NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lectures

Dal canale di Youtube del National Institutes of Health, i video dei Seminari del Mercoledì sui più vari aspetti delle scienze biomediche.

The NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series includes weekly scientific talks by some of the top researchers in the biomedical sciences worldwide.

NIH Youtube Channel (link).

(segnalato dal dr. F. Merolla).

Cancer genome landscapes

Over the past decade, comprehensive sequencing efforts have revealed the genomic landscapes of common forms of human cancer. For most cancer types, this landscape consists of a small number of "mountains" (genes altered in a high percentage of tumors) and a much larger number of "hills" (genes altered infrequently). [...] A typical tumor contains two to eight of these "driver gene" mutations; the remaining mutations are passengers that confer no selective growth advantage. Driver genes can be classified into 12 signaling pathways that regulate three core cellular processes: cell fate, cell survival, and genome maintenance. A better understanding of these pathways is one of the most pressing needs in basic cancer research. Even now, however, our knowledge of cancer genomes is sufficient to guide the development of more effective approaches for reducing cancer morbidity and mortality.

Vogelstein B, Papadopoulos N, Velculescu VE, Zhou S, Diaz LA Jr, Kinzler KW.Cancer genome landscapes. Science. 2013 Mar 29;339(6127):1546-58.

(segnalato dal prof. G. Troncone)

Salvador Dalì. Árabes aciddesoxiribonucleics, Paisaje de mariposa. El gran masturbador en paisaje surrealista con ADN.

vedi anche: Rovira, S. Metaphors of DNA: a review of the popularisation processes. Public Understanding of Science, 2008; 7 (1)

Hypoxic Patterns of Placental Injury

The placenta does not respond in a single way to hypoxia, and various placental hypoxic features should be explained within a clinical context. Because the placenta has a large reserve capacity, hypoxic lesions may not result in poor fetal condition or outcome. On the other hand, very acute, in utero, hypoxic events, followed by prompt delivery, may not be associated with placental pathology, and many poor perinatal outcomes can be explained by an etiology other than hypoxia. Nevertheless, assessment of placental hypoxic lesions is helpful for retrospective explanations of complications in pregnancy and in medicolegal investigation.

Histopathologic features of placental hypoxia da Stanek J. 2013

Stanek J. Hypoxic patterns of placental injury: a review. Arch Pathol Lab Med.2013 May;137(5):706-20.