Skip to main content

Home/ RIS IB Biology/ Group items tagged protecting

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Kantham Hongdusit

Key enzyme involved in protecting nerves from degeneration identified - 0 views

  •  
    Fly's enzyme is used to cure diseases such as Parkinson's, and aid nerve damage and spinal cord
avikan

New Hope Of a Cure For H.I.V. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • So people with H.I.V. now must take drugs every day for life, which some researchers say is not a sustainable solution for tens of millions of infected people.
  • CCR5,
  • This is what was done with the Trenton patient. Some of the man's white blood cells were removed from his body and treated with a gene therapy developed by Sangamo BioSciences. The therapy induced the cells to produce proteins called zinc-finger nucleases that can disrupt the CCR5 gene.
  • ...5 more annotations...
    • avikan
       
      Millions of people worldwide are currently affected by HIV and many have died from AIDS. Scientists have been trying for many years to find a cure for the epidemic, but now many are trying to find a way to prevent the passing on of the virus for future generations. Although no definite treatment has been discovered yet, recent findings have shown promising results for the future. 
    • avikan
       
      With the fast developing biological technologies we are seeing today, scientists hope's are growing stronger.  Maybe one of us one day will be a part of the phenomenon, in search of a way to help the millions affected by the epidemic  
    • avikan
       
      CD4 cells initiate the body's response to infections.
    • avikan
       
      Many forms of HIV, initially use CCR5 to enter and infect host cells. A few individuals carry a mutation known as CCR5 delta 32 in the CCR5 gene, protecting them against these strains of HIV.
    • avikan
       
      For over 30 years scientists have been trying to find a cure for the HIV/AIDs epidemic and so far have been unsuccessful 
    • avikan
       
      Incase some of us forgot, AIDs stands for Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a disease in which there is a severe loss of the body's cellular immunity. And HIV stands for Human immunodeficiency virus, a virus that causes AIDs
Paige Prescott

Genes Are No Crystal Ball For Disease Risk - Science News - 0 views

  • For all but four diseases, the genetic data would fail to determine who is likely to contract the condition in most cases,
  • genetics are only part of the story when it comes to determining health. Lifestyle, environment and random chance play a bigger role than genes, or work with genes, to cause or protect against disease.
  •  
    Looking at twin data, researchers found that genetics alone could not account for the risk of disease.
Rafael Chen

Increased honey bee diversity means fewer pathogens, more helpful bacteria - 0 views

  • microbes in bee colonies that have previously been associated with fermentation in humans and other animals
  • communities of active bacteria harbored by honey bee colonies
  • research suggests honey bees may take advantage of these beneficial symbiotic bacteria to convert indigestible material into nutritious food and to enhance protection from pathogens
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Genetic diversity is created in a colony when a queen mates with many male bees
  • less likelihood of potentially pathogenic bacteria showing up in genetically diverse honey bee colonies
  • individual bees and their symbionts can enhance the overall health of a colony when it is genetically diverse
  • increased resistance to colonization by pathogens or through the production of nutrients by these microbes
  •  
    Genetic Diversity in bee colonies increases resistance to colonization by pathogens through symbiotic relations with microbes.
nidthamsirisup

Mysterious Noncoding DNA: 'Junk' or Genetic Power Player? | PBS NewsHour - 0 views

  • Genes represent only a tiny fraction -- 1 percent -- of our overall genetic material. Then there's the other 99 percent of our DNA -- the stuff that doesn't make protein
  • Researchers have found that some of this noncoding DNA is in fact essential to how our genes function and plays a role in how we look, how we act and the diseases that afflict us.
  • Embedded in this 99 percent is DNA responsible for the mechanics of gene behavior: regulatory DNA. Greg Wray of Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy describes the regulatory DNA as the software for our genes, a set of instructions that tells the genome how to use the traditional coding genes.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "It's like a recipe book," Wray said. "It tells you how to make the meal. You need to know the amounts. You need to know the order. The noncoding DNA tells you how much to make, when to make it and under what circumstances."
  • common diseases are probably more influenced by regulatory differences, Harismendy said. These include Type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease, Alzheimer's Disease and a variety of cancers, including breast, colon, ovarian, prostate and lung.
  • According to Wray, research has shown that diseases like bipolar syndrome and clinical depression may be associated with noncoding mutations that determine whether the brain is producing too much or not enough of a particular neurotransmitter. One noncoding mutation gives a person almost complete protection against the nasty malaria parasite, plasmodium vivax.
  • Another piece of noncoding DNA regulates the enzyme responsible for lactose tolerance, the ability to digest milk. Research by Wray and other scientists has shown that in four populations where dairy consumption is a vital part of the diet, new mutations have appeared that essentially keep the gene that produces the lactase enzyme from switching off.
  • And recent research done by evolutionary biologists suggests that differences in regulatory DNA may represent a major part of what separates us from chimpanzees.
chanon chiarnpattanodom

Cancer epigenetics takes center stage - 1 views

    • chanon chiarnpattanodom
       
      DNA methylation is a chemical process where a methyl group is added on either the cytosine ring or the adenine ring, used in "higher leveled" organisms. Important in cell differentiation since methylation will cause cells to "remember" and remain differenciated instead of expressing other genes. 
  • Epigenetics is defined as modifications of the genome, heritable during cell division, that do not involve a change in the DNA sequence.
  • Epigenetic alterations in cancer include global hypomethylation
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • the promoters of housekeeping genes that are generally protected from methylation.
  • may lead to aberrant silencing of tumor suppressor genes
  • discovered loss of imprinting (LOI) in cancer
  • Genomic imprinting, the subject of the report by Nakagawa et al. (2), is an epigenetic modification of a specific parental allele of a gene, or the chromosome on which it resides, in the gamete or zygote, leading to differential expression of the two alleles of the gene in somatic cells of the offspring.
  • we found that LOI can occur in the normal colonic mucosa of colorectal cancer patients with LOI in their tumors
  • This LOI was linked to cases showing microsatellite instability (MSI) in the tumors
  • However, these patients do not have mutations in mismatch repair genes
  • One potential cause of MSI in these sporadic cancers is hypermethylation and epigenetic silencing of the hMLH1 mismatch repair gene
  • Nakagawa et al. (2) now confirm the original study of Cui et al. that LOI occurs in both tumor and normal tissue of patients
  • The present study (2) also offers an intriguing mechanistic hypothesis to explain the relationship between H19 DMR methylation and LOI in these patients
  • Nevertheless, the study calls attention to this remarkable highly conserved multifunctional protein,
  • The potential link to CTCF suggested by this study also calls our attention to the link among DNA methylation, epigenetics, and chromatin.
  • A clue to the link between MSI and epigenetics may be provided by another sometimes overlooked common thread in epigenetics, namely DNA replication
  • repeat-induced gene silencing is thought to be propagated through hemimethylated intermediates during DNA replication
  • The studies of Cui et al. (11), Nishihara et al. (20), and Nakagawa et al. (2) suggest a new and provocative view of the timing of epigenetic changes in cancer.
  • Studies of transgenic mice with constitutive biallelic expression of IGF2, comparable to LOI, show reduced apoptosis and increased tumor formation
  • I conclude by noting that the distinction between cancer genetics and epigenetics has blurred considerably in recent years
  • Many conventional “genetic” mechanisms directly affect proteins that regulate chromatin,
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20 items per page