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Your life depends on a muscle the size of a fist weighing 8 to 12 ounces. Your heart never sleeps. It beats about 100,000 times per day, feeding your tissues with crucial oxygen and nutrients, and then doing double duty as it takes out the trash — removing carbon dioxide and other wastes. Heart failure contributes to the death of about one in eight Americans. Despite improvements in the care of heart failure patients, the disease is currently associated with a 50 percent chance of death within five years of the onset of symptoms. According to the National Heart, Lung…

MU researchers are getting a deeper understanding how mosquito-borne viruses infect the mosquito – an important step toward eliminating the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases They approach with the telltale sign – a high-pitched whine. It’s a warning that you are a mosquito’s next meal. But that mosquito might carry a virus, and now the virus is in you. Now, with the help of state-of-the-art technology, researchers at the University of Missouri can see how a virus moves within a mosquito’s body, which could lead to the prevention of mosquitoes transmitting diseases. “Previously, the common understanding was that when a mosquito…

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who predated Socrates, famously said, “Change is the only constant in life.” The truth of this paradox is found throughout the biological world. Organisms adapt to changes in their environment, or even differences between their various habitats. Plasticity is the modern byword for this quality of being readily molded or changeable. “Plasticity is when you’re exposed to something again and again, over time, you’re going to start to adapt to it; you’re going to develop plasticity,” says Nicole Nichols, PhD, a researcher and assistant professor in Biomedical Sciences at MU’s College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). “It’s…

Monir Shababi, an assistant research professor in veterinary pathobiology, and Christian Lorson, College of Veterinary Medicine professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies, have invested countless hours during the past five years to solving a cruel medical mystery. A family who has endured the agonizing ordeal of having two children born with the same disease has invested funding for the research being conducted at MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center. The disease is called spinal muscle atrophy with respiratory distress, or SMARD. SMARD is a progressive motor neuron disease that has no treatment or cure. At least, not yet….

University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine students, house officers and post-doctoral fellows share their scientific exploration from the previous 12 months during the annual Research Day.

Shift Pharmaceuticals developed by team of MU researchers, Office of Technology Management and Industry Relations Approximately one out of every 40 individuals in the United States is a carrier of the gene responsible for spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative disease that causes nerves to die and muscles to weaken over time. In 2014, Chris Lorson, an investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center and associate dean of research in the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine, and his team developed a molecule that was found to be highly effective in animal models exhibiting SMA. Now, testing of that compound has…

Findings could shed light on human health concerns and autism Past studies have shown that biparental care of offspring can be affected negatively when females and males are exposed to bisphenol A (BPA); however, previous studies have not characterized how long-term effects of BPA exposure in grandmothers and grandfathers might affect offspring communication ability. In a study published today in the journal PLOS One, researchers at the University of Missouri found that mice pups whose grandparents had been exposed to BPA, had different vocalization patterns. This, in turn, could also affect the amount of parental care they received. Scientists believe…

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects more than 5.5 million Americans and is one of the costliest diseases to treat, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Characterized by a buildup of plaque in the brain, few animal models exist that researchers could use to study this devastating disorder. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Missouri, publishing in PLOS One, developed a rat model that can be used to study the buildup of amyloid plaques and vascular abnormalities in the brain. “One of the defining traits of Alzheimer’s is the progressive accumulation of amyloid-β plaques in the brain,” said Yuksel Agca,…

University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine Dean Carolyn J. Henry has named Christian Lorson as the associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies. Lorson, PhD, has served as the interim associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies since Aug. 1, 2017, when then-associate dean Henry was appointed interim dean of the CVM. After earning a bachelor of arts in biology at Colorado College in Colorado Springs in 1991, Lorson pursued graduate studies at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Department. In 1997 he completed a PhD with his focus on parvovirus gene…