In his book, “The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat And Sick,” Dr. Richard Johnson reviews the increasing evidence that fructose may play a role in the obesity epidemic and proposes a low-fructose diet he believes could help people lose weight and potentially prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“We recognize that obesity has multiple causes, including eating too much and exercising too little, but we think a missing piece of the obesity puzzle is fructose intake,” said Johnson, the J. Robert Cade professor of medicine and chief of the division of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation in the UF College of Medicine. “It’s not fructose itself that is the problem, but eating too much of it.”

Americans consume nearly three times as much fructose as a century ago, Johnson said. Although the major source of fructose is soft drinks, it’s found in a variety of foods such as fruit, juice, sweetened cereals and pastries.

“We think fructose makes you obese not simply by the calories it provides but because it also tricks hormonal systems that control appetite,” Johnson said. “You don’t get a sense of being full so you keep eating. It (fructose) may also be important in the development of diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease.

“An additional problem is that the more fructose you eat, the more sensitive you become to it,” Johnson said. “If you want to have success losing weight, you have to cut out fructose for two weeks. At that point you are no longer as sensitive and you can resume a low-fructose diet with ease.”

Johnson’s book, which was published by Rodale, contains a diet he developed with nutritionist and dietitian Elizabeth Gollub, as well as tables listing the fructose contents of common foods. Fructose content is not found on most labels.

Unlike other low-carbohydrate diets, which require dieters to reduce all carbs, Johnson’s plan targets fructose. Starchy foods like potatoes and rice aren’t a no-no as in low-carb diets. And after the first two weeks, dieters can resume eating fruit and having treats such as cake in moderation.

“Most people are used to eating about 50 percent of their diet as carbohydrates,” Johnson said “When you cut it way back and have a very high-protein, high-fat diet, it’s very hard to sustain. It’s also not necessarily healthy. What’s great about our diet is we can maintain a normal carbohydrate-protein-fat balance, and when you do that, the diet is much easier to sustain.”

Johnson became interested in fructose while studying hypertension. He and his colleagues discovered that uric acid increased blood pressure in animals and that ingesting fructose seemed to spur production of uric acid. Reducing uric acid in these animals helped control blood pressure and other problems such as pre-diabetes.

“The effect of fructose to cause pre-diabetes and raise blood pressure may be more important than its effects to increase weight,” Johnson said. “Our studies suggest that, even if one can control one’s weight, that excessive intake of fructose may increase the risk for high blood pressure and diabetes. Going on a low-fructose diet will have benefits above and beyond losing weight.”

The research in Johnson’s book came from studies in his own lab as well as from other scientists studying fructose in cells, animals and humans at other institutions, he said.

He also reviews the history of fructose consumption, comparing it with the rise of obesity. The two histories mirror each other, he writes.

Although fructose consumption was already on the rise when high-fructose corn syrup was invented, the introduction of this sweetener in the late 1960s accelerated the increase. High-fructose corn syrup contains about as much fructose as table sugar but is cheaper to produce, leading companies to produce bigger portions of sweets and soft drinks for the same price, Johnson said.

Today, Americans eat 30 percent more fructose than they did in the 1970s and three times as much as in 1900, when the obesity rate was 5 percent, Johnson said. About 33 percent of adults are now overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“After reading this book I found myself looking more carefully at labels, looking specifically for high-fructose corn syrup,” said Dr. Andrew Whelton, an adjunct professor of medicine and the former director of clinical nephrology at Johns Hopkins University. “I was amazed to see it so often.

“Although this book was put together for a lay audience, I thought it would be useful for health-care providers, particularly for anyone who deals with issues of obesity and diabetes.”

Reported this month in the online edition of the Journal of Proteome Research, the advance could one day lead to earlier detection and improved treatment of some types of cancer as well as other diseases.

“With many diseases, the problem has been that we really don’t know what to look for,” said Weihong Tan, a professor of chemistry and the lead author of the paper. “What we’ve done is create a technique to identify the biomarkers despite that limitation.”

Doctors often diagnose cancer and other diseases based on the appearance of a tumor or a patient’s symptoms. While such traditional methods can be effective, they sometimes identify a disease only after it is established. For example, clinicians may get tipped off to the presence of lung cancer — which kills more people than any other type of cancer — based on visible images of a tumor that appear on radiological exams of a patient’s lungs.

Because earlier detection typically improves outcomes, doctors would like to spot disease at the molecular level, before it grows or spreads and manifests itself in more obvious and harmful ways. Given that diseased cells’ molecular structures differ from those of healthy ones, that approach should be possible, and researchers have had some success finding such “biomarkers” using antibodies, Tan said. But despite years of research, biomarkers for most diseases remain elusive or unreliable, he said.

His group turned to “aptamers,” single-strand chains of DNA or RNA that recognize and bind to target protein molecules, as a new tool. His paper reports the first-ever successful use of the aptamers to discover a molecular biomarker — in this case, one for leukemia.

Tan said his group used cell-SELEX, a process his group developed and patented.

Researchers create trillions of different varieties of aptamers in a solution. They then immerse cells known to carry the sought-after disease in the solution. After an incubation period, they rinse the cells.

The vast majority of the aptamers wash away, but those with stronger molecular affinity for the diseased cells remain. The researchers repeat the process several times, eventually shrinking the pool of aptamers to as few as 10 to 25 very strongly attached aptamers — those most closely associated with the diseased cells. Analysis then reveals these aptamers’ molecular structure, as well as the molecular structure of the cells’ biomarkers they bind to.

“As long as the molecules in question are expressed in a substantially different way on diseased and normal cells, they can be identified,” Tan said.

Rebecca Sutphen, associate professor and director of the Genetic Counseling & Testing Service at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, said improved diagnosis may not be the only application of the research.

“The opportunity to identify cancer cell-specific biomarkers and potentially detect small numbers of cancer cells has many potential clinical applications, including disease detection, better imaging of tumors and even potential application for stem cells,” she said.

Other biomarkers have been found for leukemia, but none is particularly reliable, Tan said. Tan and his colleagues reported using aptamers to recognize cancer cells in a 2006 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tan said the latest paper advances that work by revealing the target biomarkers the selected aptamers recognize, Tan said. These targets will form a molecular foundation in understanding diseases, he said.

“In 2006, we did not know what the aptamer recognized on the cancer cell surface,” he said. “In this current work, we report discovering these biomarkers, which then form the molecular foundation for us to understand the cancer and to prepare different molecular tools for molecular medicine.”

Tan said the research is particularly promising because aptamers are relatively easy and inexpensive to manufacture compared with antibodies. “This offers the potential for wider application,” he said, adding that aptamers could one day be used not only to detect disease, but also to ferry therapeutic agents to diseased cells.

The research was funded in part with two grants from the National Institutes of Health. It was also funded with two grants from Florida’s Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program and one grant from the State of Florida Center of Excellence in Bio/nano sensors.

The paper’s co-authors are Dihua Shangguan, Zehui Cao, Ling Meng, Prabodhika Mallikaratchy, Kwame Sefah, Hui Wang and Ying Li.

AAA and the University of Florida National Older Driver Research and Training Center are making these and other recommendations for addressing the physical, visual and cognitive changes that affect senior drivers as part of the Smart Features for Mature Drivers program. AAA and UF announced the smart features today (March 21) at the New York International Auto Show.

Reduced range of motion, arthritic joints, diminished fine motor skills and trouble with night vision and recovery from glare are all common age-related physical changes that can affect driving ability. A recent AAA survey found that 43 percent of drivers over 55 suffered from at least one of nine driving-related difficulties commonly caused by aging.

“There are ways to counteract the difficulties brought on by age-related changes so that seniors can maintain their safe driving abilities,” said Dennis McCarthy, co-director of the National Older Driver Research and Training Center and a research assistant professor in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ department of occupational therapy. “One of these is through proper use of particular vehicle features.”

In 2003 about one in seven licensed drivers was 65 or older. By 2029, that proportion is expected to rise to one in four drivers, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.

“The goal of Smart Features for Mature Drivers is to ensure that mature drivers are comfortable in their vehicles and to keep them driving safely as long as possible,” said Desiree Lanford, a UF driving rehabilitation specialist.

Smart Features for Mature Drivers recommends particular vehicle features based on the driver’s needs. For example, thick steering wheels, keyless entry and ignition, power mirrors and larger dashboard controls can make driving easier for seniors with arthritic hands or diminished fine motor skills. The doors on four-door models require less strength to open and close than two-door vehicles. Those with limited range of motion in the back, neck, shoulder or arm should consider large, wide-angle mirrors, tilt steering wheels and comfortable, six-way adjustable seats with lumbar support when choosing a vehicle. Seniors with vision issues may benefit from extendable sun visors and larger dashboard controls with contrasting text.

“The best vehicle features are those that fit the individual person and his or her limitations or needs,” Lanford said.

AAA and UF experts also suggest all mature drivers consider proven crashworthiness, antilock brakes, head restraints to reduce the risk of neck injuries, dynamic stability control to help prevent loss of control in a turn, and side and dual-stage or dual-threshold air bags that inflate based on the severity of the crash, lowering the risk of injury if airbags deploy with too much force.

“Safe driving is a function of person, environment and vehicle factors,” said Sherrilene Classen, a UF older driver injury prevention researcher and project team member. “The Smart Features for Mature Drivers project recognizes normal age-related changes and provides beneficial vehicle features to accommodate such changes — a critical step in injury prevention.”

To learn more about the Smart Features for Mature Drivers program, visit the Web site www.AAA.com/seniors.

“By providing public services such as Smart Features for Mature Drivers, AAA aims to keep our growing senior population safe behind the wheel,” said AAA President and Chief Executive Officer Robert L. Darbelnet. “We encourage older drivers and their families to use this as a guide in the selection of their next vehicle or evaluating their current one.”

A three-year, three-pronged prevention program did little to keep Chicago middle schoolers from drinking or using drugs, despite its prior success in rural Minnesota, where the program reduced alcohol use 20 to 30 percent, UF and University of Minnesota researchers recently reported in the online edition of the journal Addiction.

“The intervention found to be effective in rural areas was not effective here, which really surprised us,” said Kelli A. Komro, a UF associate professor of epidemiology in the UF College of Medicine and the study’s lead author. “This is an important finding to realize this program was not enough. The bottom line is this: Low-income children in urban areas need more, long-term intensive efforts.”

Adolescents who drink by age 15 — about half of teens — are more likely to struggle in school, abuse alcohol later in life, smoke cigarettes and use other drugs than those who don’t. Even worse, exposure to alcohol at a young age may damage the developing brain, according to a 2007 U.S. Surgeon General report.

“Almost any problem kids might have, alcohol increases that risk,” Komro said.

By targeting middle-school-age children, the UF and University of Minnesota team hoped to reduce these risks. The researchers studied 5,812 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from mostly low-income communities in Chicago, randomly dividing the neighborhoods into two groups: those who would participate in the prevention program and those who would not.

The program, a tweaked version of what Komro and her colleagues developed for their Minnesota study, included three preventive approaches to relay the message that drinking is not acceptable in school, at home and in the community.

In participating schools, an alcohol prevention curriculum was used in the classroom. Students led these sessions because the prevention messages are more accepted when they come from peers rather than teachers, Komro said. The family component included homework assignments that parents and children could complete together, organized events for families, and educational postcards with helpful hints that were sent to parents. For the community aspect of the program, researchers hired organizers to work with community volunteers to change the risks and problems with teen drinking in their neighborhoods.

But at the end of the study, year-end surveys showed no difference in alcohol use among the teens who took part in the project and those who did not. At least 70 percent of the schools in the neighborhoods that did not use the program had some form of drug and alcohol prevention program in the schools. It’s unlikely these programs skewed the results of the study though, Komro said. UF’s prevention program was larger and more comprehensive than the other school-based programs and researchers would have detected a difference among the students had it worked.

One particular problem surfaced during the community component of the project. The organizers struggled to rally some community members around the cause, often having to explain why they should be concerned about adolescent alcohol use. That gave researchers some insight into why the program did not work there.

“People in these areas are concerned with housing, they’re concerned with gangs and other drug use,” Komro said. “There was a whole upfront effort where we had to educate people about how alcohol was related to those other issues, and that it was an important issue to think about with their young people.

“We know from other studies in low-income, urban neighborhoods, there is a higher concentration of alcohol outlets, compared to suburban or rural areas. There were a lot of alcohol ads around these schools and a greater density of pro-alcohol messages these children are exposed to. You mix that with the poverty level and it’s just a high-risk environment.”

Despite the overall results, there were positive findings that researchers hope to build on, Komro said. Of all the components, the family interventions had the most significant effects. And one aspect of the community project worked well: Half of the community teams went to stores that sold alcohol and asked merchants not to sell to underage kids. In those communities, the ability of young people to buy alcohol went down 64 percent.

“While the findings may not be what the investigators were hoping for, they reported them fully and openly, and this is good for the field,” said Brian Flay, a professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Oregon State University. “Science can advance properly only when both positive and negative findings are reported.”

Just the right amount of concern could solidify ties between parents and their adult children, but too much fretting may become a burden to the relationship, said Elizabeth Hay, a UF psychology professor, who led the research.

“If someone knows you worry about them, they may see it as an expression of love and caring, but at the same time they can feel irritated and annoyed by it,” said Hay, whose study is published in the December issue of the journal Personal Relationships.

To date, most of the studies on worry don’t consider worries experienced within the context of specific relationships and instead focus on pathological worries or anxiety disorders, she said.

Worrying appears to reflect people’s investment in the relationship, Hay said. Parents and their adult children felt more positively about their relationships when the other party worried about them and conveyed their concerns, she said.

At a certain point, however, expressing one’s unease to the other person exacted a cost, Hay said. The more parents and adult children worry about one another and discuss those worries, the more negatively the other party viewed the relationship, she said.

“In a sense it’s socially and emotionally supportive to worry and share your concerns, but you need to do it in a way that doesn’t make the other person feel that you perceive them to be incapable of managing their own affairs,” she said. “Perhaps they feel like you are undermining their autonomy, and maintaining autonomy is important in parent-adult child ties.”

In the study, 70 percent of the adult children said their parents’ health was their biggest worry, while parents expressed a wide range of worries relating to their adult children, according to an analysis she did for a second paper that has not been published yet.

“The interesting thing is that many of the children in our study were in their 20s and their parents were not of advanced age or experiencing any health problems,” Hay said.

The study’s participants were 213 adult children — 110 daughters and 103 sons — between the ages of 22 and 49 and each of their mothers and fathers, whose ages ranged from 40 to 84. They were interviewed by telephone in the Philadelphia area from fall 2002 through fall 2003.

“Very few adults or their parents said they didn’t worry about each other,” Hay said. “Almost everyone could identify a major worry that they could clearly explain, and they reported thinking about it somewhat to a lot of the time.”

Parents worry about their children largely as a continuation of patterns that developed early in the relationship, Hay believes. “When children are young and parents are responsible for so much of their life, they probably worry about a variety of things, which is not likely to just suddenly stop once their children become adults,” she said.

Indeed, while the focus of adult children’s worries overwhelmingly centers on their parents’ health, parents had many diverse worries, the study found. They talked about their children’s health, but they also mentioned finances, relationship issues and problems in balancing work and family, Hay said.

A small proportion of adults brought up more global concerns, such as today’s world being a dangerous place, Hay said. The majority of parents discussed anxieties that were specific to their own situation, though, such as their child having an unsafe job, she said.

The study found that daughters fretted slightly more about their mothers than fathers, while sons worried equally about both parents, Hay said. There were no differences in how much mothers and fathers worried about their daughters and sons, she said.

Worrying was also slightly greater in black families than in white ones, the results showed. Participants in the study included 141 white and 66 black families, with each family consisting of an adult child and two parents.

The study confirms that worrying is still very much a part of family relationships once children have grown and moved out, she said.

“I think the take-home message would be that to a certain degree it is normal to worry about your adult child or to worry about your parents, even if it is before they get very old and have health problems,” she said.

Hay did the research with Karen Fingerman, professor of developmental and family studies at Purdue University, and Eva Lefkowitz, professor of human development and family studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

University of Florida researchers warn that the same warm-weather activities that create lasting childhood memories are some of the leading causes of pediatric foot and ankle burns in the southeastern United States.

In what is thought to be the largest such evaluation to date, UF burn experts found that 69 percent of the 155 pediatric foot and ankle burns reviewed were caused by children walking on hot ashes, coals and embers — with some injuries occurring as long as a day or more after the fires were thought to be extinguished. Most of these youngsters were barefoot or wearing footwear that did not fully cover their feet, such as sandals.

“We wanted to look at our experience with these burns because it appeared to us, anecdotally, that we were treating a fair number of children with burns isolated to the feet,” said Dr. Elizabeth Beierle, a UF associate professor of pediatric surgery and the principal investigator of the study, published in the January/February edition of the Journal of Burn Care and Research. “We felt that there may be a pattern that could be identified that would lead us to potentially develop prevention strategies.”

In the retrospective study, researchers used hospital and pediatric surgery databases to identify patients ages 8 months to 17 years admitted to the Shands at UF Burn Center between September 1992 and February 2006.

Two-thirds of the ash burns occurred after children came into contact with burning yard waste or garbage, nearly a third were caused by campfires and 6 percent involved encounters with a barbecue.

About half of the total cases studied — which also included scald, flame or contact burns — were classified as second-degree burns, and more than a third were third-degree burns, the most serious type.

“Clearly they’re not going to have this problem in Manhattan, where most people don’t even have space for a backyard,” Beierle said. “I think this is a problem in rural areas with warm weather because it tends to be more common to burn trash and leaves in the backyard in these areas.”

Dr. Wayne Cruse, a professor of surgery at the University of South Florida and assistant director of the Regional Burn Center at Tampa General Hospital, said about one-third of the pediatric burns treated at the Tampa General burn center are foot and ankle injuries.

“The study is a great review of these burn cases because it shows how the origins of these injuries tend to be region-specific,” he said. “We see about two to three cases a month, and in about half of the instances, the accidents occurred on the beach from kids running over ashes and hot sand that were supposed to extinguish a bonfire.”

These smoldering byproducts of burning yard debris, charcoal and campfire timbers posed the greatest risk to children under age 5. Lack of parental supervision, open sandals and running around outdoors with bare feet were some of the factors contributing to the burn injuries.

“The classic story is that a 2-year-old goes running outside through the ashes without footwear and gets burned,” Beierle said. “In many cases parents burned yard trimmings or trash and didn’t put water on the underlying coals to properly extinguish the fire. They just thought it was out because there weren’t open flames any longer.”

Cruse said the burns can be easily prevented by using common sense when families make outdoor fires.

“Parental supervision is paramount and proper closed footwear is also very important in the presence of a fire,” he said. “But the best preventative modality is to learn how to extinguish the fires appropriately. The best resource that tells you how to do that is the Boy Scouts of America handbook.”

Although a smaller percentage of the ash foot and ankle burns required skin grafting compared with the other types of burns studied, the average hospital stay was five days, which is valuable time lost for both the children and their parents, Beierle said.

“For a child or a parent, that’s five days out of school or five days out of work, often for both parents,” she said. “It’s not only a physically painful experience for the child and his or her family, but it has a painful economic impact as well. The point is that this is an easily preventable injury.”

High levels of the protein, known as Bc12, are found in the cells of lung cancer patients who smoke.

Previous UF research has shown that nicotine activates the protein, which helps tumor cells live long past their natural lifespan and resist chemotherapy. The new findings explain how the protein enables cancer cells to circumvent the body’s own efforts to change them back into healthy cells — or evade treatments designed to kill them.

Cancer is frequently associated with the accumulation of genetic aberrations in cells’ chromosomes. If these damaged cells can’t access their built-in repair system and subsequently survive long enough to divide and multiply, they pass along their mutations.

“If a cell experiences DNA damage, often that DNA can be repaired. But we found that Bc12 can block the DNA repair mechanism, which promotes tumor formation and genetic instability,” said Dr. Xingming Deng, an assistant professor in UF’s College of Medicine who is affiliated with the UF Shands Cancer Center. “This is a very important fundamental mechanism that explains why this protein has (a cancer-forming) function.”

Researchers say just one cell that develops a genetic mutation and is unable to repair itself could be enough for a full-blown tumor to develop.

“Lung cancer is the No. 1 killer of all cancer types; it is the most dangerous,” Deng said. “We wanted to find a way to treat lung cancer, how to prevent lung cancer, because lung cancer prognosis is very poor.”

Nearly 162,000 people will die from lung cancer in 2008, accounting for about 29 percent of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. More people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined.

In the study, UF scientists performed a series of laboratory experiments on lung cancer cells in culture that illuminated the molecular chain of events that allows Bc12 to disrupt DNA repair.

Deng also plans to explore the possibility that nicotine-induced activation of Bc12 can be blocked to increase chemotherapy’s effectiveness.

“This will probably help us in the future find ways to prevent tumors,” said Deng, adding that the protein could be a target for drug development. “We can target this mechanism and somehow find a way to prevent tumor formation.”

The research was funded by about $1.2 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute. FAMRI was established in 1997 as a result of a $300 million settlement between airline flight attendants and the tobacco industry. The nonprofit organization awards grants for research focusing on smoking-related illnesses.

So concludes a group of researchers, including a scientist in the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute, who spent three years producing the first spatial map of global malaria risk in four decades.

The Malaria Atlas Project’s findings appear today in the online edition of the open-access medical journal, PLoS Medicine.

The Malaria Atlas Project, or MAP, found that 2.37 billion people were at risk of contracting malaria from Plasmodium faciparum, the most deadly malaria parasite for humans transmitted through the bites of infected Anopheles mosquitoes. Of that number, about 1 billion people live under a much lower risk of infection than was assumed under the previous historical maps. The lower than expected risk extends across Central and South America, Asia and even parts of Africa, the continent where malaria kills the vast majority of its victims and where risk has historically been classified as universally high.

“This gives some hope of pursuing malaria elimination because the prevalence isn’t as universally high as many people suppose,” said David Smith, a UF associate professor of zoology and a co-author of the paper. “It’s reasonable to think we can reduce or interrupt transmission in many places, but the prospects for success will improve if we make plans that are based on good information about malaria’s distribution.”

The MAP effort, a collaboration between Oxford University and the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, compiled information from national health statistics, tourist travel advisories, climate, mosquito vectors and surveys of malaria infection in nearly 5,000 communities and 87 countries. The project also incorporated information about how climatic conditions affect mosquito life cycles, and thus the likelihood of active transmission.

“One of my contributions was to help standardize prevalence estimates,” Smith said.

The new map is important in part because it offers hope that malaria could be eliminated in certain areas using currently available tools, such as bed nets treated with insecticide that kills mosquitoes, the researchers said. It will also help donors and international agencies target investments in control measures where they are most likely to achieve the biggest gains.

More than 500 million cases of malaria are reported annually. Of those afflicted, about one million die; 80 percent of them are children in sub-Saharan Africa.

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust. In accordance with the trust’s philosophy on open access, all the data and techniques tapped in the MAP are freely accessible via the project’s Web site at http://www.map.ox.ac.uk.

“Making data and maps more accessible on the worldwide web is a large part of the MAP’s philosophy of getting the science accessed, critiqued and used by a much wider range of users,” said the lead author of the paper, Carlos Guerra, of the University of Oxford.

The paper can be found at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050038.

Scientists studying rats induced to display a form of Parkinson’s disease discovered that a protein commonly found in brain cells can be toxic if — at one pinpoint location in its amino acid structure — it lacks a chemical compound called a phosphate.

When scientists used gene therapy to simulate a phosphate at this critical position, the rats’ brain cells didn’t develop the Parkinson-like pathology that would normally occur.

The finding provides new insight into the fundamentals of Parkinson’s disease and the role of an abundant yet mysterious brain protein known as alpha-synuclein, which is believed to help brain cells communicate but may have a more sinister role in the development of neurological diseases.

“We have another potential target for therapy, but there is a great deal left to discover,” said Nicholas Muzyczka, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the College of Medicine and an eminent scholar with the UF Genetics Institute. “This is one more piece of information about what might be causing the toxicity in Parkinson’s disease, and it gives us a little more to go on about what alpha-synuclein does in the brain.”

Generally located at the synapses of nerve cells, alpha-synuclein is believed to aid in brain function, possibly by helping cells communicate with one another by controlling the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine.

Mutations of alpha-synuclein may cause a rare, inherited form of Parkinson’s, and the protein has been found to be the major component of Lewy bodies, which are abnormal clusters of protein in the brain cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease.

The National Parkinson Foundation estimates 1.5 million Americans currently have Parkinson’s disease and about 60,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. It is caused by the death or impairment of certain nerve cells in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra. When these cells die, the body is deprived of dopamine, a neurotransmitter vital for movement.

“We know of several enzymes that can cause phosphorylation in the proper position of the alpha-synuclein protein,” said Oleg Gorbatyuk, an assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology. “Increasing their expression in brains afflicted with Parkinson’s disease could possibly provide a gene therapy approach to the disease.”

In experiments described in the Jan. 15 issue of PNAS, UF researchers used gene transfer to enhance the production of three versions of alpha-synuclein in the substantia nigra region on one side of the rats’ brains. The other side was not treated, for comparison purposes.

Of the types of alpha-synuclein, the one that simulated phosphorylation at position 129 of the protein was nontoxic. But the other versions of the protein all caused significant loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra.

“Adding a phosphate group is about the smallest thing that can possibly happen in biology,” said Mark R. Cookson, an investigator in the Cell Biology and Gene Expression Unit of the National Institute on Aging who was not involved in the research. “But this relatively minor, innocuous change can switch everything around from being a big problem to being no problem. This research really gives us an idea of some things going on in inherited cases of Parkinson’s disease, and if we use that genetic information as a handle to get into the common disease, it is possible to take this from genetics to a drug discovery program.”

Furthermore, the New World was colonized by approximately 1,000 to 5,000 people — a substantially higher number than the 100 or fewer individuals of previous estimates.

The developments, to be reported by University of Florida Genetics Institute scientists in Wednesday’s (Feb. 13) edition of PloS ONE, help shape understanding of how the Americas came to be populated — not through a single expansion event that is put forth in most theories, but in three distinct stages separated by thousands of generations.

“Our model makes for a more interesting, complex scenario than the idea that humans diverged from Asians and expanded into the New World in a single event,” said Connie Mulligan, an associate professor of anthropology at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and assistant director of the UF Genetics Institute. “If you think about it, these people didn’t know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum, but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World. So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years. It wasn’t paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place.”

UF scientists analyzed DNA sequences from Native American, New World and Asian populations with the understanding that modern DNA is forged by an accumulation of events in the distant past, and merged their findings with data from existing archaeological, geological and paleoecological studies.

The result is a unified, interdisciplinary theory of the “peopling” of the New World, which shows a gradual migration and expansion of people from Asia through Siberia and into Beringia starting about 40,000 years ago; a long waiting period in Beringia where the population size remained relatively stable; and finally a rapid expansion into North America through Alaska or Canada about 15,000 years ago.

“This was the raw material, the original genetic source for all of the Americas,” said Michael Miyamoto, a professor and associate chairman of zoology in UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “You can think of the people as a distinct group blocked by glaciers to the east. They had already been west, and had no reason to go back. They had entered this waiting stage and for 20,000 years, generations were passing and genetic differences were accumulating. By looking at the kinds and frequencies of these mutations in modern populations, we can get an idea of when the mutations arose and how many people were around to carry them.”

Working with mitochondrial DNA — passed exclusively from mothers to their children — and nuclear DNA, which contains genes from both parents, UF scientists essentially added genetic information to what had been known about the archaeology, changes in climate and sea level, and geology of Beringia.

The result is a detailed scenario for the timing and scale of the initial migration to the Americas, more comparable to an exhaustive video picture rather than a single snapshot in time.

“Their technique of reading population history by using coalescence rates to analyze genetic data is very impressive — innovative anthropology and edge-of-the-seat population study,” said Henry C. Harpending, a distinguished professor and endowed chairman of anthropology at the University of Utah and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who was not involved with the research. “The idea that people were stuck in Beringia for a long time is obvious in retrospect, but it has never been promulgated. But people were in that neighborhood before the last glacial maximum and didn’t get into North America until after it. It’s very plausible that a bunch of them were stuck there for thousands of years.”

As for Beringia, sea levels rose about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, submerging the land and creating the Bering Strait, which now separates North America from Siberia with more than 50 miles of open, frigid water.

“Our theory predicts much of the archeological evidence is underwater,” said Andrew Kitchen, a Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department at UF who participated in the research. “That may explain why scientists hadn’t really considered a long-term occupation of Beringia.”

UF researchers believe that their synthesis of a large number of different approaches into a unified theory will create a platform for scientists to further analyze genomic and non-genetic data as they become available.

Reporting Feb. 7 in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Florida, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and the biotechnology company DNA2.0 describe how they reconstructed proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth’s temperature over the ages.

“By studying proteins encoded by these primordial genes, we are able to infer information about the environmental conditions of the early Earth,” said Eric Gaucher, president of scientific research at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville and the study’s lead scientist. “Genes evolve to adapt to the environmental conditions in which an organism lives. Resurrecting these since long-extinct genes gives us the opportunity to analyze and dissect the ancient surroundings that have been recorded in the gene sequence. The genes essentially behave as dynamic fossils.”

The team wanted to measure Earth’s temperature billions of years ago to learn more about life on Earth during the Precambrian period. But instead of taking the traditional route — analyzing rock formations or measuring isotopes in fossils — they opted to do what they knew best: protein reconstruction.

“We’ve analyzed the temperature stability of proteins inside organisms that were around during those times,” said Omjoy Ganesh, a structural biologist in the UF College of Medicine’s department of biochemistry and molecular biology. “The ancient oceans were warmer. For ocean organisms living during that time to survive, the proteins within them had to be stable at high temperatures.”

After scanning multiple databases, the scientists struck gold with a protein called elongation factor, which helps bacteria string together amino acids to form other proteins. Each bacterial species has a slightly different form of the protein: Bacteria that live in warmer environments have resilient elongation factors, which can withstand high temperatures without melting. The opposite is true for bacteria that live in cold environments.

Armed with information about when bacterial species evolved, the scientists rebuilt 31 elongation factors from 16 ancient species. By comparing the heat sensitivity of the reconstructed proteins, they were able to discern how Earth’s temperature changed over the ages.

“Although the concept of ancestral gene resurrection was proposed more than 40 years ago, the development of efficient gene synthesis has only recently enabled the synthesis of ancestral genes,” said Sridhar Govindarajan, co-author of the paper and vice president of informatics at DNA2.0, a California-based company that constructed the genes. “Gene synthesis allows for a direct route from a calculated gene sequence to a protein that can be tested for function in the laboratory.”

Almost all bacteria are related if you go back far enough, the scientists said. Even organisms that like extreme heat are related to organisms that are very sensitive to temperature change. The key is determining when, during Earth’s history, each type of bacteria came into existence.

“Remarkably, our results are nearly identical to geologic studies that estimate the temperature trend for the ancient ocean over the same time period. The convergence of results from biology and geology show that Earth’s environment has continuously been changing since life began, and life has adapted appropriately to survive,” Gaucher said.

The study findings, published in a recent issue of Urologic Nursing, underscore the need for health-care practitioners to educate their patients about the physical and psychological effects the surgery will have on their everyday lives.

“The effects of this treatment are quite immediate and can lead to depression and frustration,” said Bryan Weber, an assistant professor in the UF College of Nursing and the study’s lead author. “After an initial diagnosis of prostate cancer, men may be so focused on eradicating the disease that they don’t realize the effects the treatment will have on their quality of life, both for them and their families.”

Prostate cancer is the No. 1 cancer among men, excluding skin cancer, and with more baby boomers reaching their 50s and 60s, it’s expected to grow even more prevalent, with more than 200,000 cases diagnosed in 2007. Given the various treatment options for prostate cancer, men who undergo radical prostatectomy may initially decide that the risk of physical dysfunction is worth the benefit of improved likelihood of survival. But many don’t know what to expect in the months after surgery, Weber said.

Physical side effects of prostate cancer treatment limit daily activities and may interfere with a man’s sense of masculinity and self-confidence. Urinary incontinence, for example, requires the use of pads that add considerable bulkiness to clothing and create concern about leakage and odor. Sexual dysfunction interferes with a man’s sense of self and may limit the relationship he has with his significant other, Weber said.

In the study, UF researchers evaluated 72 men six weeks after they underwent prostatectomy. In addition to measuring participants’ physical function and assessing whether they had urinary and bowel symptoms and sexual dysfunction, the researchers also evaluated measures of self-confidence, social support and uncertainty about the disease and treatment. Most participants were white, married and employed full-time or retired, and most had some college education.

Fifty-seven percent of the men reported low to moderate social support, indicating that many of the topics proved embarrassing for them to discuss with others, Weber said. The level of social support was significantly related to urinary problems, revealing that men with urinary incontinence may need more support than those with more control.

“Within the first 100 days of diagnosis, men may be so distressed and so focused on curing their cancer that they don’t focus on these side effects, which is what makes it imperative for health-care professionals to educate them on ways that their lives will change and how they can cope,” Weber said. “Almost immediately after treatment, men may experience depression, awkwardness and emasculation, which will have a great effect on their quality of life.”

Weber suggests that clinicians assess men and their support systems, identify changes in physical function that may occur as a result of treatment, and direct them to products and services designed to help them cope with the immediate effects of sexual dysfunction and urinary and bowel incontinence.

For example, Weber said numerous medications aim to ease sexual dysfunction, but many men may not realize the great expense associated with these drugs or be aware of their potential side effects. Similarly, a number of options for urinary incontinence exist, such as boxer shorts that are designed to hold urinary pads, lessening the embarrassment of having to wear such items.

“Education and counseling should be provided to these men to better inform and prepare patients for the physical side effects they are likely to experience postoperatively,” Weber said. “Since we know that men are less likely to rely on support groups or be more embarrassed to discuss these items with family and friends, it’s even more vital for health-care professionals to stress these issues and include options for patients. Men need to be introduced to different options, make choices and regain control over their lives.”

Health practitioners need to remember to thoroughly discuss the consequences of treatment with patients, and information should be tailored to each individual’s needs, said Joyce Davison, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Urologic Sciences.

“Once diagnosed with prostate cancer, men vary with regard to the type and amount of information they wish to access and the degree of decision control they wish to have,” Davison said. “It is up to health-care professionals to assess and provide information and support accordingly.”

“Our objective was to understand whether beach sand could pose a health risk to beachgoers,” said Tonya D. Bonilla, a doctoral student in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of infectious diseases and pathology who studied three South Florida beaches over a two-year period to see whether human health risks appear to increase based on the level of sand exposure.

“What we found was that there was no increased health risk due to exposure to sand on the upper beach,” Bonilla said. “However, the longer the period of time people spent in the water and in the wet sand, the higher the probability that they would experience some gastrointestinal illness.”

Bonilla’s research was conducted at Fort Lauderdale Beach, Hollywood Beach and Hobie Beach. There were 882 respondents who participated in the pilot epidemiological study and 609 who participated in the control group.

Beachgoers were made aware of the study and, if willing to participate, were given a survey form to complete four days after their beach visit. The questionnaire focused on type and duration of beach activity and inquired whether participants became ill during the four days after the beach visit. The control group consisted of people randomly chosen from the general population who had not visited a beach in at least nine days.

Jay M. Fleisher, an associate professor in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Nova Southeastern University, analyzed the epidemiological data collected in the study.

“Our findings suggest that there is an increased risk of acquiring gastroenteritis the longer a bather either sits in the wet sand or stays in the water,” Fleisher said. “The probability that an individual will become sick increases over expected non-exposure rates from six out of 1,000 people for a 10-minute exposure to approximately 12 out of 100 people for a two-hour stay in the wet sand.

“For exposure to water, these rates increase from seven out of 1,000 people affected over expected non-exposure rates for a 10-minute stay to approximately seven out of 100 people exposed for a 70-minute stay,” Fleisher added. “Both show a clear dose-response relationship in risk with increasing time of exposure. These estimates of increased risk might seem small, but when one considers how many people use this beach in the course of a year, we can end up with a substantial public health problem.”

While fecal indicator levels in the near-shore waters of South Florida’s recreational beaches are routinely monitored, sand samples from the surf zone — the wet sand — and the upper beach are not. Beach sand may become contaminated by gull droppings and other sources of fecal-derived organisms that then diffuse into wet sand and water, said Bonilla, whose research was published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. Her work, part of her master’s thesis work at Nova Southeastern University, was funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. She has continued her water-quality work at UF, where she is pursuing her doctoral degree.

Her former mentor, Andrew Rogerson, a professor of biology who is now at Marshall University in West Virginia, is a study co-author. Their findings suggest water is an important factor for pathogen transmission.

“At this point, we don’t know whether the increased health risk is due to pathogen exposure,” Bonilla said. “To really understand this, a more comprehensive and targeted epidemiological approach is needed.”

Helena Solo-Gabriele, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Miami and a collaborator in the National Science Foundation’s Oceans and Human Health Center, is working on understanding how fecal indicator levels correlate with pathogen levels in her own research. Her work primarily focuses on environmental measurements, specifically of microbial indicators in water.

In addition to evaluating the potential human health effects of microbes from beach sands, Bonilla’s paper provides new information concerning the reservoirs and sources of fecal indicator bacteria, Solo-Gabriele said.

“This study emphasizes that beach sands serve as the most significant reservoir of fecal indicator bacteria, and shows that the situation is not isolated to one specific beach, but can be widespread across regions,” she said. “Bonilla and her collaborators provide a mechanistic explanation for the potential spread of fecal indicator bacteria through gull droppings and subsequent distribution through natural diffusion in the environment, as well as by people walking on the beach. The suggestion of an association between fecal indicator levels in sand and illness rates among humans is very significant and points to the need to conduct more comprehensive studies of beach sand.”

Researchers used real life experimental situations to discover that verbal abuse so flusters people that they lose much of their problem-solving and creative talents.

“When someone is screaming at you, you’re too busy thinking about the incident and how to deal with it to think about much else,” said Amir Erez, a University of Florida management professor.

Not only did single episodes of rude treatment have damaging consequences, but simply imagining being on the receiving end of a tirade hampered workers’ ability to perform routine tasks, be innovative and be good team players, Erez said.

“We found that even when the rude behavior is pretty mild, it impairs a person’s cognitive functioning and has spillover effects in how they treat their co-workers,” he said.

The unusual study, by Erez and Christine Porath, a management professor at the University of Southern California, appears in the October issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

The disruption of mental functioning because of someone’s lousy manners is serious business in a world that has transitioned from the brawn of an industrial economy to the mindset of the information age Erez said. The problem is magnified because complaints of incivility in society are on the upswing about everything from inconsiderate cell phone use to road rage, he said.

Reflecting the adage that more bees are caught with honey than vinegar, Erez believes employers would be well advised to buck the rise in incivility. “As more and more jobs within organizations become increasingly complex and require higher levels of cognitive functioning and creativity, anything that interferes with that process is likely to have an impact, not only on individual job performance but on the productivity of the labor force as a whole,” he said.

Other studies have examined self-reports from employees about workplace rudeness. This research, however, actually measured how discourteous treatment impedes worker performance on specific tasks, he said.

The researchers tested three scenarios involving rude behavior on a series of brainstorming tasks, which included solving anagrams and finding creative uses for a brick, on 275 students enrolled in management classes at UF and the University of Southern California.

One set of participants observed a confederate arrive six minutes late to the experiment, apologize and explain that a class across campus was not let out on time. After the confederate was dismissed for being too late, the experimenter unleashed a barrage of criticism about students being unprofessional compared with those at other universities. A control group saw only a confederate being dismissed for being too late.

A second set of participants arrived at the scheduled test site where a small, easy-to-miss sign was posted on a door that was ajar to a room where a person seated at a desk greeted them by saying “Can’t you read? There is a sign on the door that tells you the experiment will be in (another room). But you didn’t even bother to look at the door, did you? Instead, you preferred to disturb me and ask for directions when you can clearly see that I am busy. I am not a secretary here, I am a busy professor.” Members of a control group were simply told that the room had been changed and given directions to the new location.

In a third scenario, participants merely imagined themselves in one of these two situations where rudeness was encountered.

Compared to the control group, the students who were treated rudely, or even imagined they had been, solved fewer anagrams, recalled less information and found fewer and less creative uses for a brick. They might suggest it be “used as a door stop,” for example, instead of “selling it on e-Bay” or “hanging it from a wall in the museum and calling it abstract art.”

The study also tested participants’ willingness to help by having the experimenter drop some books or pencils. Whether the rude behavior was directed at them by the experimenter or delivered by a third party assumingly unrelated to the study or the experimenter, they picked up fewer books and pencils, if they chipped in to help at all.

Robert Sutton, a Stanford University professor of management science and engineering and author of the book “The No Asshole Rule,” said the study provides “some of the strongest evidence I’ve seen that mean-spirited behavior can undermine productivity and creativity. This well-crafted research shows that when organizations allow rude employees to run roughshod over others, it not only creates uncivilized workplaces, it is just plain bad business.”

The partnership, which will extend Moffitt’s innovative model of comprehensive patient care to UF and Shands cancer programs, was outlined at a joint news conference in UF’s new Cancer-Genetics Research Complex.

“As a statewide resource for cancer research and treatment, Moffitt seeks to foster relationships such as these to maximize the state’s investment in addressing cancer,” said Dr. William S. Dalton, president/CEO and center director of Tampa-based Moffitt. “We feel this partnership will enhance Florida’s national and international reputation in cancer care and research, and ultimately contribute to improving the overall standard of cancer care in Florida and increase the state’s profile in cancer care and research in the state and beyond.”

Under the arrangement, crafted through extensive discussions between Dalton, UF College of Medicine Dean Bruce Kone, Shands HealthCare CEO Tim Goldfarb and other leaders, the parties will look for opportunities to collaborate across the spectrum of patient care, research and educational activities. The participants signed a memorandum of understanding at the news conference.

“We’re looking for synergies,” Kone said. “Our efforts will leverage their best assets and our best assets to deliver world-class care and discovery.”

As part of this collaboration, Moffitt’s Total Cancer Care, or TCC, model and approach to a cancer patient’s life journey will be integrated with the cancer program at Shands at UF, the academic medical center in Gainesville, renowned for its pioneering work in such areas as bone marrow transplantation and radiosurgery.

The TCC model is widely admired for its emphasis on quality improvement, the needs of surviving family members, and tissue and data collection for the purpose of tailoring therapies for individual patients, Kone said.

This alliance comes 18 months after of the opening of the Cancer-Genetics Research Complex on the UF campus. Additionally, Shands at UF is preparing for the completion of its $388 million, 500,000-square-foot cancer hospital in 2009. Cancer patients treated there will gain access to state-of-the-art therapies in a comfortable, healing environment.

Goldfarb said he especially likes the arrangement because it is “additive, not exclusive.”

“This partnership doesn’t disturb any relationship that our organizations have with other parties, in fact we welcome others to join us,” Goldfarb said. “Through this alliance, we are uniting our intellectual, technological and scientific resources to truly lead cancer care for the benefit of Florida residents. Our impact together will be outstanding. This is an exciting day for people throughout our region.”

In addition to implementing the TCC initiative, initial collaborations will include joint research, co-authored scientific publications, joint recruitment and philanthropy.

Working with the National Cancer Institute, Moffitt will seek to integrate the UF and Shands cancer program into Moffitt’s NCI comprehensive cancer center designation, held by only 39 cancer centers nationwide. Inclusion should give UF scientists more opportunities at garnering NCI grants for collaborative projects with Moffitt investigators, Kone said. It also will give UF and Shands patients’ better access to large-scale clinical trials of new therapies.

UF President Bernie Machen expressed his optimism about the progress made thus far.

“This collaboration has the real potential to have a major impact on every Florida citizen, because cancer touches all of us,” he said. “Clearly this is just the beginning and a great deal of work is ahead of us, but the spirit of collaboration that has gotten us to this point is practically unheard of and it bodes well for the future of these efforts.”

An archive of the news conference is now available at http://streaming.video.ufl.edu/~video/20080123-pressconference.asx.

For more information, contact:
Michelle Foley, Moffitt Cancer Center, 813-745-1505, Michelle.Foley@moffitt.org
Kim Jamerson, Shands HealthCare, 352-265-0373, jamerk@shands.ufl.edu
Tom Fortner, UF College of Medicine, 352-273-5814, tfortner@ufl.edu

About Moffitt Cancer Center
Located in Tampa, Fla., Moffitt Cancer Center (www.moffitt.org) is the only Florida-based cancer center with the NCI designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center for its excellence in research and contributions to clinical trials, prevention and cancer control. Moffitt currently has 15 affiliates in Florida, one in Georgia and two in Puerto Rico. Additionally, Moffitt is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a prestigious alliance of the country’s leading cancer centers, and is listed in U.S. News & World Report as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” for cancer as well as for ear, nose and throat. Moffitt’s sole mission is to contribute to the prevention and cure of cancer.

About UF Health Science Center
The University of Florida Health Science Center — the most comprehensive academic health center in the Southeast — is dedicated to high-quality programs of education, research, patient care and public service. The Health Science Center encompasses the colleges of Dentistry, Public Health and Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine, as well as the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital and an academic campus in Jacksonville offering graduate education programs in dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy. Patient-care activities are provided through teaching hospitals and a network of clinics in Gainesville and Jacksonville. The Health Science Center also has a statewide presence through satellite medical, dental and nursing clinics staffed by UF health professionals, and through affiliations with community-based health-care facilities stretching from Hialeah and Miami to the Florida Panhandle.