Biology

Unanimous decision against BRCA breast cancer susceptibility gene patents in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. Plus: a movie about BRCA1 discoverer Mary-Claire King.... Hall, J., Lee, M., Newman, B., Morrow, J., Anderson, L., Huey, B., & King, M. (1990) Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21. Science, 250(4988), 1684-1689. DOI: 10.1126/science.2270482 Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21 Miki, Y., Swensen, J., Shattuck-Eidens, D., Futreal, P., Harshman, K., Tavtigian, S., Liu, Q., Cochran, C., Bennett, L., Ding, W.... (1994) A strong candidate for the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1. Science, 266(5182), 66-71. DOI: 10.1126/science.7545954 A strong candidate for the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1 Wooster, R., Neuhausen, S., Mangion, J., Quirk, Y., Ford, D., Collins, N., Nguyen, K., Seal, S., Tran, T., Averill, D.... (1994) Localization of a breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA2, to chromosome 13q12-13. Science, 265(5181), 2088-2090. DOI: 10.1126/science.8091231 Localization of a breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA2, to chromosome 13q12-13

Main Point: Scientists studied Martian meteorite obtained from Antarctica and found potential building block of life in it. Published in: PLoS ONE Study Further: Scientists have found good amount of boron in the rock. Boron is considered as the important element in the development of ribonucleic acid or RNA, which a nucleic acid that contains the sugar ribose. It is found in all living cells, and is essential for the manufacture of proteins according to the instructions carried by genes. RNA also acts instead of DNA as the genetic material in certain viruses. “I had read how important boron could have been in the origins of life, stabilizing a part of RNA,” biologist James Stephenson, with the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii told Discovery News. RNA is composed of phosphate, a ribose, which is a five-carbon sugar, and a nucleobase. Out of these three components, only ribose has not been found outside of earth on any meteorite. “Of the three parts that make RNA, the ribose is the tricky part. We haven’t been able to explain how it could form naturally,” Stephenson said. Previously, researchers proposed that boron is one of the basis of ribose. “It’s the unique size of the boron which is able to stabilize the ribose ring structure. No other element has been shown to have that effect,” Stephenson added. “Given the greater similarity of Earth and Mars early in their geological history, and the extensive disruption of Earth's earliest mineralogy by plate tectonics, we suggest that the conditions for prebiotic ribose synthesis may be better understood by further Mars exploration,” Scientists wrote in the paper. Source: Discovery News Reference: Stephenson, J., Hallis, L., Nagashima, K., & Freeland, S. (2013). Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay PLoS ONE, 8 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064624... Stephenson, J., Hallis, L., Nagashima, K., & Freeland, S. (2013) Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay. PLoS ONE, 8(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064624 Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay

The Times newspaper has published a front-page story revealing that the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, and his brother Prince Harry share some Indian ancestry via their mother, based on DNA analysis of distant cousins. ? This in itself is not a particularly controversial revelation &ndash ...

Autoimmunity, the process by which the immune system fails to recognise self as self and subsequently targets those self tissues and cells, is something talked about quite a lot on this blog with autism specifically in mind. Part of the very wide and diverse immune-related features which have been discussed with at least some of the autisms in mind, it's not yet altogether clear exactly how and why autoimmunity is linked to behaviour but the association is an interesting one.Sally? @ Wikipedia The paper by Michael Benros and colleagues* expands that autoimmune - behaviour interest and their observations suggesting: "Autoimmune diseases and infections are risk factors for subsequent mood disorder diagnosis". Their conclusion is based on the analysis of a huge patient set from which nearly 100,000 people had a hospital contact for mood disorder. Mood disorder by the way, is an overarching term for quite a few conditions (see here) which as the name suggests, affect mood; be it an unusual 'high' or an unusual 'low'."A prior hospital contact because of autoimmune disease increased the risk of a subsequent mood disorder diagnosis by 45%". To me this is a really interesting association. OK I know correlation does not equal causation, but added to the association they made between hospitalisation for infection and subsequent mood disorder (62% increase) and the large participant numbers, there is lots to ponder here.I've gone on a few times on this blog about the bi-directional link between our physiology and the presentation of more psychiatric or behavioural 'symptoms'. Be it C.diff infection and depression or the skin-brain axis (see here), the connections are starting to be formed and examined. I'm just remembering back to some interesting research on allergic disease and neurodevelopment as also potentially being relevant to this post (see here) with the focus on allergy and its potential developmental effects and indeed the implication of some interesting potential interventions too. So what could be the mode of action for this autoimmune-infection-mood disorder link? Well, we have some contenders but at the moment nothing concrete. That the immune system might be doing so much more than protecting against disease is already pretty well known about as for example with the rise and rise of research into microglia (see here) and some other areas of interest** particularly with a focus on a very nebulous term: inflammation.Regular readers might know about my views and opinions on the role of food and the gut to behaviour - no really - and certainly when it comes to certain autoimmune conditions like coeliac (celiac) disease, we have a body of research suggesting how food, certain elements of food, under the right circumstances might be able to affect behaviour. Think Marios Hadjivassilliou for example. Even more outlandish, how about some role for those HERVs - human endogenous retroviruses - which seem to be cropping up with lots of conditions in mind (see here) and in particular autoimmune conditions***? Too speculative? Whether any of these areas overlap with the Benros paper is something as yet unknown. But the association posited between autoimmune conditions / infections and subsequent mood disorders is really, really interesting.To close, with the new Stone Roses inspired movie on the horizon, how about a song about Sally Cinnamon?----------* Benros ME. et al. Autoimmune Diseases and Severe Infections as Risk Factors for Mood Disorders. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013;():1-9. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.1111.** del Rey A. et al. A cytokine network involving brain-borne IL-1?, IL-1ra, IL-18, IL-6, and TNF? operates during long-term potentiation and learning. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 6 June 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2013.05.011*** Dreyfus DH. Autoimmune disease: A role for new anti-viral therapies? Autoimmun Rev. 2011 Dec;11(2):88-97. doi: 10.1016/j.autrev.2011.08.005.-----------Benros ME, Waltoft BL, Nordentoft

You see them in sunflowers and artichokes. The familiar, concentric spiral-shaped Fibonacci sequence is part of a lot of flowering plants. These patterns precisely follow the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), in which each digit (once you move along) is the sum of the previous two. But until now, nobody really knew how plants knew to make these mathematically precise patterns.... Pennybacker, M., & Newell, A. (2013) Phyllotaxis, Pushed Pattern-Forming Fronts, and Optimal Packing. Physical Review Letters, 110(24). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.248104 Phyllotaxis, Pushed Pattern-Forming Fronts, and Optimal Packing

By David Jachowski Photo by biotour13 via Flicker and a Creative Commons License     What if the future of biodiversity conservation isn't in National Parks and protected areas, but in abandoned places? The played-out farm fields or remains after mountaintop removal for a seam of coal. Those overused and now typically overlooked parcels of land that saw a brief boom in... Wood, P., & Williams, J. (2013) Impact of Valley Fills on Streamside Salamanders in Southern West Virginia. Journal of Herpetology, 47(1), 119-125. DOI: 10.1670/11-187 Impact of Valley Fills on Streamside Salamanders in Southern West Virginia Larkin, J., Maehr, D., Cox, J., Bolin, D., & Wichrowski, M. (2003) Demographic Characteristics of a Reintroduced Elk Population in Kentucky. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 67(3), 467. DOI: 10.2307/3802704 Demographic Characteristics of a Reintroduced Elk Population in Kentucky

A new study by Reid et al. question the accuracy of a standardised survey method used across Europe to report the conservation status of the European otter (Lutra lutra). Reid et al. have found that the current survey method under detected otter presence at 22% of sites in Ireland, taking rainfall, surveyor variability and the number of bridges and confluences into account. ... Reid, N., Lundy, M., Hayden, B., Lynn, D., Marnell, F., McDonald, R., & Montgomery, W. (2013) Detecting detectability: identifying and correcting bias in binary wildlife surveys demonstrates their potential impact on conservation assessments. European Journal of Wildlife Research. DOI: 10.1007/s10344-013-0741-8 Detecting detectability: identifying and correcting bias in binary wildlife surveys demonstrates their potential impact on conservation assessments

Sauropods are the largest animals to have ever lived, surpassing whales even though they lived on land. Their unique anatomy, including their extremely long neck, has long been the subject of speculation and study, as their physiology must have stretched the limits of regular vertebrate capabilities. The topic of circulation is one central issue: how […]... Seymour, R. (2009) Raising the sauropod neck: it costs more to get less. Biology Letters, 5(3), 317-319. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0096 Raising the sauropod neck: it costs more to get less

Dogs have been at humankind’s side for thousands of years; we’ve bred them for size, ferocity, hunting assistance (actually, assistance of all kinds), and perhaps above all, companionship. Now, a number of studies show how dogs evolved from their wild wolf ancestors, and what all that breeding has led to.... Bellumori TP, Famula TR, Bannasch DL, Belanger JM, & Oberbauer AM. (2013) Prevalence of inherited disorders among mixed-breed and purebred dogs: 27,254 cases (1995-2010). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 242(11), 1549-55. PMID: 23683021 Prevalence of inherited disorders among mixed-breed and purebred dogs: 27,254 cases (1995-2010). Axelsson E, Ratnakumar A, Arendt ML, Maqbool K, Webster MT, Perloski M, Liberg O, Arnemo JM, Hedhammar A, & Lindblad-Toh K. (2013) The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet. Nature, 495(7441), 360-4. PMID: 23354050 The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet.

Infertility is a rising problem around the world. Coupled with a current tendency to delay childbearing, the growth in the population of many countries has come to halt. Bacterial infections are an often overlooked cause for infertility. This is particularly relevant to the recent increase in Chlamydia infections among young people. When untreated, Chlamydia in pregnant women can be transmitted to the newborn. As a result, up to 15% of newly born babies are currently known to be infected with Chlamydia, reducing their reproductive potential. Animal studies have demonstrated that exposure to bacteria during early development can lead to a change in the onset of puberty, as well as in ovarian morphology and sexual behaviour. Luba Sominsky and colleagues from the University of Newcastle, Australia, have shown that when infant rats are injected with lipopolysaccharide molecules that are normally found on the exterior of bacteria, the expression of genes in their ovaries changes, especially for genes implicated in immune-mediated inflammatory disease. Sominsky et al. propose that during early development, immune factors are major regulators of ovarian development, so that an immune imbalance during this period may interfere with the formation of ovarian follicles, compromising fertility later in life. This link between adult fertility and infections during critical periods of development may help explain the ongoing trend for declining fertility in young women worldwide. For more information about this work, please see the following journal article: Sominsky, L., Sobinoff, A., Jobling, M., Pye, V., McLaughlin, E., & Hodgson, D. (2013). Immune regulation of ovarian development: programming by neonatal immune challenge Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00100 Please click here for an open access copy of the journal article or, for further information, please contact Luba.Sominsky@newcastle.edu.au... Sominsky, L., Sobinoff, A., Jobling, M., Pye, V., McLaughlin, E., & Hodgson, D. (2013) Immune regulation of ovarian development: programming by neonatal immune challenge. Frontiers in Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00100 Immune regulation of ovarian development: programming by neonatal immune challenge