in the news...

• Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) said two studies showed genetic susceptibility to obesity involves changes in entire networks of genes, not just mutations in several specific genes.Visit here for more.
• First study to show that microRNAs may also play a role in synaptic plasticity and the modulation of translation.Michael Greenberg's group at Harvard Medical School and Austrian colleagues hypothesized that microRNAs are involved in the regulation of protein synthesis in neuronal dendrites. To test this, they overexpressed a hippocampal microRNA, miR-134, and found that it reduced the size of dendritic spines by inhibiting a protein kinase that induces spine development.Read the paper here.