PCC STEM's Posts

In a major development, researchers in Australia have successfully performed the first implantation of an early prototype bionic eye with 24 electrodes. A patient with profound vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited condition, has now received the implant that enables her to experience some vision.
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The use of "smoky coal" for household cooking and heating is associated with a substantial increase in the lifetime risk of developing lung cancer, finds a study from China.
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Living a healthy lifestyle into old age can add five years to women's lives and six years to men's, finds a new study.
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Kidney stones are associated with a small but significant increased risk of developing more serious kidney problems later in life, suggests a new study.
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Mystery of operon evolution probed

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New research suggests a possible explanation for the organization of operons, jointly controlled clusters of genes that evolved in bacterial chromosomes. Operons, which are found in the chromosomes of bacteria but not in more advanced organisms, have puzzled biologists since their discovery in the 1960s. The new study suggests operons evolved as a means of reducing "noise" in biochemical signal processing.
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Biophysicists have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, how the nonspecific binding of a protein known as the lambda repressor, or C1 protein, bends DNA and helps it close a loop that switches off virulence. Findings are the first direct and quantitative determination of non-specific binding and compaction of DNA, relevant for the understanding of DNA physiology, and the dynamic characteristics of an on-off switch for the expression of genes.
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New findings of a key genetic mechanism in plant hormone signaling may help save crops from stress and help address human hunger.
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A monoclonal antibody tested in an animal model prevents infection by the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
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For patients with type 2 diabetes, any degree of measurable urinary protein excretion —- even in what is considered the normal range —- increases their risk of experiencing heart problems, according to a new study. More than 300 million people worldwide have type 2 diabetes.
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Women who have breast cancer and are treated with two chemotherapy drugs may experience more cardiac problems like heart failure than shown in previous studies, according to a new study.
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Moving toward regeneration

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Scientists have shown how pluripotent stem cells mobilize in wounded planarian worms, to better understand stem cell behavior in regeneration and disease.
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Open an undergraduate biochemistry textbook and you will learn that enzymes are highly efficient and specific in catalyzing chemical reactions in living organisms, and that they evolved to this state from their “sloppy” and “promiscuous” ancestors to allow cells to grow more efficiently. This fundamental paradigm is being challenged in a new study by bioengineers who reported in the journal Science what a few enzymologists have suspected for years: many enzymes are still pretty sloppy and promiscuous, catalyzing multiple chemical reactions in living cells, for reasons that were previously not well understood.
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