Sardinia is an Italian island where thalassemia incidence is really high. Giving the complications of atherosclerotic disease and the necessity of frequent blood transfusions for thalassemic patients, scientists from the University of Cagliari (Italy) were interested in the relationship between these two diseases.

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 at the Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore because of an aggressive form of cervical cancer. She would be probably unknown now, if your cells hadn’t been extracted and cultured as HeLa cells. Scientists of every molecular biology and cellular lab know about these cells because they have used them at least one time or because they have studied their application on biology books.

Are you looking for a specific congress or for some award to fund your work? Have you already visited the NatureEvents.com website? This tool is important for both scientists and companies because is a melting point of several disciplines.

Natural antioxidant elements consist of carotenoids, vitamins, mineral salt contained in food. These components are important to remove free oxygen derived compounds that are highly reactive and generate lipid peroxidation and DNA damage. Lipid peroxidation is one cause of lipoprotein modifications.

Camelid derived single domain peptides are a novel form of antibody which maintain the same antigen binding properties but have greater stability and smaller size than traditional antibody. These molecules can be conjugate with several chromophores, for instance with green fluorescent protein for cellular imaging applications.

Scientists from the University of Michigan and the INSERM (France) identified Cxcr1 gene as differentially expressed in cancer stem cells in comparison with other cancer cells in breast malignancies. CXCR1 is the receptor for interleukin 8 and has been involved in tumour progression and metastasis in several kinds of cancers, such as prostate, glioma, ovarian and breast cancers.

Current antidepressants usually marketed compensate the low level of serotonin, the main cause of depression, anxiety and mood problems. These compounds selectively block the re-uptake of neurotransmitter into the synaptic space. Serotonin still longer available for the interaction with its receptors located onto the plasma membrane of post synaptic neurons. Unfortunately, clinical studies reported an high variability in the response and some patients acquired resistance after few months of treatment.

Promoter region is the regulatory portion of genes that controls transcription. Even if this portion is crucial for finely tuning protein expression, and is known that epigenetic alterations are dangerous for this control, poor knowledge are available about the role of point mutations. Indeed, several point mutations are identified in promoter region, their biological consequence is poorly understood and studied. Scientists of the University of Washington set up an array to screen the effect of mutation on promoter functionality.

Negative results are similarly important than positive results for science advances. Indeed, a large number if hypothesis could be excluded if we considered negative results from other studies. Unfortunately, negative results are not so easily accepted and published in peer reviewed journal, thus are not available for science community.

Monoclonal antibodies are important tool in molecular biology, diagnostics and clinical studies. These protein are produced by a single cells isolated from immunized animals. Current protocol requires an immunization of an animal host, for instance rabbit or mouse; then spleen cells are selected in vitro and B cells are isolated. B cells from spleen are fused with tumoral mouse cells of mieloma in order to stabilize and make possible the B lymphocyte culture. Indeed, B cell culture is difficult to set up and maintain.