A UC San Diego-led team has identified a gene that helps prevent the harmful buildup of proteins that can lead to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As published in Nature, the researchers found that the “Ankrd16” gene acts like a failsafe in proofreading and correcting errors to avoid the abnormal production of improper proteins.
The Gary and Mary West Emergency Department at UC San Diego Health in La Jolla has been accredited as a geriatric emergency department by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). The accreditation is the first of its kind and is part of an effort to improve the quality and standards of emergency care provided to the nation’s older patients.
Using new analytic tools, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have decoded the epigenetic landscape for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common autoimmune disease that affects more than 1.3 million Americans.
UC San Diego scientists have unraveled a decades-long mystery on how genes are activated. Until activated, human genes are blocked by structures known as nucleosomes, components that serve to package DNA inside cells. Scientists have been trying to determine how these nucleosome roadblocks clear out to allow genes to be turned on. Now, a team of scientists has identified a key factor that partially unravels nucleosomes and clears the way for genes to activate. The identification of “NDF,” or nucleosome destabilizing factor, is described May 14 in the journal Genes & Development. The researchers say the finding provides a new perspective on how genes are turned on and off—knowledge useful in the study of human diseases such as cancer, which can be caused by improper gene activity.
In a new paper, an international team led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe successfully grafting induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural precursor cells back into the spinal cords of genetically identical adult pigs with no immunosuppression efforts. The grafted cells survived long-term, displayed differentiated functionality and caused no tumors.
University of California San Diego’s Wei Xiong studies the science of “in between.” Specifically, the physical chemist studies mixed states of light and matter in order to better understand how the two forms of energy interact and communicate. Xiong does this by mixing light and matter to create hybrid quantum combinations whose properties he and his team measure and analyze. Recent research by Xiong; Bo Xiang, a Ph.D. candidate in his group; and postdoctoral scholar Raphael Ribeiro, from the Joel Yuen-Zhou Group, was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in an article titled, “Two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy of vibrational polaritons.”
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