Volume 21 Issue 4, April 2015

Malaria is thought to have shaped the worldwide distribution of human ABO blood but the underlying molecular details of this process have only recently started to be revealed. A new study provides insights on how malaria parasites interact with ABO blood group sugars, mediating rosetting events that cause severe disease.

Developing therapeutics for cancers targeting driver mutations in epigenetic regulators is a challenging frontier in cancer therapy. A new study identifies a pathway that, when activated, inhibits the actions of the histone methyltransferase DOT1L in MLL fusion leukemia.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreatic beta cells fail to meet the increased insulin requirement in insulin-resistant individuals. A new therapeutic approach targeting glutamate receptors on beta cells improves insulin secretion and preserves beta cell mass.

A study involving a mouse model of Down syndrome and analysis of human postmortem brain samples indicates that hippocampal GABA_A receptor signaling in Down syndrome may be excitatory. This advance promises new clinical applications in Down syndrome.

Goel et al. report that RIFINs mediate rosetting of Plasmodium falciparum infected erythrocytes in vitro, a phenotype that is associated with severe disease in humans

Both chronic and acute treatment of adult Ts65Dn mice with the FDA-approved NKCC1 inhibitor bumetanide suppressed aberrant excitatory GABA_AR signaling and rescued synaptic plasticity deficits and cognitive disabilities in this mouse model of Down syndrome.

Susan Kaech and colleagues report that in chronic viral infection, prostaglandin E2 and PD-1 signaling suppressed the function and survival of cytotoxic T cells.

The authors uncover the mechanism by which DOTL1 exerts its role as an epigenetic regulator required for leukemic progression by counteracting the effects of the chromatin regulators SIRT1 and SUV39H1.

The MLL complex promotes androgen receptor signaling and drives growth of castration resistant prostate cancer

After myocardial infarction, dedifferentiated cardiomyocytes secrete the protein Reg3β, thereby recruiting macrophages required for neutrophil clearance and myocardial healing.

NMDA receptors in pancreatic beta cells inhibit glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, and inhibiting these receptors with an over-the-counter medication improves diabetes in mouse models

Nicotine acts on adipocytes to induce activation of AMPK, promoting excess lipolysis and weight loss but also the development of whole-body insulin resistance.

A high-throughput chemical screen reveals that harmine and its analogs promote improved human pancreatic beta cell replication and function, thus identifying these molecules as a potential new class of antidiabetic agents.

Clonally-derived cell lines of human preadipocytes from BAT biopsies allows for the genetic and functional characterization of adipocytes from this tissue

Deep sequencing identifies somatic activating mutations of MTOR in affected brain regions of FCDII patients that are sufficient to cause neuronal migration defects and epileptic seizures in mice.

William Bishai and colleagues report that cyclic-di-adenosine monophosphate produced during infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis induces IFN-β and contributes to the innate sensing of tuberculosis.

A method for converting biopsy-size tissue samples into digital files containing the mass spectrometry–measurable proteome of the sample will allow analysis and re-analysis of limited tissue samples.