Category Archives: Biochemistry

Kara Arnold, Miss Davis County, was crowned Miss Utah 2012 on Saturday night at the Capitol Theater in Salt Lake City.

Arnold, of Bountiful, is a biochemistry major at the University of Utah and was recently accepted into the universitys medical school. Along with the title she won Saturday, she will receive a $10,000 scholarship to help her toward her goal of becoming a physician. She received a preliminary award for academic excellence, which is sponsored by and decided upon by the Miss America organization.

During her reigning year, Arnold will travel the state promoting her chosen platform "Discover Your Potential Step Up with STEM," serving as an ambassador for the Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals. She will also be the official spokeswoman for the Child Protection Registry, which is dedicated to protecting Utah families from adult-oriented solicitations.

First runner-up was Miss Duchesne County, Brittani Reinhardt; second runner-up was Miss Pioneer Valley, Ciera Pekarcik; and third runner up was Miss Orem, Hannah Harkness. All will receive varying amounts of scholarship money.

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Miss Davis County crowned Miss Utah 2012

Friday, June 15, 2012 | 7:45 p.m. CDT

COLUMBIA Peter Cornish has always been interested in discovery and figuring out how things function.

These interests have led him to national recognition.

Cornish, a biochemistry assistant professor at MU, is one of the22individuals in the nation to be named a 2012 Pew Scholar in the biomedical sciences.He is the first MU faculty member to receive the honor while working at the university.

It is a big deal for me and a big deal for the university, Cornish said. It not only provides money for research but also notoriety.

Pew Scholars are considered to be among the most innovative young researchers. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts website, the community includes Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows and Albert Lasker BasicMedical Research Award recipients.

Since 1985, the program has invited top research institutions to nominate one candidate each year. It received 134 eligible nominations from a pool of 179 institutions this year.

Winners receive $240,000over four years to help them pursue their research without major restrictions.The program looks to back scientists early in their careers so they can take calculated risks to help advance the human health field.

Even though Cornish only started at MU in the spring of 2010, his talent, past work and future potential made him a great fit to be MUs Pew Scholar nominee, said Gerald Hazelbauer, chairman of the Biochemistry Department.

Cornish is working with technologycalled Frster resonance energy transfer (FRET), which is relatively new and developing quite rapidly, Hazelbauer said. Single-molecule FRET gives scientists the ability to look at molecules on an individual basis.

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MU biochemistry assistant professor Peter Cornish named Pew Scholar

Public release date: 14-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Angela Hopp 240-283-6614 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Breast cancer cells frequently move from their primary site and invade bone, decreasing a patient's chance of survival. This process of metastasis is complex, and factors both within the breast cancer cells and within the new bone environment play a role. In next week's Journal of Biological Chemistry "Paper of the Week," Roger Gomis and colleagues at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Spain investigated how breast cancer cells migrate to bone.

In particular, they examined the role of NOG, a gene important to proper bone development. Previously, NOG was associated with bone metastasis in prostate cancer, but its specific role in breast cancer to bone metastasis remained unknown.

Gomis and colleagues showed that once breast cancer cells are on the move NOG enables them to specifically invade the bone and establish a tumor. It does this in two ways. First, NOG escalates bone degeneration by increasing the number of mature osteoclasts (bone cells that break down bone), essentially creating a spot in the bone for the metastatic breast cancer cells to take up residence. Second, NOG keeps the metastatic breast cancer cells in a stem-cell-like state, which enables them to propagate and form a new tumor in the bone environment.

Gomis explains that the reason NOG expression leads to an increased potential for breast cancer to bone metastasis is because it not only affects features inherent to aggressive cancer cells (such as the ability to establish a new tumor) but also influences properties of the bone environment (such as osteoclast degeneration of bone).

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From the article: "Identification of NOG as a specific breast cancer bone metastasis-supporting gene" by Maria Tarragona, Milica Pavlovic, Anna Arnal-Estap, Jelena Urosevic, Mnica Morales, Marc Guiu, Evarist Planet, Eva Gonzlez-Surez, Roger R. Gomis

Link to "Paper in Press": http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2012/04/30/jbc.M112.355834.full.pdf+html

Corresponding author: Roger R. Gomis, Oncology Programme, Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain; e-mail: roger.gomis@irbbarcelona.org

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Tracking breast cancer cells on the move

Seven-time Tour de France champ and cancer activist Lance Armstrong is back in the news, but not for great physical feats.

This time, hes defending himself against doping charges that could strip him of the seven Tour de France titles that he won from 1999 to 2005.

While many of the allegations have been raised before, and were the subject of a federal investigation that concluded several months ago with no criminal charges, there is some surprising new evidence that Armstrong continued to dope during his "comeback" to professional cycling from 2009 to 2011.

PHOTOS: Lance Armstrong: Cycling Legend

It seems odd he would continue, said Thomas Brenna, professor of nutritional science at Cornell University and researcher into the use of steroids in sports.

Brenna says that even though Armstrong did not fail any doping tests, his biochemistry may have been suspicious enough to raise alarm bells by U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials.

They are charging that he was flying under the radar, Brenna said. That indicates that they believe that based on the totality of the evidence that he has been systematically been doping and avoiding detection in same sense that the BALCO folks (the San Francisco Bay Area lab linked to doping violations by Giants slugger Barry Bonds and Olympic sprinter Marion Jones) were keeping track of when one could dope and take a test and pass it.

According to the allegations by USADA, Armstrong figured out a way to get a performance benefit from blood-boosting drugs without tripping the wire.

Yes, there are ways to fool the test if you know what you are doing, said Brenna. Im not going to say how.

The charges against Armstrong and five former team officials and team doctors were contained in a June 12 letter from USADA. The letters existence was first revealed by The Washington Post and has been published by the Wall Street Journal.

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Did Lance Try to Fly Under the Radar?

Newswise CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Saskia B. Neher, PhD, assistant professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, was one of twenty-two of Americas most promising scientists to be named Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Neher is the eleventh such recipient for UNC since the program began in 1985 and she is one of 8 women among 22 awardees, overall, nationwide.

The 2012 Pew Scholars will join a select community that includes MacArthur Fellows, recipients of the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award and three Nobel Prize winners. The program encourages early-career scientists to advance research that leads to important medical breakthroughs and treatments.

Nehers research explores the molecular systems that help to activateand disablethe breakdown of fat. When we consume food rich in fat, molecules called lipases break down the fat so that it can be used as a source of fuel or be stored. In humans, defects in a lipase called LPL increase an individuals risk of cardiovascular disease. The activity of this molecule is regulated by a pair of proteins: one that activates LPL and another that switches it off when an animal fasts. Neher uncovered evidence that suggests how the activating protein functions.

Nehers work now will be to determine how the regulators of LPL interact, using sophisticated approaches in biochemistry, molecular biology and crystallography. Her research should provide insights into the regulation of an important process that could produce new targets for the treatment or prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Pew is pleased to provide this countrys most ambitious and dedicated scientists with timely funding that enables them to explore novel areas of investigation early in their careers, at what may be the most inventive and creative period in their research, said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The program has invested more than $125 million to fund over 500 scholars. Recipients receive $240,000 over four years to pursue their research without restriction. Applicants are nominated by an invited institution and demonstrate both excellence and innovation in their research. This year, 179 institutions were requested to nominate a candidate and 134 eligible nominations were received.

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UNC's Saskia Neher selected as 2012 Pew Scholar

The return of the Olympics means that we'll get to enjoy some of those weird and delightful summer sports -- stuff like archery, handball, and synchronized swimming. Unfortunately, it also means the return of a thorny and frustrating subject: doping. In Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat, Chris Cooper, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Essex, provides an extraordinarily thorough account of the history and science of drugs in sports. We tend to think about doping in a relatively unsophisticated way, Cooper argues: It's bad, and we want to stop it. In fact, however, the science of doping is extraordinarily complex, and its history is nuanced and surprising. We need to understand doping better.

The first thing to grasp about doping, Cooper writes, is that, for most of history, no one's cared about it -- the idea of "doping" simply didn't exist. The ancient Greeks were entirely open about their use of nutritional and pharmaceutical aides: "Charmis of Sparta swore that dried figs led him to Olympic gold in 668 B.C.," Cooper writes, while the great Greek physician Galen "noted the positive benefits of eating herbs, mushrooms, and testicles." In 1904, runner Thomas Hicks won the St. Louis Olympic Marathon "on a combination of strychnine injections laced with brandy," and no one seemed to mind; in the inter-war years, scientists on both sides of the Atlantic openly and enthusiastically endorsed performance-enhancing drugs, including cocaine. In the 1930s, British soccer teams proudly boasted about the supplements they used: the Wolverhampton Wanderers, for example, "informed the media of their latest pharmaceutical tricks, publicizing their use of extracts of monkey glands in the newspaper the News of the World." Doping was banned at the Olympics in 1938, but still didn't have a real stigma -- professional athletes continued to use drugs.

For most of history, Cooper writes, "The debate, as far as we can judge, was about methods not morals. The view seemed to be that any way to obtain an edge was fine." Really, Cooper argues, it should come as no surprise that no one cared about doping: Ordinary people were enthusiastic about drugs in everyday life, too. In the 1940s and 50s, it was totally normal for a person to pop an amphetamine pill to boost his mood. It was only when society as a whole turned against drugs after the 1960s that doping in sports became a truly moral issue.

So we are still working out own attitudes toward doping, which are relatively recent -- and those attitudes must contend with the science of doping, which, Cooper shows, is equally double-edged. In the first place, it's hard to know what really works -- and, therefore, which offenses an athlete ought to be punished for. Clinical trials of performance-enhancing drugs, he points out, are of limited relevance to elite athletes, since they have bodies which differ in substantial ways from those of even very fit ordinary people. And, at the highest levels, elite athletes often possess built-in advantages which are 'unfair,' and which can be arranged on a spectrum along with pharmaceutical or nutritional advantages. Some athletes, for example, are "doped" by their genes -- like the Finnish skier Eero Mantyranta, who won seven Olympic medals, in part because he possessed a mutant gene which caused his body to over-produce EPO, a hormone which drives the production of red blood cells. EPO, as it happens, is also a performance-enhancing drug. Similarly, a small percentage of female athletes, Cooper points out, are born with hormonal profiles which give them unusual strength and speed. Above and beyond these issues, there's the fact of "technological doping" -- the benefits which an economically advanced home country can provide for an athlete-in-training.

Doping, in short, is complicated, and hard to talk about in a monolithic way. The only way to make sense of it is to think very carefully, on a case-by-case basis, about which sorts of interventions constitute effective, meaningful cheating. (Some doping interventions might in fact boil down to the placebo effect.) Unfortunately, our approach to doping is as inconsistent as our policy on recreational drugs. Caffeine, for example, has a demonstrable and substantial affect on athletic performance, and yet no one's outlawed it -- almost certainly because it's legal in civilian life. This suggests that many of our attitudes about doping may have little to do with sports. Instead, they proceed out of our moral concerns about drug use in general.

Cooper devotes most of the book to a fine-grained discussion of the science of doping, and shows that it's full of surprising wrinkles and exceptions. As a whole, his account suggests that we are not spending enough money and time to really understand the problem. Ultimately, he makes the case for a more empirical and pro-active approach to thinking about drugs in sports, driven by research. More research would help us anticipate new developments and concentrate on those doping practices which truly create unfairness. "We can no more 'win' a war on drugs in sport than we can 'win' a war on drugs in society," he concludes -- the best we can do is be informed, and to focus on increasing fairness, one case at a time.

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Brainiac: The history and science of doping