Vascular Dementia

Vascular Dementia accounts for 25% of all dementias (the second most commen cause after Alzheimers. It is the cumulative effects of many small strokes - patients often have evidence of vascular path...

Alzheimer's Disease

Of all the types of Dementia, Alzheimer's disease is the most common, affecting around 465,000 people in the UK. Neurons in the brain die, becuase  'plaques' and 'tangles'...

BioPortfolio Twitter Accounts

BioPortfolio has created a number of Twitter accounts to help you keep upto date on the latest news, research papers, reports and clinical trials on a selected range of important and popular topics....

Caspase Pathways

Caspases are a family of enzymes with very specific characteristics that can be used in almost every biological pathway in the body. The knock-on effects of the action of caspases keep us alive, ini...

Figure 1: Glutamine metabolism

Glutamine metabolism drives PDAC Figure 1. Glutamine metabolism. Cancer cells are dependent on specific metabolic pathways, such as glutamine metabolism, to supply excess energy that sustains cell gro...

Alzheimers Can Strike Earlier than Expected

Alzheimers can develop much sooner than some might expect; catching it early however can mean a longer life.

Modulation of glutamine metabolism by the PI(3)K–PKB–FOXO network regulates autophagy

Coffer and colleagues report that the transcription factor FOXO3 regulates the induction of autophagy. In response to PI(3)K–Akt signalling, FOXO3 directly induces expression of glutamine synthase,...

Metabolism: Glutamine connections

Three recent studies have uncovered molecular links between various cancer signalling pathways and altered glutamine metabolism.

Pancreatic Cancer Cells Vulnerable to Glutamine Pathway Inhibitors

Pancreatic cancer cells utilize the amino acid glutamine to fuel their metabolism and are dependent on a single molecular...

Extra glutamine increases mortality in critically ill adults

N Engl J Med2013;368:1489-97Early glutamine supplementation looked harmful to critically ill adults in a large trial that tested the supplements in intensive care units in Canada, the US, and Europe.....

Glutamine Therapy Dangerous to the Critically Ill

Treating critically ill patients with the amino acid glutamine not only didn't help, but may have increased their risk of death, according to a new study in 40 intensive care units in Canada, the Unit...

Glutamine metabolism drives PDAC

Dana-Farber researchers have identified a glutamine metabolism pathway activated by oncogenic K-Ras in pancreatic cancers. The team found three different enzyme targets within the pathway that could b...

Glutamine stimulates mTORC1 independent of the cell content of essential amino acids.

Glutamine and leucine are important mTORC1 modulators, although their roles are not precisely defined. In HepG2 and HeLa cells glutamine-free incubation lowers mTORC1 activity, although cell leucine i...

The Hydrogen-Bonding Ability of the Amino Acid Glutamine Revealed by Neutron Diffraction Experiments.

Hydrogen bonding between glutamine residues has been identified as playing an important role in the intermolecular association and aggregation of proteins. To establish the molecular mechanisms of glu...

Glutamine uptake and metabolism are coordinately regulated by ERK/MAPK during T lymphocyte activation.

Activation of a naive T cell is a highly energetic event, which requires a substantial increase in nutrient metabolism. Upon stimulation, T cells increase in size, rapidly proliferate, and differentia...

Reduced glutamine concentration improves protein production in growth-arrested CHO-DG44 and HEK-293E cells.

For most cultivated mammalian cells, glutamine is an essential medium component. However, glutamine consumption results in the production of ammonia, a cytotoxic byproduct. Here we investigated the ef...

Transcription factor TnrA inhibits the biosynthetic activity of glutamine synthetase in Bacillus subtilis.

The Bacillus subtilis glutamine synthetase (GS) plays a dual role in cell metabolism by functioning as catalyst and regulator. GS catalyses the ATP-dependent synthesis of glutamine from glutamate and...