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Sleep Extension Improves Athletic Performance And Mood
Athletes who extended their nightly sleep and reduced accumulated sleep debt reported improvements in various drills conducted after every regular practice, according to a research abstract presented on June 8, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
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Learning More About The Placebo Effect
In this trial, a sample of alcohol-dependent patients received naltrexone, acamprosate or placebo for 12 weeks. While there were no differences in outcomes between treatment groups, those who believed they had been taking active medication consumed fewer alcoholic drinks and reported less alcohol dependence and cravings. That is, irrespective of actual treatment, perceived medication allocation predicted health outcomes.
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Scientists Out A Gene For Gout
Having partnered last year with an international team that surveyed the genomes of 12,000 individuals to find a genetic cause for gout, Johns Hopkins scientists now have shown that the malfunctioning gene they helped uncover can lead to high concentrations of blood urate that forms crystals in joint tissue, causing inflammation and pain the hallmark of this disease.
Sexual Health

A Cancer Gene Switch For Repairing Damaged DNA

Scientists at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology uncover how an important cancer gene, BRCA1, works by increasing the accuracy with which broken DNA is repaired. Women who inherit a faulty version of the BRCA1 gene are at a higher risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer. In a research paper appearing in Nature on 21 May, Dr Kevin Hiom and Dr Maximina H. Yun from the Cambridge laboratory describe how an important cancer gene, BRCA1, works by increasing the accuracy with which broken DNA is repaired and thus reducing the risk of cancers developing. Mutations in the BRCA1 gene are associated with a significant increase in breast cancer risk and with the onset of ovarian cancer. By studying the interaction between BRCA1 and a protein called CtIP, the scientists discovered a switch that causes DNA breaks to be repaired using another identical piece of DNA as a template. Using the template makes sure the correct genetic sequence is restored without mistakes, thereby reducing the chance of introducing harmful mutations. Lead author Dr Hiom said: "Our findings help us to understand of how breaks in DNA strands can be repaired in a way that preserves our genetic code so that harmful mutations, which may lead to cancer, are kept to a minimum. We use chicken cells because they repair their DNA in a similar way to humans. Also we can easily create cells lacking different factors involved in DNA repair to study in the laboratory what happens when these factors are missing." "Up to now, it was unclear how this accurate mechanism for repairing DNA breaks is turned on so we are very pleased with the result." Cancer is caused by alterations in the sequence of the genetic material DNA. These mutations often arise when DNA becomes damaged, for example, through the generation of DNA breaks. Sometimes this damage is repaired accurately to restore the original DNA sequence and other times it is repaired inaccurately to produce a mutation. Together BRCA1 and CtIP act on broken ends to enable the reconstitution of one strand of a DNA helix to generate a region of single-stranded DNA. The generation of this single stranded DNA tail, which becomes the template for repair, is a critical step in the initiation of accurate DNA repair. By promoting the interaction of BRCA1 with CtIP it might be possible to increase the levels of accurate DNA repair and reduce the frequency of cancer causing mutations. The Medical Research Council


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