Category Archives: Biochemistry

Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry Also Included In: Diabetes;Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness;Nutrition / Diet Article Date: 03 Jul 2012 - 3:00 PDT

Current ratings for: Honey Bees Reveal Link Between Sugar Sensitivity And Metabolic Disorders

Lead author Ying Wang, a research scientist, in the School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU), and colleagues, write about their findings in a paper published on 28 June in the open access journal PLoS Genetics.

Honey bees offer a useful model for studying what influences food-related behavior, such as the role of taste sensitivity in making choices between foods rich in carbohydrate and food rich in protein (for bees this is choosing between nectar and pollen).

A young bee's sensitivity to sugar predicts what she will forage for later in life, as Wang explained to the press:

"A bee's sensitivity to sugar reveals her attitude towards food, how old the bee is when she starts searching for nectar and pollen, and which kind of food she prefers to collect."

To study the processes that influence this, Wang and colleagues successfully inactivated two genes in the "master regulator" that controls the bees' food-related behavior.

When they did this, they discovered a possible molecular link between sweet taste perception and the state of internal energy.

"By suppressing these two 'master' genes, we discovered that bees can become more sensitive to sweet taste. But interestingly, those bees also had very high blood sugar levels, and low levels of insulin, much like people who have Type 1 diabetes," said Wang.

One of the genes they suppressed is called vitellogenin, which codes for a protein in the bee's fat cells and is similar to a human gene called apolipoprotein B. The other gene is called ultraspiracle, which partners with an insect hormone that has some functions in common with the human thyroid hormone.

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Honey Bees Reveal Link Between Sugar Sensitivity And Metabolic Disorders

COLUMBIA The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) has a rudimentary molecular "memory" that allows it to swim toward the richest sources of food. MU biochemistry professor Gerald Hazelbauer's discoveries about bacteria could shed light on human and animal sensory, memory and response systems.

"When I began my work as a researcher in the late 1960s, studying bacterial behavior was a curiosity and its significance unclear," Hazelbauer said. "Now, decades later, the research done by my group and others has grown into a body of knowledge about the fundamental processes used by all living things to recognize, remember and respond to changes in their environments."

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) recently recognized and rewarded Hazelbauer's scientific contributions by granting him a "Method to Extend Research in Time" (MERIT) Award. The award, which is worth at least $5.5 million over 10 years, will allow him to continue his research without re-applying for funding. Hazelbauer joins only 11 other MU researchers who have received the MERIT award, including his wife, Linda Randall, who is also a biochemistry professor.

MERIT awards are intended to foster creativity and allow researchers to take more time to develop new techniques.

The awards are given only to scientists who have proven themselves by succeeding in at least 10 years of previous NIGMS-funded research and who seem likely to continue making valuable contributions to their field.

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MU Researcher Receives NIH MERIT Award

Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: MRI / PET / Ultrasound Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;Medical Devices / Diagnostics;Biology / Biochemistry Article Date: 02 Jul 2012 - 3:00 PDT

Current ratings for: FMRI Brain Scanner Reads Thoughts Letter By Letter

5 (1 votes)

5 (1 votes)

Bettina Sorger of Maastricht University in The Netherlands and colleagues report their work in the 28 June online issue of Current Biology.

Human communication depends on being able to move and use a multiplicity of muscles, such as in forming sounds and words and making gestures and facial expressions. To do this the neuromuscular system must be healthy and undamaged. But severely motor-disabled patients, such as those with locked-in syndrome, who are fully conscious and aware, can't have a back-and-forth conversation because their neuromuscular system is not intact.

The challenge to scientists trying to find ways to enable such patients to communicate is to tap into those parts of the brain that are performing the mental tasks of communication but are denied the means with which to express them physically, using the motor system or voluntary muscles.

fMRI tracks brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow (hemodynamics) and oxygen in the brain. When a brain area is more active it uses more oxygen, and to meet this increase in demand, the blood flow to the area increases. Thus using fMRI, researchers can produce activation maps that show which parts of the brain are involved in particular brain processes.

Neuroscientists like Adrian Owen and his team have already used fMRI to assess consciousness in people thought to be in an unconscious vegetative state and thus incapable of thought, and enabled them to respond yes or no to questions.

This latest study by Sorger and colleagues takes that work a stage further, as Sorger explained to the press:

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FMRI Brain Scanner Reads Thoughts Letter By Letter

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2012) You'd be amazed at how much you can learn from a plant.

In a paper published this week in the journal Science, a Michigan State University professor and a colleague discuss why if humans are to survive as a species, we must turn more to plants for any number of valuable lessons.

"Metabolism of plants provides humans with fiber, fuel, food and therapeutics," said Robert Last, an MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. "As the human population grows and nonrenewable energy sources diminish, we need to rely increasingly on plants and to increase the sustainability of agriculture."

However, Last and co-author Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science point out that despite decades of plant genetic engineering, there are relatively few types of commercial products originating from this body of work.

"This is in part because we do not understand enough about the vastly complex set of metabolic reactions that plants employ," Last said. "It's like designing and building a bridge armed only with satellite images of existing bridges."

The authors say that perhaps the best approach is to bring together a variety of disciplines -- not just plant scientists -- to study how plants operate.

They also suggest looking hard at what brought plants to the place they are today -- evolution.

"We think that understanding design principles of plant metabolism will be aided by considering how hundreds of millions of years of evolution has led to well-conserved examples of metabolic pathways," Last said.

One of the amazing aspects of plant metabolism is this: It must continuously strike a balance between evolving to meet an ever-changing environment while maintaining the internal stability needed to carry on life as it knows it.

In addition, the authors point out that plants experiment with specialized (also called secondary) metabolism which can produce novel chemicals that are used to defend against pathogens and herbivores.

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Scientists urge new approaches to plant research

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Kap girl published

Public release date: 27-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Angela Hopp ahopp@asbmb.org 240-283-6614 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

In a recent Journal of Biological Chemistry "Paper of the Week," research led by Ayae Kinoshita at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan reveals the benefits of exercise in combating Alzheimer's disease.

The most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer's disease results in the loss of cognitive faculty. In the majority of cases, Alzheimer's disease occurs after age 65, and factors such as diet and exercise appear to play a role in its development, with high-fat diets as a risk factor.

Kinoshita's research compared the effects of 1) diet control, 2) voluntary exercise and 3) diet control plus exercise in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model. The results showed that exercise was more beneficial than diet control in reducing -amyloid formation (a defining characteristic of Alzheimer's disease) and restoring memory loss induced by a high-fat diet in these mice. Moreover, Kinoshita's team found that the effect of diet control plus exercise was not significantly different than exercise alone. They attribute the positive effects of exercise to increased degradation of -amyloid deposits in the brain.

"Based on the results in this research," Kinoshita suggests, "exercise should be given priority to prevent Alzheimer's disease."

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From the article: "Exercise is more effective than diet control in preventing high fat diet-induced -amyloid deposition and memory deficit in amyloid precursor protein transgenic mice" by Masato Maesako, Kengo Uemura, Masakazu Kubota, Akira Kuzuya, Kazuki Sasaki, Naoko Hayashida, Megumi Asada-Utsugi, Kiwamu Watanabe, Maiko Uemura, Takeshi Kihara, Ryosuke Takahashi, Shun Shimohama and Ayae Kinoshita

Corresponding author: Ayae Kinoshita, School of Human Health Sciences, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan; email: akinoshita@hs.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp

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Exercise is key in the fight against Alzheimer's disease