Archive for the ‘Bioscience’ Category

Many studies on gene therapy are directed to the development of efficient vectors for gene transfer. In recent years, there is increasing interest in nonviral vectors because, despite the undeniable efficiency of viral vectors in the transfer of DNA, they have limitations associated, as are the difficult achievement of viral particles titles high, and biological safety risks, such as induction of immune responses, insertional mutagenesis or reversion phenomena. In the context of this growing concern about the potential dangers of using viral vectors, researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona publish their work on potential non-viral vectors that provide more security to the process of introducing therapeutic nucleotide sequences. Read the rest of this entry »

Insulin is a paradigm of regulation and specific function. Essential anabolic hormone in the adult, seems to have a different role during embryonic development. A group from the Center for Biological Research, CSIC has been characterized step by step this new role. Insulin, as its precursor proinsulin and acting through insulin receptor hybrid with the growth factor insulin-like IGF-I, regulates the process of programmed cell death in the early stages of development of the nervous system stage where this process is, in turn, little studied. Read the rest of this entry »

An international collaboration between the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona Science Park, the Biomedical Research Institute Alberto Sols CSIC and the Institute of Molecular Cardiology Research in Boston, have observed that inhibition of the route of the N-terminal kinase factor c-Jun, implicated in cell proliferation. The inhibitory action of glucocorticoids on the route of this kinase (JNK) represses the transcription factor AP-1, which is part of c-Jun. The term AP-1 (activator protein 1) refers to dimeric transcription factors composed of subunits Jun, Fos or ATF (activating transcription factor) that bind to a common DNA binding, the binding site AP-1 .

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The hammerhead Ribosome natural, found in some various (small RNA of 250-400 nucleotides able to replicate and cause disease in certain plants), catalyze cis cutting their own oligomeric intermediates generated during replication by rolling circle mechanism. The hammerhead Ribosome, thanks to its structural simplicity, have been manipulated in this study to act in trans as restraining ribonucleases specific RNA, assuming that the similar catalytic behavior in this context is artificial. Read the rest of this entry »

The TAP (tissue plasminogen activator) is the main converter
of plasminogen to plasmin in the brain, where it seems to have a beneficial
role. In fact, it has been used as a drug to reduce brain damage in patients who
have suffered strokes, as in the conversion of plasminogen to plasmin can
dissolve the clots formed. However, you may also have neurotoxic effects, as
reported already in 1998 a team from Harvard Medical School, noting that caused
brain damage in mice the injection of the activator, and can be plasmin
dependent or not.

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The mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) is a mitochondrial fusion protein whose expression decreased in skeletal muscle is related to processes such as obesity and type 2 diabetes and its deficiency decreases oxygen consumption, mitochondrial membrane potential and oxidation of glucose. In addition, he described an antiproliferative role in vascular disorders, and certain mutations in the Mfn2 gene, encoding this protein cause neurological disease Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) type 2A, a hereditary sensorimotor neuropathy classified as rare.

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This paper identifies a group of genes specifically involved in breast cancer metastasis to lung, a finding that has been made possible by combining studies of selected cell lines in vivo, transcriptomics, functional verification and subsequent clinical validation. In many cases, the genes identified had not previously been linked to metastatic processes. Read the rest of this entry »

What is causing the invasion of a genome of a transposable element to stop and, therefore, that item is terminated? A group from the University of A Corunna has raised this question for the particular case of human retrovirus ERV9. This retrovirus was active during evolution of primates, made between 15 and 6 million years and then stopped their growth for unknown reasons.

In this work, Lopez-Sanchez and colleagues have made a reconstruction of the last active subfamily of the retroviruses, ERV9_XII, analyzing the sequence of the 115 long terminal repeats (LTR) of this subfamily have been identified in the human genome. Almost all of the LTR were found could be classified into 11 distinct groups, it developed between 10 and 6 million years. Most notable is the observation that at least 75% of the members of this subfamily was done between 8 and 6 million years ago, in a final period of intense proliferation coincides with the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees. Read the rest of this entry »