Scientists find molecular switch that controls skin growth. Scientists have discovered a regulator of gene activity that tells epidermal stem cells when it”s time to grow more skin, as well as a “crowd control” molecule that can sense cell crowding and turn the growth off.
The study, in mice and in human cancer cells, provides clues to new therapeutic strategies for cancer, particularly squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common skin cancer, in which epidermal cell growth is inappropriately turned on. The findings could also aid efforts to grow skin grafts and treat burn patients. Image: Cell Press “We have found a molecular switch that tells your skin to keep growing or stop growing,” said Fernando Camargo at Children’s Hospital Boston. Camargo and colleagues manipulated a molecule called Yap1 to cause massive tumor growth by triggering a pathway known as Hippo. When they suppressed Yap1 function in mice, their epidermal skin stem cells failed to expand and they had thin, fragile skin. Linux interests. Linux interests.
Newsletters. Space.com. South Atlantic Anomaly. Modern Physics: Statistical Mechanics. 7.014 Introductory Biology. Element 113: Ununtrium Reportedly Synthesized In Japan. By: Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 09/26/2012 11:06 AM EDT on LiveScience Scientists in Japan think they've finally created the elusive element 113, one of the missing items on the periodic table of elements.
Element 113 is an atom with 113 protons in its nucleus — a type of matter that must be created inside a laboratory because it is not found naturally on Earth. Heavier and heavier synthetic elements have been created over the years, with the most massive one being element 118, temporarily named ununoctium. But element 113 has been stubbornly hard to create. After years of trying, researchers at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan said today (Sept. 26) they finally did so. "For over nine years, we have been searching for data conclusively identifying element 113, and now that at last we have it, it feels like a great weight has been lifted from our shoulders," Kosuke Morita, leader of the research group, said in a statement.
The Official String Theory Web Site. Researchers now able to stop, restart light. By William J.
Cromie Gazette Staff "Two years ago we slowed it down to 38 miles an hour; now we've been able to park it then bring it back up to full speed. " Lene Hau isn't talking about a used motorbike, but about light – that ethereal, life-sustaining stuff that normally travels 93 million miles from the sun in about eight minutes. Less than five years ago, the speed of light was considered one of the universe's great constants. Albert Einstein theorized that light cannot travel faster than 186,282 miles per second. Hau, 41, a professor of physics at Harvard, admits that the famous genius would "probably be stunned" at the results of her experiments. "It's nifty to look into the chamber and see a clump of ultracold atoms floating there," Hau says. She and her team continued to tweak their system until they finally brought light to a complete stop.
"We didn't have much contact," she notes, "just a few e-mails. " Stopping cold.