How life on Earth began

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Increased overweight in children of mothers who drank coffee while pregnant

A study published in the BMJ Open journal shows that even moderate coffee consumption during pregnancy, one to two cups per day, is related to a risk of overweight or obesity in school age children. It has not been clearly shown if caffeine is the direct cause of the overweight, but the relationship, alone, has caused researchers to encourage increased caution. "There may be good cause to increase the restriction of the recommended maximum of three cups of coffee per day. Caffeine is not a medicine that needs to be consumed," says Verena Sengpiel, Associate Professor in obstetrics and gynecology at Sahlgrenska Academy, Sweden, and specialist physician at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, studied information on 50 943 pregnant women, in one of the world's largest health surveys of pregnant women, the Norwegian...
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New approach to treating infectious diseases as an alternative to antibiotics

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Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is known as a major cause of diarrhea in travelers and people living in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ETEC is responsible for 300,000 ~ 500,000 deaths a year, constituting a serious problem. Effective vaccines for ETEC have not been developed, so patients infected with ETEC are treated with antibiotics and supporting measures. However, the emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria has become a social issue, so the development of new treatment methods is sought after. Adherence to the host intestinal epithelium is an essential step for ETEC infection in humans. It was thought that a filamentous structure on the surface of bacteria called 'type IV pilus' was important for bacterial attachment, but its detailed adhesion mechanism was not known. Osaka University-led researchers clarified how pathogenic E.coli attached to the host intestinal epithelium using type IV pili and secre...
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Supercoil me!

Even living cells have their own tangled problems to solve. They involve knots that arise accidentally in DNA and that can comprise its functionality. A new study by SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) brings a new twist to the problem and suggests that the DNA propensity to be supercoiled, just like telephone cords, can come to the rescue. These coils can keep DNA knots locked in place for long enough that they can be untied by specialised enzymes. The computational study, based on molecular dynamics simulations of bacterial DNA, has just been published in Nucleic Acids Research . A tangled problem Supercoiled, twisted, and even knotted! Far from the elegant and polished textbook images, DNA filaments in living cells is all crumpled and entangled and, to be functional, needs to be constantly unravelled, much like our telephone cords that with careless use accumulate annoying curls or supercoils. "Supercoils are, in fact, present in DNA too ...
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