It’s largely known that drugs are addictive because they alter the expression of dopamine receptors on the brain. The same mechanism seems to involve the pleasure centre of the brain to generate addiction to fatty food. The study has been recently published in Nature Neuroscience journal. Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute studied the behaviour of three groups of rats.

The climate change have a broad range of effects, but few studies show interest in its effect in change of animal lives. In the last number of Nature journal, an ecologist from the Imperial College London demonstrated that marmots fatten up in the last 15 years, corresponding to the period in which the temperature started to rise. Indeed, the summer have been getting longer in the area of the Upper East river of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. This seems to modify and reduce the hibernation period and give birth early in the growing season.

The “glitazones” family is a group of drug used to treat and care diabetes. The mechanism of action involves the nuclear receptor PPAR-γ: this protein is activated by glitazones, translocated into the nucleus and activates the transcription of genes important for glucose metabolism. Even if the glitazones have great effect in managing diabetes, several severe side effects, such as the increased likelihood to have heart attack, induce the FDA advisory committee to recommend some restriction in glitazones sales or to remove them from market.

LA7 cell line had been isolated from DMBA induced adenocarcinoma in rat several years ago. Up to date, it represents an important model to study the differentiation process of mammary gland. It has been shown that these cells form fluid filled blisters, called domes, by the local detachment of the cellular layer. Dome formation is dependent on a polarized phenotype, the presence of tight junctions and the ability to direct secretion and involves cellular changes similar to those occurring in tubuli and alveoli formation during mammary gland development and in pregnancy.

   Wnt proteins are cysteine-rich secreted ligands, involved in development control in organisms ranging from worm to mammals. 19 Wnt members are expressed in mammals and are classified in two distinct groups based upon their ability to induce transformation in mouse mammary epithelial cell line C57MG. The highly transforming group includes Wnt1, Wnt3, Wnt7a, while the intermediately or non transforming members are Wnt2, Wnt4, Wnt5a, Wnt5b, Wnt6, Wnt7b, Wnt11. The two classes of Wnts signal through different pathways and lead to different developmental outcomes.

The Baculovirus expression system provides a versatile and reliable system for the production of recombinant proteins in insect cells.

The identification of effective HIV antibodies is a scientific and medical challenge that has not solved yet. Last week, it has been published in Science journal an article about the isolation of selective antibodies against more than 90% strains of HIV virus that could be used for vaccine design. Scientists at the Vaccine Research Center generated a probe to selectively identify and pick out only the antibodies that act against the part of the virus’s protein envelope that interacts with CD4+ cells.

Docking analysis is usually used to improve drugable molecules or develop new derivatives from old drugs. Based on this application of docking analysis, scientists from the Department of Bioinformatics at the Bharathiar University in India, generated and validated a series of aspirin analogues that act on prostaglandin H1 enzyme.

Data sharing is one of most important challenge in several scientific fields and it has already given good results in genomic and proteomic analysis. Also neuroscience should benefit from data sharing, in particular from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data sharing. This technique is used to map functional region of brain that are monitored and recorded in resting or working state. The entire map of functionally tuned regions in the brain constitutes the connectome and it may help scientists to better understand brain physiology and functioning.

Morphoproteomics is a novel medical discipline that combines histopathology, molecular and cellular biology and protein biochemistry to define the protein circuitry in diseased cells. In this way it should be possible to identify specific target for customized therapeutic intervention. One preclinical study on prostate cancer overlaps data from phosphorylation analysis with phospho-specific probes and morphological evaluation of cellular compartmentalization.