ENDOCRINOLOGY:
Research on Brown Fat Heats Up
Three research groups have identified a little-recognized energy-burning
organ in healthy adults: brown fat. Until now, this unusual tissue, combining
features of both white fat and muscle, was believed to be irrelevant to adult
humans. In one of the new findings, thinner people tended to have slightly more
brown fat, which is tucked under collarbones and neck muscles, reported C. Ronald
Kahn (pictured), Aaron Cypess, and coauthors in the April 9 New England Journal
of Medicine. Scientists hope to harness the tissue’s calorie-burning
capacity to fight obesity and related metabolic diseases.
GLOBAL
HEALTH: Burden of Breast Cancer in Poorer Women Featured in First of
Participatory Panels on Public Health Priorities
The recent recognition of breast cancer as an “unforeseen public
health priority” in Mexico and many parts of the less-developed
world formed the basis of an April 14 event hosted by HSPH dean Julio
Frenk (right), the first in a planned series of “participatory
panels” on public health issues. Frenk and his wife, Felicia
Marie Knaul (left), have helped open a window on the previously unrecognized
toll of breast cancer among the poor in Mexico and other less-developed
countries. They have also drawn attention to the social and cultural
barriers that aggravate problems of access to early diagnosis and care
for many women.
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY:
Read on Dinosaur Protein May Rewrite Study of Prehistory
Researchers may have shattered decades-old dogma about fossils by retrieving
the oldest known biological material from the bone of an 80-million-year-old
dinosaur. The study, by John Asara and colleagues published in the
May 1 Science, confirms previous data from a Tyrannosaurus
rex fossil and reinforces the idea that a dinosaur was more chicken
than lizard.
SYSTEMS
BIOLOGY: Oh, Behave
Models of cells and their signaling pathways can help scientists understand
cancer by showing how an oncogene tips a cell’s behavior from
normal to abnormal. A model can help drug developers see if an inhibitor
tips the cell back. But good models are hard to come by. The basic
modeling tools are geared for physics, a challenging but arguably less
messy science than biology. Now, a team led by systems biologist Walter
Fontana has devised a new set of tools, described in the April 21 Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, that simplify the modeling
of these messy systems without simplifying the models.
Copyright 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College