Slanted Science

Archive for the ‘Biochemistry’ Category

Great news for boozers: scientists have announced that they have discovered why we get hangovers the morning after a great night out.

Well, in between our usual slurps of vodka and cranberry juice. Obviously. Read the rest of this entry »

Cancer begins when a single cell’s DNA acquires sufficient mutations in key areas (or ‘genes‘) that it can no longer regulate its own growth. The cell begins to divide and divide repeatedly, being unable to either sense or act upon the signals coming from nearby cells telling it to “be a good neighbor and quit with all the mitosis already“. The result, perhaps only detected after several years of growth, is a tumor.

But why are some cancers relatively benign – growing in mass but showing no inclination to leave their location – while others are extremely aggressive, throwing out their seeds to grow as copies of the original cancer (or ‘metastases“) in different parts of the body? Well, scientists are reporting that they have discovered a new reason which partly explains the aggressive behavior: cancer cells can dramatically ramp up production of a protein which helps them to release energy and cellular building blocks from stored fat. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a pandemic, but not – so far – a particularly deadly one. Health officials are still concerned, though, that the H1N1 influenza virus may acquire the right mutations during this initial period of infection to make it a much more formidable foe during the next year.

Which is why scientists are still working feverishly (forgive the pun) on finding out how the human body responds to H1N1 infection, and whether an individual’s chances of surviving it can be improved.

Their latest discovery is that a family of proteins called IFITMs contribute to resistance to H1N1, as well as West Nile and Dengue viruses. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the secret to living to be 100? Vegetarianism? Lots of exercise? Making sure you never watch a Sandra Bullock movie, thus ensuring your blood pressure isn’t raised by contemplating the unfairness of a world in which so little talent can take a person so far?

Well sure, all of those things can help. But a new study shows that it may be our genes, more than our actions, which give us the chance of seeing out a century. Read the rest of this entry »

Hairless, buck-toothed, visually repulsive to most humans, and living their lives in darkened burrows away from the rest of the world, these creatures are advancing scientific knowledge.

But enough about computer programmers, let’s introduce the star of this story: the naked mole rat. These creatures appear to be completely resistant to spontaneous cancers, of the kinds which all other animals succumb to (including, despite the urban myth, sharks). Scientists now believe they have discovered the reason for this immunity to tumorigenesis: a second layer of molecular protection against abnormal cell cycle progression. Read the rest of this entry »

What turns a normal cell into a cancer-causing cell? Well, the cell must lose control over its replication machinery, and this almost always happens in one or both of two ways: the genes which tell a cell to divide can develop mutations and become permanently switched on; or the genes which stop a cell from dividing develop mutations and become permanently switched off.
Genes in the first group – those which drive a cell to divide inappropriately – are called oncogenes, and scientists are reporting that they have discovered an oncogene which causes a nasty form of head/neck glandular cancer.

Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry have been announced: they’re Venkatraman Ramarkrishnan (Cambridge, UK); Thomas A. Steitz (Yale, USA); and Ada E. Yonath ( Rehovot, Israel). The three have been honored for their work (carried out independentlyfrom each other) into deciphering the 3-D molecular structure of ribosomes. They’re pictured above (photo from Reuters). Read the rest of this entry »

For several years, scientists have known that, at least in organisms such as flies and mice, liefspans can be significantly increased by restricting the animals’ protein intake. The mechanism(s) behind this are currently unknown, but a new piece of research suggests the involvement of mitochondria. Read the rest of this entry »