For patients receiving kidney transplants, treatment with cholesterol-lowering "statin" drugs may lead to longer survival, reports a study in the November 2008 Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

Scientists at Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin have found that genetic evolution is strongly shaped by genes' efforts to prevent or tolerate errors in protein production.

Isoforms from Novel Structure Proteins (NSP), a new family of genes discovered by researchers in the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Temple University's College of Science and Technology, could be involved in apoptosis or programmed cell death.

Researchers have taken a first snapshot of how a class of highly reactive molecules inflicts cellular damage as part of aging, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and Alzheimer's disease to name a few. According to a study published today in the journal Cell, researchers have discovered a tool that can monitor related damage and determine the degree to which antioxidant drugs effectively combat disease.

Steroids bulk up plants just as they do human athletes, but the playbook of molecular signals that tell the genes to boost growth and development in plant cells is far more complicated than in human and animal cells. A new study by plant biologists at the Carnegie Institution used an emerging molecular approach called proteomics to identify key links in the steroid signaling chain. Understanding how these plant hormones activate genes could lead not only to enhanced harvests but also to new insights into how steroids regulate growth in both plant and animal cells.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is reshaping its research enterprise to broaden HIV vaccine discovery activities. Many of the initiatives have evolved from ideas and opinions recently expressed by scientists either at NIAID's HIV Vaccine Summit on March 25 or in response to two Requests for Information that NIAID issued in April.