The broad diffusion of technologies such as computers, databases, mobile phones and so on, has determined a considerable change in our life. We usually use this kind of instruments at the work or school, at home and in other situations of everyday life.

Survival of motor neuron centromeric (SMN) genes are involved in spinal muscular atrophy when mutated. This disease is an autosomal recessive disorder that progressively determines the loss of spinal alpha motor neurons, causing death during the childhood.

Christmas is one of the most magic moment during the year and New Year’s Eve is really exciting. Nevertheless, some studies reported in literature demonstrated a correlation between heart attack and winter holiday. It could sound strange because stressor elements that have an important role in heart failure should not be present during holiday.

Genetic mutations are usually identified in cancer. These alterations can cause loss of function, when one mutation interferes with protein functionality, or gain of function when a mutated protein over-works or is over-expressed in a wrong cellular district. In this case, a protein maintains the same function as a normal one. In some cases, mutation can generate novel functions in a protein.

Welcome to 2010! When the old year is finished and the new one is becoming, this is the time for balance. What was the most significant lesson from 2009? 2009 was the year of the big financial crisis, and also science world had a lot of problems in funding, starting new projects and thinking the future. Anyway, several important advances have been done in stem cell research or in oncology field, for instance. Limited money availability doesn’t interfere with scientists’ capability to formulate bold hypotheses and achieve brilliant conclusions.

Current pharmacological approaches to identify target have strong molecular basis. Giving the important results of genome and proteome projects in understanding cell biology and biochemistry, also pharmaceutical research changes its approach and obtains great advantages from this new knowledge. Indeed, once identifying mutations in genes involved in particular diseases in the genome project, the role of proteins have been defined by the proteome project.

The celiac disease is an immune disease in which gluten represents the principal cause. Gluten is contained in several cereals, such as oats, wheat, rye and barley. Immune system of persons affected by this disease is wrongly activated when gluten component are presented by antigen presenting cells of small gut. T lymphocytes destroy the small intestine cells presenting this antigen, with a big damage in the whole gut functionality.

Cardiovascular protection is one of more challenging effort of current medicine. High mortality is associated with cardiovascular diseases and the incidence of stroke increases every year. In scientific literature, several papers report the benefits of a diet rich in omega- 3 fatty acids.

Abscisic acid is a small molecule essential for plant life because it regulates seed maturation and bud dormancy as well as stressors response, such as high salinity of environment or extreme temperature. Giving the peculiarity of this substance in plant life, several studies have been performed to clarify the mechanism of action and better understand how it could be possible to use it to introduce useful qualities into plant genome.

Plant biology has acquired a great interest in biotech company, because of the opportunity to modify plant genome and introduce genetic improvement. Of course, selecting the best types and matching them to obtain more productive species is a current practice since long time. We remember how Mendel performed his studies about genetics and hereditary law, matching different plants of pees in order to observe how phenotypical characteristics were transmitted to progeny.