Tag: switch

Think of the protein BH3 like a finger that turns off a cancer cell survival switch. The problem is that most cancer cells have found ways to remove this “finger—commonly, by breaking the action of a gene called p53 that puts the BH3 finger in motion. Now think of Bcl-2 as the switch itself. When

Two decades ago, Clifford B. Saper, MD/Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), and colleagues discovered a set of nerve cells they thought might be the switch that turns the brain off, allowing it to sleep. In a new study published in Nature Communications today, Saper and colleagues

The brain is a precision instrument. Its function depends on finely calibrated electrical activity triggering the release of chemical messages between neurons. But sometimes the brain’s careful balance is knocked out of control, as in epilepsy. Electroencephalography, or EEG, visualizes a brain’s electrical activity and can reveal how an epileptic seizure diverges from the predictable

Some people respond well to both aerobic exercise and strength training, while others don’t. And some of us respond well to only one of those things, but not both. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center now have uncovered a surprising molecular “switch” that may help to explain why this happens. “We’ve identified an exercise-activated biological pathway

Researchers in Germany have discovered that colon cancers are often resistant to existing drug treatments because they are composed of two different cell types that can replace each other when one cell type is killed. The study, which will be published May 16 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that combination therapies targeting both

As the brain grows and develops, nerve cells must make connections between one another in order to function properly. Brain cells are tightly packed together, so each cell might touch hundreds or thousands of other cells, and yet those cells only make stable and strong connections with a fraction of those neighboring cells. Researchers have

An incentive to switch to e-cigarettes? Smokers have more ‘bad’ and less ‘good’ bacteria than vapers putting them at greater risk of disease, finds study This puts them at higher risk of colon cancer, colitis, Crohn’s disease and obesity E-cig users have similar microbiomes to those without the notoriously bad habit Scientists today labelled the