Science and Health News

A new study identifies genome variants and pathways that contribute to composing and arranging in musically trained individuals. The study estimates the inherited proportion as 30% for these characteristics. Genes linked to composing and arranging suggest the role of the cerebellar LTD pathway, known to affect the acquisition of novel information and memory, as a common denominator for these cognitive activities.

Scientists from China said Thursday they have finally succeeded in creating functioning sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells in the laboratory, a major scientific development that could some day lead to a treatment for male infertility in humans. The researchers, who described their groundbreaking technique in the U.S. journal Cell Stem Cell, then successfully used the functional sperm cells to produce healthy mouse offspring, which went on to give birth to the next generation.

In the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, medical researchers can observe protein deposits, also called aggregates. For many years, these aggregates have been suspected to contribute to the death of nerve cells, and to diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or Huntington’s. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, led by Mark Hipp and Ulrich Hartl, have now shown that the location of protein aggregates strongly influences the survival of cells. While aggregates within the nucleus barely influence cellular function, deposits of identical proteins within the cytoplasm interfere with important transport routes between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. This results in a blockage of protein and RNA transport into and out of the nucleus. In the long run this can lead to the death of the affected cells, and progression of the disease. The results of these studies have now been published in the journal Science.

In a first for medical science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pharmacy researchers turn skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that destroy brain tumors known as glioblastoma — a discovery that can offer, for the first time in more than 30 years, a new and more effective treatment for the disease.

CHICAGO — Epigenetic age is a new way to measure your biological age. When your biological (epigenetic) age is older than your chronological age, you are at increased risk for getting and dying of cancer, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. And the bigger the difference between the two ages, the higher your risk of dying of cancer.

Cells with higher fat content outlive lean cells, says a new study from Michigan State University. This study has implications for larger organisms, such as humans, as the results support the phenomenon known as the «obesity paradox." This concept shows that overweight people have the lowest all-cause mortality rates while fit people, oddly enough, have mortality rates comparable to those categorized as slightly obese.

What helps her live longer might be harmful to him, according to a new study that may help to explain how and why organisms age. Analyzing years of previous research on dietary and pharmaceutical tests on flies and mice, researchers showed that aging interventions can have opposite effects on mortality rates in males versus females. The findings appear consistent with data gathered on humans as well, said lead researcher John Tower of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Davis School of Gerontology.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Images of disease and suffering should move smokers to kick the habit — at least, that’s the thinking behind graphic warning labels used on cigarette packages in much of the world, and maybe someday in the U.S. According to a University of Illinois study, however, «the good intentions of this tobacco control measure may be for naught.»