Many who struggle with their weight will often blame a slow metabolism meaning their bodies do not burn calories as quickly or as efficiently as others. For those who do suffer this condition, investigators from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) say they have found a genetic switch that can accelerate a persons basal metabolic rate leading to a dramatic reduction in the risk for obesity and diabetes. Their research, published in the journal Nature, involves turning off a gene that encodes a protein called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), which is found in the fat cells and the liver. NNMT is known to process vitamin B3 and has been previously linked with certain types of cancers. Lead researcher Dr. Barbara Kahn said she and her team first started looking at NNMT in relation to metabolism, after studying a major sugar transporter called GLUT4 in the fat cells of genetically engineered mice. Through their work, they found that mice that produced large amounts of GLUT4 were insulin sensitive and protected against diabetes, while mice with no GLUT4 were insulin resistant and at risk for diabetes. So we took fat from mice with a lot of this sugar transporter and fat from mice … Continue reading →

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators. But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires. A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago. The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Apr-2014 Contact: Sarah Avery sarah.avery@duke.edu 919-660-1306 Duke University Medical Center DURHAM, N.C. Drugs used to block copper absorption for a rare genetic condition may find an additional use as a treatment for certain types of cancer, researchers at Duke Medicine report. The researchers found that cancers with a mutation in the BRAF gene require copper to promote tumor growth. These tumors include melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer that kills an estimated 10,000 people in the United States a year, according to the National Cancer Institute. "BRAF-positive cancers like melanoma almost hunger for copper," said Christopher M. Counter, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine and senior author of the study published April 9, 2014, in Nature. The BRAF gene is involved in regulating cell division and differentiation. When mutated, the gene causes cells to grow out of control. Using animal models and cells, Counter and colleagues found that when they experimentally inhibited copper uptake by tumors with the BRAF mutation, they could curb tumor growth. They achieved similar results with drugs used to treat patients with Wilson disease, a genetic disorder in which copper builds up in the … Continue reading →