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 PATHOLOGY: Fatty-acid Imbalance May Boost Inflammation in CF
For years, blame for the symptoms of cystic fibrosis (CF) was pinned on the disease's viscous secretions, which clog the lungs and result in chronic infections. Steven D. Freedman and his colleagues have discovered that patients also display highly abnormal fatty-acid levels, which may aggravate the body's response to these infections. The findings, reported in the Feb. 6 New England Journal of Medicine, could lead to a new understanding of the disease and possible treatments, not just of CF, but of a host of related diseases such as pancreatitis, chronic sinusitis, and male infertility.
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 ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Lasting Brain Damage Found from Prenatal Mercury Exposure
Prenatal exposure to mercury is known to damage the developing nervous system, but questions remain about the toxic effects of low levels of mercury, usually derived from contaminated seafood in the mother's diet. Now, after nearly two decades of studying children in the Faroe Islands, HSPH's Philippe Grandjean and his colleagues report a correlation between mercury levels in mothers and their babies and impaired neurological functions in the children at age 14. The results, published in the February Journal of Pediatrics, demonstrate that at least some of the damage caused by prenatal exposure to mercury in seafood is permanent.
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 CELL BIOLOGY: RNA Puts on the RITS, Hushes DNA
In the last few years, small RNAs have become famous for their transient ability to hush genes by interfering with the transcribed RNA before it can be translated into proteins. In the Jan. 30 Science, Danesh Moazed (on left), Andre Verdel, and their collaborators show that this silencing machinery in fission yeast can stifle genome regions for many cell divisions by working with a newly identified protein complex, which they named RITS. Small RNAs team up with RITS to weave the heterochromatin cloak that muffles portions of the chromosome.
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 MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: Enzyme Mends Fibers that Give Stretch to Tissues
In mammals, elastin fibers bestow mechanical flexibility on a variety of tissues, such as blood vessels, lungs, and the retina. Damage to the fibers can be life-threatening because there is no known way to rebuild elastin. But in the February Nature Genetics, Tiansen Li (on right), Xiaoqing Liu, and colleagues report that they have identified an enzyme that repairs elastin fibers in aging tissues. The finding may lead to a better understanding of the forces at play in age-related diseases such as macular degeneration.
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Copyright 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
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