Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have described for the first time the molecular mechanism of cancer development caused by well-known "resistance" mutations in the gene called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). While these mutations were known for quite a long time, the question as to why they cause cancer or make some drugs ineffective was still not answered.

The study demonstrates how computer modeling of EGFR mutations found in lung cancer can elucidate their molecular mechanism of action and consequently optimize the selection of therapeutic agents to treat patients.

Without antibodies we would be at the mercy of pathogens or cancer cells. Therapeutic antibodies are used as passive vaccines, for cancer therapy or for controlling autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. According to "bccresearch.com" the global market for antibody drugs was worth nearly 70 billion USD in 2014 and should rise to 122 billion USD until 2019.

Two thirds of those molecules are produced biotechnologically using Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO). Actually the major cost factor for industry is purification using "protein A" affinity chromatography where tens of thousands of liters of culture volume have to be processed annually. About 80 % of the production costs fall upon purification.

It is often claimed that the Ancient Greeks were the first to identify objects that have no size, yet are able to build up the world around us through their interactions.

And as we are able to observe the world in tinier and tinier detail through microscopes of increasing power, it is natural to wonder what these objects are made of.

We believe we have found some of these objects: subatomic particles, or fundamental particles, which having no size can have no substructure. We are now seeking to explain the properties of these particles and working to show how these can be used to explain the contents of the universe.

By Benjamin Plackett, Inside Science

There is an ongoing competition of bureaucratic one-upmanship between the U.S. government and renegade pharmacists. The government is playing defense. When they ban a variation of a drug, pharmacists then quickly create a newly formulated and therefore legal variation.

Humans, worms and flies are all completely different organisms and yet we have a more or less common set of genes.

Given that similar DNA blueprint, how do species develop such vast differences in physical shape, size, and complexity?

One so-called "central dogma" of molecular biology says that genetic information passes faithfully from genomic DNA to messenger RNA to the synthesis of proteins but a new study finds that such information can be significantly altered along the way by a variety of means, including by precision "editing" at the RNA stage to fine-tune the type of proteins that will be produced. 

In diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the body produces too much mucus, making breathing difficult. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides clues to potentially counteract inappropriate mucus production.

"The new study lays the groundwork for developing treatments for diseases such as asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis and even certain cancers," said senior author Thomas J. Brett, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. "It also solves a 20-year mystery about the role of a protein that has long been associated with these diseases."

How does a mother transition genetic control to offspring early in development?

It's part of a larger mystery regarding how embryos regulate cell division and differentiation into new types of cells.

A new article in Cell provides some insight into the mechanism for this genetic hand-off, which happens within hours of fertilization, when the newly fertilized egg is a zygote.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service  of the United States Department of Agriculture has released its honey report for 2014 and found it's boom times for bees.

Hives increased again, another 4 percent, up to a whopping 2.74 million colonies, and honey production is up 19 percent. Yield per colony averaged 65.1 pounds, which is up 15 percent.

If there is a Beepocalypse, the bees have not gotten the memo.

Our nation’s most influential, respected and powerful public health officials and academics are engaged in a vast,corrupt and fraudulent conspiracy to keep desperate smokers ignorant of the facts about how reduced-harm devices (such as e-cigarettes) are likely to help them quit smoking. 

A new paper notes that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago, one of the largest volcanic cataclysms in Europe and responsible for injecting a significant amount of sulfur-dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, coincided with the final decline of Neanderthals as well as with dramatic territorial and cultural advances among modern humans.  

Scientists have long debated if this eruption and the resulting volcanic sulfur cooling and acid deposition could have contributed to the final extinction of the Neanderthals more than climate change or hominin competition. 

A new paper tests this hypothesis using a climate model.