A “survivor gene“ has been identified that could double carriers’ chances of surviving severe infections, according to BBC news website.
University of Newcastle researchers found patients with a certain variation in mitochondrial DNA--the “powerhouse“ of cells--had higher survival rates.
The DNA of 150 intensive care patients was studied, the Lancet reported.
Experts said the finding could lead to screening of patients for the variation and subsequent targeted treatment.
It has long been thought that there may be a connection between the workings of the mitochondria and how the body reacts to fight infections, such as MRSA and pneumonia.
Researchers identified 10 major variants of mtDNA.
Patients from each variant group were monitored and researchers found people with a particular variant--called haplogroup H--were more than twice as likely as those from any of the other groups to survive for six months.
There was no evidence to suggest that people from haplogroup H were any less likely to contract a severe infection in the first instance.
The mtDNA is inherited from the mother and has evolved over tens of thousands of years to produce 10 main variations.
Recently evolved
Haplogroup H is the most recent genetic variation to evolve, but is also the most common--40% of people have it.
Lead researcher Professor Patrick Chinnery, a senior clinical fellow at the Wellcome Trust, said, “In identifying that some patients may be predisposed to survival or death on the intensive care unit is an important development and opens up new avenues to develop novel treatment.
“Those who seem to have less chance of survival may benefit from more aggressive clinical care.“
Dr. Giles Edwards, of Scottish MRSA Reference Laboratory, said the findings sounded “interesting“, but that it had always been expected a genetic variation would play a role in surviving infection.
“To be of use for treating patients, a cheap and easy test to screen for this has to be available early on,“ he said.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists demonstrated that cancers may cause surrounding supportive cells to evolve and promote cancer growth.
According to Science Daily, the research offers what is believed to be the first evidence that mutations within cancer cells can signal surrounding tissue cells to alter their molecular composition in ways that promote tumor growth and proliferation.
The findings also suggest that cell mutations that promote cancer progression may arise in cells other than the predominant cancer cell, according to study author Dr. Terry Van Dyke.
While not offering immediate application to the treatment of human cancers, the research indicates that new anti-tumor therapies may be more effective if their targets are broadened to include molecules within supporting cells of the cancer.

Siblings of babies born early or small have a greater risk of unexplained death.

Sound sleeping: the siblings of babies born early or small have a greater risk of unexplained death.
According to nature.com, the seeds of sudden infant death syndrome seem to be planted in part by conditions in the mother’s womb.
The finding shows it is not just genetic factors that determine whether babies are predisposed to the tragic condition. And although it will not change doctors’ advice to parents, it may shed some light on the causes of these mysterious deaths.
Cot death, or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), is the name for the unexplained death of a baby, usually in its sleep. The condition strikes 1 in 2,000 babies in the developed world.
Most cases are isolated. But it is known that a woman who has had one baby die from SIDS is five times more likely than other women to have a second baby die. This was once thought to cast suspicion on a mother’s ability to care for her children. But it is now accepted that there are biological reasons for this recurrence, although it hasn’t been clear what these are.
To investigate, a team led by Gordon Smith, an obstetrician at the University of Cambridge, UK, studied the medical records of more than a quarter of a million women in Scotland. They compared three groups: those who had given birth to two surviving children; those whose first baby had died from SIDS, but whose second child did not; and those who first child did not die, but whose second baby did.
They found that the babies of women whose first baby had died of SIDS were two to three times more likely to be smaller than usual and delivered early. What’s more, women whose first baby was alive, but born small or early, were at increased risk of having a subsequent child die from SIDS. They publish their results in the Lancet1.
Stunted growth and pre-term delivery are signs that the babies have experienced a poor environment in the womb. So the findings suggest that an inferior environment can make babies more vulnerable to SIDS, says Smith.
The team then looked at why these women tended to have such complications. They were more likely to smoke, and to be unmarried, very young and living in areas of high deprivation.

Experts believe that studying the humble zebrafish may have helped solve the mystery of human skin color.
According to BBC News website, a team at Penn State University has found just one tiny change in a key gene plays a major role in determining skin pigmentation.
The finding may help explain why people of European descent have lighter skin than those from Africa.
It is hoped the research may lead to new ways to treat skin cancer.
Potentially, it may also lead to the development of new ways to modify skin color without damaging it by tanning or using harsh chemical lighteners.
The genetic determination of human skin color is one of biology’s enduring mysteries.
Alterations in some of these genes are associated with disorders such as albinism, which causes very light skin, but also vision problems.
However, most of the genes responsible for normal differences in skin pigmentation have remained unknown.
The gene identified by the Penn State team--called SLC24A5--had not previously been suspected to be involved in pigmentation.
Zebrafish are ideal for research because they share many similar genes with humans.
They also have similar pigment cells, which, like humans, contain granules called melanosomes.
The researchers found a variant of the zebrafish, called golden, had fewer, smaller and less heavily pigmented melanosomes than normal fish.
They found the lighter pigmentation was caused by a mutation in the SLC24A5 gene which cuts production of a key protein.
Adding protein from the normal zebrafish resulted in fish with a darker coloring.
Next, the researchers analyzed data from the human genome, and found a similar pattern.
Most human populations carried the same version of the SLC24A5 gene, but people with a European ancestry carried a variant with just one mutation.
This mutation appears, like the zebrafish, to result in fewer, smaller and lighter melanosomes.
Further analysis showed that among people with mixed European and West African ancestry, those carrying the European form of the gene tended to have lighter skin.
The findings suggest that this single gene controls up to 38% of the color range in this mixed population.

When you stir cream into your cup of coffee, you would amazed to see the two fluids return to where they started simply by reversing the direction of stirring, PhysicsWeb reported.
However, a team of physicists in the US and Israel has now discovered that such mixing can indeed be reversible under certain conditions. The work could be important for mixing processes in industry and biology.
David Pine of New York University and colleagues at the Haverford College, the California Institute of Technology and the Israel Institute of Technology studied the motion of tiny polymer beads suspended in a viscous fluid trapped between two concentric cylinders held 2.5 millimeters apart.
When the team rotated the inner cylinder in one direction and then back again, they found that the beads returned to their starting positions. But the behavior is only seen if the solution is relatively dilute and the beads are stirred for a short time. At higher concentration and longer times, mixing becomes irreversible.
According to the researchers, the observed behavior can be explained by collisions between individual beads. Mixing can be reversed if the particles do not collide with each other, which is the case at low concentrations. But as the solution becomes more concentrated--and more collisions occur--the process becomes irreversible.
“The irreversibility of these particles may be explained by the extreme sensitivity of their trajectories to imperceptibly small changes of the particle positions,“ explains Pine.
Such perturbations might arise from almost anything--from small imperfections in the particles or by small external forces--and are magnified exponentially because of the motion of other particles suspended in the liquid, he says.
Physical systems that exhibit such extreme sensitivity to small perturbations are said to be ’chaotic’, which means that their behavior cannot be determined in advance.
The US-Israel team says that an irreversible flow could be transformed into a reversible one at a predictable point by reducing the number of particles since this makes collisions between the particles less likely.
This could be important for scaling up laboratory experiments to industrial levels, which is difficult simply because of the unpredictable behavior of the particles involved.
Possible applications include mixing of pharmaceutical suspensions and the catalysis of petrochemicals in fluid beds. The work could also help in understanding particle migration during ceramic processing and in the culture of blood-making cells.

A drug used to treat psoriasis may also relieve the depression and fatigue associated with the condition, PsychPort reported.
And it may one day offer a new avenue of treatment for depression itself, the scientists say.
Etanercept, which goes under the brand name Enbrel, works by blocking a protein called tumor necrosis factor-alpha, which is produced by the body and promotes inflammation. High concentrations of TNF-alpha have also been linked to major depression, the researchers says.
“When people get a cold, infections, psoriasis, arthritis, they tend to feel bad and have low energy, they want to sleep more, they are moody and depressed,“ says lead researcher Dr. Ranga Krishnan, chairman of Duke University’s department of psychiatry.
The question that Krishnan and his colleagues wanted to answer was whether blocking TNF-alpha could improve the symptoms of depression and fatigue.
To test the theory, Krishnan’s team assigned 618 psoriasis patients to receive injections of 50 milligrams of etanercept twice a week for 12 weeks, or a placebo. After this period, the patients were all given etanercept for an additional 84 weeks.
The researchers found that after 12 weeks, 47 percent of the patients receiving etanercept had a 75 percent or greater improvement in their psoriasis, compared with 5 percent of those receiving a placebo.
In addition, patients receiving etanercept had a significant improvement in guilt, irritability, interest, appearance, work, sleep and sexual symptoms, compared with those receiving a placebo.
Patients receiving the drug also showed lower levels of fatigue.
Improvement was strongly related to the improvements in joint and skin pain caused by psoriasis, the researchers report.
The researchers noted that the improvement in depression was not correlated with improvement in symptoms.
However, the study was not designed to detect the effect of etanercept on primary depression.

High-strength, ultra-light and elastic carbon materials are commonly used in high-performance sports goods and modern aerospace technology--for example in tennis rackets, racing tyres, heat shields and even guitars, Brightsurf reported.
Carbon fibers are only a few micrometers thick and mainly used to mechanically reinforce other materials, like polymers, metals, and ceramics. In tension, these kinds of fibers are stronger than most other known materials. However, compression applied parallel to the fiber axis can cause the buckling of nanoscale carbon layers--comparable to the buckling of a long, thin rod under compressive load.
In a novel physical experiment at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, researchers from Potsdam, Germany and Vienna have threaded both ends of micrometer thick carbon fibers through thin hollow needles in order to form fiber loops.
The fibers are stretched on the outside of the loop and compressed on the inside. In-between there is a neutral zone, as we might find in a bent beam. By tugging on the ends of the fibers, the scientists were able to adjust the loop’s radius, and thus also the mechanical load in the tensile and the compression region.
Oskar Paris from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces explains that “what is unique about the experiment is that we can make observations at many length-scales and thus gather evidence about the secret of ’nano-buckling’.
Using a 100-nanometer wide x-ray beam, we can scan the differently distorted regions along the cross-section of the fiber. Our nano-magnifier--the diffraction of the x-ray beam -allows us to measure the local strains of the only some nanometers thick carbon layers, as well as their orientation with respect to the fiber axis.“
High-tech carbon fibers are made of graphite-like carbon sheets with strong covalent atomic bonding within the sheets, and weak Van der Waals bonding between them.
Almost all the physical properties--and particularly mechanical behaviour--of these materials depend on their orientation. Their tensile stiffness is as much as five times higher than that of steel, and their specific tensile strength can overcome that of steel by a factor of ten. Under compression, however, the fibers can fail.
Here, the mechanical behavior is determined by mechanical instability--carbon layers buckling at the nanoscale--in addition to the shearing of single carbon layers.