Smoking risks

Bangkok - A meeting of South-East Asian health ministers next week is to focus on the regional stockpiling of anti-influenza medicines to combat swine flu, officials said Saturday. Besides including the 10 members of the Association of South-East Asi...

Seoul - South Korea on Saturday reported its first human case of swine flu, a nun who had recently travelled to Mexico. The 51-year-old has been isolated in hospital since Tuesday after displaying flu symptoms after her return a week ago from the cou...

Washington - Development of a vaccine against the H1N1 swine flu could take six months, and more likely seven, the head of the Pan American Health Organization Mirta Roses-Periago said Friday. The top health official for North, Central and South Amer...

Washington - While research has already started on developing a vaccine, there was some indication Friday that the swine flu virus might not be as deadly as once thought. It may turn out that H1N1 runs its course like ordinary flus, US President Ba...

Daf-2 was one of the original longevity genes uncovered in nematode worms. Here, Ouroboros looks at the knowledge spiraling out from that discovery: "The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathway is one of the longest-known and well-studied regulators of longevity. Extracellular signals (insulin-like peptides) activate insulin-receptor homologs (in worm, DAF-2) which in turn recruit and activate phosphoinositol 3-kinases (AGE-1). PI3Ks convert PIP2 into PIP3, which tethers and recruits other kinases such as AKT-1. Eventually, activation of these upstream kinases results in phosphorylation and inactivation of the longevity assurance gene DAF-16, which encodes a transcription factor that activates (among many other things) stress resistance genes. ... And what does DAF-16 do? It heads to the nucleus and transcriptionally silences the genes encoding the upstream kinases DAF-2, AGE-1 and others - in other words, DAF-16 turns off the genes that could turn off DAF-16. It's a feedback loop! ... The authors argue that this arrangement represents a biological switch between a short-lived 'reproductive state' and a non-reproducing 'longevity state', characterized by DAF-16 activation of stress-resistance and other types of longevity assurance genes."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://ouroboros.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/giving-daf-16-the-upper-hand-a-transcriptional-switch-in-the-igf-pathway/
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