Lifeboat Foundation

Naked mole rats are rodents that are about the size of a mouse with a key difference, aside from having no fur — they’re extremely long-lived — reaching ages of around 40 years old. For comparison, lab mice live an average of about three and a half years. To explain their extensive lifespans, researchers have sought to pinpoint how naked mole rats evade the onset of age-related diseases like cancer. In doing so, they’ve identified a form of gelatinous substance called hyaluronan, which has anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties. Now, the question of whether the benefits of the naked mole rat’s abundant levels of this form of hyaluronan — called high molecular mass hyaluronic acid (HMM-HA) — can be exported to other species has recently drawn attention.

Published in Nature, Gorbunova and colleagues from the University of Rochester show that genetically modifying mice to harbor an enzyme that produces HMM-HA extends their lifespan. The researchers go on to show that increasing HMM-HA reduces the prevalence of cancer. Additionally, the nmrHAS2 gene improves the healthspan of mice by countering physiological dysfunction, as measured with a frailty score. These findings provide the first evidence that genes from long-lived species can be exported to other species, perhaps conferring benefits to humans one day.

Flat screen TVs that incorporate quantum dots are now commercially available, but it has been more difficult to create arrays of their elongated cousins, quantum rods, for commercial devices. Quantum rods can control both the polarization and color of light, to generate 3D images for virtual reality devices.

Using scaffolds made of folded DNA, MIT engineers have come up with a new way to precisely assemble arrays of quantum rods. By depositing quantum rods onto a DNA scaffold in a highly controlled way, the researchers can regulate their orientation, which is a key factor in determining the polarization of light emitted by the array. This makes it easier to add depth and dimensionality to a virtual scene.

“One of the challenges with quantum rods is: How do you align them all at the nanoscale so they’re all pointing in the same direction?” says Mark Bathe, an MIT professor of biological engineering and the senior author of the new study. “When they’re all pointing in the same direction on a 2D surface, then they all have the same properties of how they interact with light and control its polarization.”

Year 2020 Hopefully this is getting closer to a full antidote.

Temple researchers have identified the first genome to transmit the coronavirus.

In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been sleuthing to solve the riddle of the early history of SARS-CoV-2.

Continue reading “COVID-19 Patient Zero: Data Analysis Identifies the ‘Mother’ of All SARS-CoV-2 Genomes” »

In a recent study published in Nutrients, a group of researchers investigated the interactions between individual diets and the gut microbiome in seven volunteers, leveraging technological advancements and machine learning to inform personalized nutrition strategies and potential therapeutic targets.

Study: Unraveling the Gut Microbiome–Diet Connection: Exploring the Impact of Digital Precision and Personalized Nutrition on Microbiota Composition and Host Physiology. Image Credit: ART-ur/Shutterstock.com.

About 10% of people living with myositis—a rare inflammatory disease in which the immune system attacks healthy muscle cells—also are at risk for developing cancer. Determining which patients need screening and close follow-up is difficult.

“We screen a lot of people aggressively, and possibly unnecessarily,” says rheumatologist Christopher Mecoli, M.D., M.H.S., director of research operations and physician lead for the Myositis Precision Medicine Center of Excellence. This can lead to potential harms for patients such as radiation exposure, anxiety and false-positive test results that indicate a person has cancer when they actually do not.

The chatbot’s reasoning was “at times medically implausible or inconsistent, which can lead to misinformation or incorrect diagnosis, with significant implications,” the report noted.

The scientists also admitted some shortcomings with the research. The sample size was small, with 30 cases examined. In addition, only relatively simple cases were looked at, with patients presenting a single primary complaint.

It was not clear how well the chatbot would fare with more complex cases. “The efficacy of ChatGPT in providing multiple distinct diagnoses for patients with complex or rare diseases remains unverified.”

The idea that genetic modification can improve humanity isn’t new, but it has taken some interesting turns within the scientific community over the past few years. One of the most notable comes from the mind of He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist whose gene editing of human babies led to infamy and a prison sentence. Now, He, known as JK to friends, thinks that gene-edited humans could be the future of our species.

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Mixing and matching various strands of DNA can create versatile biological computer circuits that can take the square roots of numbers or solve quadratic equations.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Generic single-stranded oligonucleotides used as a uniform transmission signal can reliably integrate large-scale DNA integrated circuits with minimal leakage and high fidelity for general-purpose computing.