Scienceblogtwo

The liver is a crucial organ in the body's processing of all the many substances we put into it, including food, drink, alcohol, and narcotics. When the liver malfunctions, the results might be fatal. Scarring, also known as liver fibrosis, is the primary cause of many liver illnesses, including hepatitis and Non-Alcoholic SteatoHepatitis, or NASH. At this time, there are no medications available to cure this scarring. In order to find possible targets for medications in the future, researchers are looking into the underlying causes of liver fibrosis. A chemical responsible for the bile duct cells' unchecked proliferation inside the liver has been identified by a U-M study. The bile duct cells are injured in diseased livers, according to Liangyou Rui, Ph.D., the Louis G. D'Alecy Collegiate Professor of Physiology. The liver must constantly produce new bile duct cells, but occasionally these cells malfunction, resulting in inflammation and scarring. Rui notes that this incre...

Some smokers discover that going without a cup of coffee makes their first cigarette of the day less enjoyable. But it's possible that this is not only a morning habit. Researchers from the University of Florida claim that substances found in roasted coffee beans may help lower the severity of morning cravings for nicotine. In a cell-based investigation, scientists discovered two components in coffee that have a direct impact on specific high-sensitivity nicotine receptors in the brain. After a night of nicotine withdrawal, these brain receptors in smokers can become hypersensitive. According to Roger L. Papke, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, the recently published findings represent a significant advancement in our knowledge of how nicotine receptors in the brain are impacted by coffee and cigarettes, even though they have not yet been tested on humans. Caffeine is the part in coffee that makes most people feel happy, however sm...

Only the bird species is known to naturally create an enzyme that can make an amino acid that isn't one of the 20 required to encode the majority of proteins, or a noncanonical amino acid. Even if researchers are unsure of what the enzyme accomplishes for the bird, the fact that it exists—a discovery uncovered through computerized comparison of genome databases—shows that it is conceivable for the enzyme to function within the context of live cells. However, they have a solid concept of what it might be able to achieve for us. An amino acid called sulfotyrosine (sTyr), a mutant of the standard amino acid tyrosine, is a crucial building block for programming living cells to express therapeutic proteins, according to a new study by Rice University chemist Han Xiao, theoretical physicist Peter Wolynes, and their collaborators. It might enable cells to function as sensors that keep an eye on their surroundings and react with the appropriate treatment. It is necessary to alter a cell...