Researchers Reveals How Certain Chemicals Protect The Brain Against Cell Damage

Researchers Reveals How Certain Chemicals Protect The Brain Against Cell Damage: "Prostaglandins are a class of compounds that act like hormones by binding to specific receptors. Their many functions include constricting and relaxing blood vessels, controlling clotting, causing pain, and both increasing and decreasing inflammation."

Prodnyorphin

'Perception' Gene Tracked Humanity's Evolution, Scientists Say: "Prodynorphin is a precursor molecule of the neurotransmitters alpha-endorphin, dynorphin A, and dynorphin B, collectively called opioids because their action is similar to stimulatory effects caused by the drug opium.

It's the prodynorphin gene's promoter sequence -- upstream DNA that controls how much of the protein is expressed -- where the big differences are. "Only about 1 to 1.5 percent of our DNA differs from chimpanzees," Hahn said. "We found that in a stretch of DNA about 68 base pairs in length upstream of prodynorphin, 10 percent of the sequence was different between us and chimps."

Hahn said this "evolutionary burst" is responsible for differences in gene expression rates. When induced, the human prodynorphin gene was 20 percent more active than the chimpanzee prodynorphin gene. Past research has also observed variation in expression levels within humans."

obestatin

Stanford Scientists' Discovery Of Hormone Offers Hope For Obesity Drug: "The identification of obestatin occurred as part of the researchers' study of a specific category of hormones-relatively small protein molecules called peptide hormones. These are of particular interest to drug developers because they bind to a type of receptor molecule known as a G-protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR. "

Charting the Interplay between Structure and Dynamics in Complex Networks

PLoS Biology: Charting the Interplay between Structure and Dynamics in Complex Networks: "While intelligent-design proponents enjoy their 15 minutes of fame denying the role of evolutionary forces in generating complex networks in nature, scientists are probing the organizing principles that govern these networks. Traditional models of complex networks assumed that connections between units�such as genes, proteins, neurons, or species�occur randomly. These notions changed as studies of protein interaction networks and other biological systems revealed �small world� features�characterized by short paths between nodes and highly clustered connections�and varying levels of organization, with certain patterns of local connections occurring more frequently in complex networks than in random networks. What determines the abundance of these so-called network motifs in specific networks is not known."

Death Receptors

Death Receptors: "Signaling by Tumour Necrosis Factor Receptor-1 (TNFR1)
TNF is produced by T-cells and activated macrophages in response to infection. By ligating TNFR1, TNF can have several effects (see Figure 1). In some cells it leads to activation of NF-kB and AP-1 which leads to the induction of a number of proinflammatory and immunomodulatory genes. In some cells, however, TNF can also induce apoptosis, although receptor ligation is rarely enough on its own to initiate apoptosis as is the case with CD95 ligand binding."