Researchers led by a Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School team found that wheezing -- a key physiological component of asthma -- requires the interaction of genes in several locations. The work, involving multiple independent verification, demonstrates the complexity of the genetic predisposition to asthma.

The study, "Interacting genetic loci cause airway hyperresponsiveness," appears online in Physiological Genomics, published by the American Physiological Society.

Advanced melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, can be successfully treated in some cases by vaccinating patients with tumor proteins. How these vaccines work and why they are only effective in some patients remains unclear. Pierre Coulie and colleagues now show, in two articles in the January 17 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, that these vaccines work by increasing the number of immune cells called killer T cells that can attack the tumor. In an unexpected finding, however, they discovered that that these cells mostly recognize tumor proteins that were not contained in the vaccine. Understanding the characteristics of the T cell populations that are expanded after vaccination may help in the development of more effective anti-tumor vaccines.

One in five mammals living on Earth is a bat, yet their evolutionary history is largely unknown because of a limited fossil record and conflicting or incomplete theories about their origins and divergence.

Now, a research team including University of California, Riverside Biology Professor Mark Springer, has published a paper in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Science that uses molecular biology and the fossil data to fill in many of the gaps.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have identified a molecular mechanism in the liver that explains, for the first time, how consuming foods rich in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids causes elevated blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and increases one's risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

In the Jan. 28 issue of Cell, scientists led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, report that the harmful effects of saturated and trans fats are set in motion by a biochemical switch, or co-activator, in liver cells called PGC-1beta.

At first, we thought that gene expression was modulated only by transcription factors. Then we found that the RNA resulting from transcription could be regulated by the RISC complex (siRNA-mediated degradation via Dicer). And now it seems that regulation at the RNA level is even more complex than we first imaginated...

As any dedicated video game player knows, the first requirement for using a weapon or tool is finding it. And it is no different for cell biologists and clinicians who want to take control of gene expression in cells to create therapies to treat disease. While cells have a variety of ways to control gene expression, the trick for players in this game is to recognize them amidst the incredibly complex background of cellular machinery.

Now, in a paper in the January 28th issue of Cell, Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and her team have identified a novel pathway for RNA degradation, a form of regulation that has garnered significant attention in recent years, and one that has the potential to produce a new set of tools for physicians to use to fight disease.

Clinical trials to test the safety of a first-of-its-kind human hookworm vaccine will begin in the Washington, DC area in a couple of months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conferred investigational new drug status on the vaccine. No current vaccine is available to prevent hookworm disease, which is one of the most common chronic infections of humans with an estimated 740 million cases in areas of rural poverty in the tropics and subtropics.

Deficiencies in the ability of cells to repair damaged DNA are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, according to a new study in the January 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

DNA repair is the system of defenses designed to protect the integrity of the genome. Studies have suggested that deficiency in cells' capacity for DNA repair contributes to the accumulation of DNA damage and accelerates the genetic changes involved in carcinogenesis.