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EurekAlert: St. Louis, March 21, 2008 —Among the approximately 23,000 genes found in human DNA, scientists currently estimate that there may be as few as 50 to 100 that have no counterparts in other species. Expand that comparison to include the primate family known as hominoids, and there may be several hundred unique genes.
Despite the distinctive contributions these genes likely make to our species, little is known about the roles they play. Now scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have produced the first detailed analysis of the cellular functions of a hominoid-only gene, TBC1D3. They affirmed earlier evidence linking the gene to cancer, showing that TBC1D3's protein can keep cellular growth factors active and helps turn on RAS, a protein that is active in a third of all human cancers.
"I was astounded at how little attention has been given to human-specific genes, which make us what we are and could potentially offer a great deal of insight into human physiology," says senior author Philip D. Stahl, Ph.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Professor and head of Cell Biology and Physiology. "In addition, certain pathogens, such as the malaria parasite, have human specific-components in their infection cycle. Human-only genes could offer us unique insights into how the parasites take advantage of us and possibly provide potent new avenues for fighting back."
Full text at EurekAlert

News Medical: Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, say depressed women have more sex than women who are mentally well.
The researchers say depressed women have more sex regardless of whether they're in a committed relationship, from kissing and displays of affection, to foreplay and intercourse.
Dr. Sabura Allen, who led the research says the results of their study of 107 Melbourne women confirmed suspicions gleaned from earlier work which indicated that some women use sex as a treatment for depression.
Dr. Allen a clinical psychologist, says when people are depressed they feel more insecure about their relationships and concerned that their partner may not care about them or find them valuable and therefore having sex helps depressed women achieve the sense of closeness and security they need.
Full text at News Medical

Wellcome Trust: Scientists have shown for the first time how a particular family of diseases are passed down from mother to child and how this can lead to the severity of the disease differing widely. The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, offers hope of being able to predict a child's risk of developing a mitochondrial disease, which can cause muscle weakness, diabetes, strokes, heart failure and epilepsy.
All human and animal cells contain many mitochondria, which are involved in energy production within the body. Mitochondria have their own genetic information, known as mitochondrial DNA (or mtDNA), which is inherited. However, whereas a child inherits one copy of DNA from each parent, a child may inherit many copies of mtDNA, which are only passed down from the mother.
Mutations in mtDNA can affect energy production within cells and therefore lead to disease. However, mitochondrial diseases differ both in location and severity depending on where and at what levels the mutations are distributed. Defective mitochondria cause most damage in muscles, nerves and the brain, the parts of the body which consume the most energy.
Full text at the Wellcome Trust

basqueresearch.com: University of Navarra PhD in chemistry researcher, Esther Vicente, has discovered new compounds active for treating tuberculosis and malaria. Her thesis, defended at the Faculty of Sciences in her home city of Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, describes the synthesis and characterisation of 65 derivatives of quinoxaline, the structure of which is similar to a number of antimalalarial and antituberculosis pharmaceutical drugs currently on the market. Of the molecules prepared, four stand out for their antimalalarial activity and 15 for their antituberculosis activity.
Full text at basqueresearch.com

EurekAlert: UIUC interdisciplinary team reports the design of chimeric polypeptides leading to development of noninvasive biosensors for potential application in biomedical research.
Reduction/oxidation (redox) systems research is reaching a stage where domains that traditionally belonged to the physical sciences, chemistry, and molecular biology are coming together to offer new synergistic opportunities for understanding and manipulating basic cellular processes that underlie complex biomedical problems (e.g., tumorigenesis). Parallel with this advance is the emerging recognition that the intracellular redox environment exerts a profound influence on the normal cellular processes of DNA synthesis, enzyme activation, selective gene expression, cell cycle progression, proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. However, this is a difficult area of study and molecular mechanisms mediating redox sensitivity are poorly defined.
An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Illinois’ Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) report in the February issue of the journal Experimental Biology and Medicine the engineering of novel peptide sequences that are sensitive to redox conditions inside cells.
Full text at EurekAlert

New York Times: By ANDREW VICKERS - Not long ago, I asked a respected cancer researcher if he could send me raw data from a trial he had recently published. He refused. Sharing data would make the study team members “uncomfortable,” he said, as I might use this to “cast doubt” on their results.
ìI’d heard this before: as a statistician who designs and analyzes cancer studies, I regularly ask other researchers to provide additional information or raw data. Sometimes I want to use the data to test out a new idea or method of statistical analysis. And knowing exactly what happened in past studies can help me design better research for the future. Occasionally, however, there are statistical analyses I could run that might make an immediate and important impact on the lives of cancer patients.
Full text at the New York Times

Science Daily: Drug treatment of neuroblastoma, a tumor of the nervous system in children, poses major problems. Therefore, scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been searching for substances that are suitable as a basis for developing better drugs. Now they have found a candidate: HC-toxin, which is isolated from a fungal plant pathogen. The substance from the maize pathogen reprograms neuroblastoma cells in such a way that they behave almost like healthy cells again.
Full text at Science Daily