When a Psoriasis Shows Its Claws!!!

Psoriasis and its management.

Novel Technique Shows When the Fertilized Egg’s Genome Comes into Its Own

0958 You might say that a mother’s infl uence begins even before her offspring were just a twinkle in dad’s eye. During egg cell development (called oogenesis), the mother deposits gene products—consisting largely of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and some proteins—into the developing egg. These mRNAs take over after fertilization to orchestrate the earliest stages of embryogenesis. As the embryo devel...

Autophagy Shows Its Animal Side

Most autophagy genes have been discovered in the single-celled yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and little is known about autophagy genes that are specific to multicellular animals. In this issue, Tian et al. (2010) now identify four new autophagy genes: one specific to the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and three conserved from worms to mammals.

BRWD1 shows its gender bias

Pattabiraman et al. add a subtle and unexpected entry to the long list of differences between the sexes. The researchers discovered that a protein that controls gene expression in maturing sperm performs a different function in maturing oocytes, where it promotes chromosome condensation and stability (1). Once meiosis is complete in male mammals, the resulting cells, known as spermatids, underg...

Claws for thought

What are the early signs of use? There are no early signs. There are only obvious signs common to all long-term users. What can be spotted is the transition from non-user to addict (one episode is sufficient for diagnosis). For example, an early draft of a manuscript may read “We replicated and extended a classic finding within an established theoretical framework...”; a later SciagraTM-influen...