Delivering cannabis more effectively • Proteins in the extremes • PredictingC.缺乏药物靶标•犬癫痫的最佳治疗•治疗老年癌症患者•驯服拟南芥• Just another incentive scheme • The cure for a broken heart?
Pharmacology:Delivering cannabis more effectively
Interest in the use of cannabis as a medical treatment has been widespread in recent years, but remains controversial. This is partly because THC, the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis, has been associated with a range of adverse side-effects. Another constituent of the cannabis plant, CBD, could ameliorate some of these effects. However, studies have had to rely on oral ingestion of CBD which results in slow and erratic absorption by patients. Administration by vaporisation would be safer and more effective, but until now no method has existed to administer CBD in this way in the high doses required. A newly described method overcomes these difficulties by enabling delivery by vaporisation of CBD, either alone or in combination with THC. This breakthrough could lead to new and more effective clinical trials of the potential medical benefits of cannabis.
Structural Biology:Proteins in the extremes
There exist organisms who can colonise the most extreme, apparently life-incompatible habitats. An example of such extremophiles are the Archaea who colonise deep underwater hot springs, where temperatures can reach 100˚C and pressure is over 200 times that on the surface. To investigate how life is possible in such conditions, researchers compared the protein dynamics of one such Archaea species,P.abyssi，浅水亲戚P.furiosus。NIP7蛋白的分子动力学模拟提供了新的见解，以了解该蛋白的功能如何适应由极端环境条件。P.abyssi。
Antibiotic resistance:PredictingC. difficiledrug targets
Clostridium difficileis one of the leading causes of antibiotic resistant hospital infections. The complexity of treating this type of constantly evolving infection requires a continuous search for new ways to targetC.缺乏。This fight will be aided by the development of a new metabolic network for the pathogenic strain of this bacteria. The creation of such networks allows the prediction of essential genes, which can then become targets for new drugs. Such metabolic networks have already proven useful in the fight against other bacteria, such ase.coli。
兽医研究：The best treatment for canine epilepsy? We don’t know.
Epilepsy is the most common chronic neurological condition not just in humans, but also in dogs; 50,000 canines are affected in the UK alone. Although a number of antiepileptic drugs are approved to treat canine epilepsy, their effectiveness still remains unclear. This motivated a team at the Royal Veterinary College to conduct a systematic review of the evidence available for the efficacy of these drugs. What they found is that much of the evidence base for these treatments is based on subpar testing, with very few published clinical trials of the expected quality. The authors discuss the reasons for this poor evidence base and what needs to be done about it in一个来宾博客。
Image of the month
甲虫是一群众所周知的动物，正如该图像的外环所示，Tenebrionidae甲虫家族也不例外。他们曾经更加多样化，在白垩纪时期，许多物种灭绝了。图像的内部显示了现有物种之间的关系，这是试图发现这种降低多样性的尝试的一部分。从 ”白垩纪环境变化导致高甲虫家族的高灭绝率。”kergoat等。BMC Evolutionary Biology2014年，14:220
癌症不成比例地影响老年人，但是这些患者在临床试验中往往不足。例如，大肠癌诊断的中位年龄为70，但大肠癌临床试验中只有不到10％的患者已有70年的历史。这种偏见使得对癌症药物对老年患者的有效性进行进一步的研究非常重要，尤其是在“现实生活”情况下。一项新的研究仅针对最近批准的贝伐单抗，在临床试验中，该试验与标准化疗对结直肠癌的治疗产生了积极影响。研究发现，贝伐单抗对75岁或以上的患者有效，尽管总生存率低于年轻患者。
Evolutionary Biology:Taming Arabidopsis
拟南芥is famed as one of the key model species in plant genetics. Other拟南芥物种也具有遗传模型的潜力，但是它们的使用受到对更广泛属的知识的限制。特别是，该属带有地理变体和明显的亚种。一种新的系统发育分析提供了各种遗传变异和各种遗传变异的第一个全面概述拟南芥物种。这些结果为将来的研究提供了一个框架，并希望为更多拟南芥物种向遗传学家证明其价值。
健康Care:“只是另一个激励计划”
A number of countries have recently attempted to improve health care by implementing performance based pay for doctors. This is not without controversy; witness the recent furore in England over doctors being paid for each patient they diagnose with dementia, perceived as a “bounty” bysome patient groups。英国国家卫生局最近的一项计划试图通过与当地的医生而不是国家水平的医生谈判绩效目标来克服其中的一些困难。但是，一项定性研究发现，所涉及的卫生专业人员并没有觉得这使得绩效目标更加有效。这种感觉坚持认为，这导致了“挑战”的练习，而其他人则认为这对他们的行为没有影响。正如一位参与者所说，“大多数GP可能将其视为另一个激励计划”。
基因组学:治愈伤心的心？
斑马鱼在严重受伤后具有显着的能力。这使其成为人类心脏损伤和再生的临床研究的诱人目标。哪些遗传差异使斑马鱼能够产生新的心肌细胞，而人类（甚至所有哺乳动物）不能？斑马鱼中的转录响应的新分析体内心脏截肢实验提供了许多可能与此能力相关的候选基因。值得注意的是，许多顶级候选人都参与细胞命运规格和分化。这些见解为心血管转化研究提供了新的机会。
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