as cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), cause a delay in this transition.
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Credit: Cancer Biology & Medicine
Cancer cells acquire growth advantages over normal cells in myriad ways. Changes in cell programming allow these cells to grow in an uncontrolled fashion, thereby forming the cancer mass. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), being highly malignant and invasive with a high recurrence rate and drug resistant phenotype, is one of the most dreadful cancers. Understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms is crucial to design therapeutic interventions and to predict patient prognosis.
Cancer cells use metabolic, immunogenic, or growth-related strategies, which can be controlled by a number of alterations in the cell process. Of these, post-transcriptional RNA modification has recently sparked interest among cancer biologists. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation, a type of RNA modification, remains the most abundant epigenetic (non-DNA related) modification in eukaryotic cells. Abnormal activity of proteins that handle m6A regulation has
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IMAGE: A desert bighorn sheep ewe (left) and ram are observed in the Providence Mountains in the Mojave Desert in California. view more
Credit: Rachel Crowhurst, Oregon State University.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Desert bighorn sheep in the Mojave National Preserve in California and surrounding areas appear to be more resilient than previously thought to a respiratory disease that killed dozens of them and sickened many more in 2013, a new study has found.
Clint Epps, a wildlife biologist at Oregon State University, and several co-authors, found that exposure to one of the bacteria associated with the disease is more widespread among bighorn sheep populations in the Mojave, and that its presence dates further back, than scientists thought. But they also found that the overall number of infected bighorn has declined since 2013 in the populations surveyed.
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IMAGE: The cells adhere to each other, and the direct contact, a cytoplasmic bridge, occurs between the partners. view more
Credit: SPbU
The mating process is one of the most important mechanisms for maintaining genetic variation in natural populations. The emergence of sexual reproduction turned out to be the most important evolutionary innovation that facilitated the evolution of eukaryotes. Paramecium is a well-known genus of ciliated protists with a complex system of sexes , or mating types. Paramecium reproduces asexually, by binary fission, which is not related to the mating process. During conjugation, Paramecium of compatible mating types exchange haploid nuclei, equivalent to gametes. The nuclei of each organism then fuse to form a diploid genome. This genome is stored in germline micronuclei of the exconjugants. It then undergoes large-scale rearrangements in the somatic macronucleus, including the elimination of virtually all non-coding DNA. Thus, t