Scientific news

A systematic experimental evaluation of microRNA markers of human bladder cancer.

Zabolotneva A, Zhavoronkov AA, Shegay PV, Gaifullin NM, Alekseev BY, Roumiantsev SA, Garazha AV, Kovalchuk O, Aravin A and Buzdin AA.

Scientists reported the first comprehensive validated database of miRNA markers of human bladder cancer. They have conducted genome-wide miRNA profiling in 17 urothelial carcinoma bladder tissues and in nine normal urothelial mucosa samples using three methods: an Illumina HT-12 microarray hybridization (MA) analysis a suppression-subtractive hybridization (SSH) assay followed by deep sequencing (DS) and DS alone. Based on this data, MA and SSH data appear to be inadequate for studying differential miRNA expression in the bladder.

Find out the full text:

http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2013.00247/abstract

Human-specific endogenous retroviral insert serves as an enhancer for the schizophrenia-linked gene PRODH

Maria Suntsova, Elena V. Gogvadze, Sergey Salozhin, Nurshat Gaifullin, Fedor Eroshkin, Sergey E. Dmitriev, Natalia Martynova, Kirill Kulikov, Galina Malakhova, Gulnur Tukhbatova, Alexey P. Bolshakov, Dmitry Ghilarov, Andrew Garazha, Alexander Aliper, Charles R. Cantor, Yuri Solokhin, Sergey Roumiantsev, Pavel Balaban, Alex Zhavoronkov, Anton Buzdin.

PRODH encodes proline dehydrogenase, which is involved in neuromediator synthesis in the CNS.

A human-specific endogenous retroviral insert (hsERV) that acts as an enhancer for human PRODH, hsERV_PRODH, was identified.

It was shown that the hsERV_PRODH enhancer acts synergistically with the CpG island of PRODH and is regulated by methylation. Scientists detected high PRODH expression in the hippocampus, which was correlated with the undermethylated state of this enhancer. PRODH regulatory elements provide neuron-specific transcription in hippocampal cells, and the mechanism of hsERV_PRODH enhancer activity involves the binding of transcriptional factor SOX2. 

The full text you can find here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/07/1318172110.abstract?sid=ed986954-8c96-4f36-bfc9-559bf70099e2 

Biomedical Progress Rates as New Parameters for Models of Economic Growth in Developed Countries. Alex Zhavoronkov, Maria Litovchenko

Biomedical progress will likely increase the healthy productive lifespan and the number of years of government support in the old age. In this paper you can find several new parameters that can be applied to established models of economic growth: the biomedical progress rate, the rate of clinical adoption and the rate of change in retirement age. The biomedical progress rate is comprised of the rejuvenation rate (extending the productive lifespan) and the non-rejuvenating rate (extending the lifespan beyond the age at which the net contribution to the economy becomes negative). While staying within the neoclassical economics framework and extending the overlapping generations (OLG) growth model and assumptions from the life cycle theory of saving behavior, authors provide an example of the relations between these new parameters in the context of demographics, labor, households and the firm.

Full text: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/11/5936