The Pacific Northwest is known for its spectacular views and dark and rainy beaches. There are deep green rainforests filled with redwoods and tall trees. With its miles and miles of hiking trails, it’s known for its mountains, the Columbia River Gorge, and Lewis and Clark’s expedition.

I think it’s also the perfect area for writers and mysteries—and that’s the reason why I set my latest cozy series along the Oregon Coast. I had the privilege of living in Oregon for two years and took multiple trips to the coast to enjoy the water, wildlife, and hiking.

In Death Bee Comes Her, the first installment in my new Oregon Honeycomb mysteries, Wren Johnson lives in a fictional coastal town that combines the charms of several of my favorite places to visit. The people there are quirky, smart, and from sturdy pioneer stock, from Wren’s Aunt Eloise, to loggers, surfers, and crab and whale boat operators.

With fall and winter holidays coming up, many will be pondering the relationship between food and sleep. Researchers led by Professor Masashi Yanagisawa at the University of Tsukuba in Japan hope they can focus people on the important middlemen in the equation: bacterial microbes in the gut. Their detailed study in mice revealed the extent to which bacteria can change the environment and contents of the intestines, which ultimately impacts behaviors like sleep.

The experiment itself was fairly simple. The researchers gave a group of mice a powerful cocktail of antibiotics for four weeks, which depleted them of intestinal microorganisms. Then, they compared intestinal contents between these mice and control mice who had the same diet. Digestion breaks food down into bits and pieces called metabolites. The research team found significant differences between metabolites in the microbiota-depleted mice and the control mice. As Professor Yanagisawa explains, “we found more than 200 metabolite differences between mouse groups. About 60 normal metabolites were missing in the microbiota-depleted mice, and the others differed in the amount, some more and some less than in the control mice.”

The team next set out to determine what these metabolites normally do. Using metabolome set enrichment analysis, they found that the biological pathways most affected by the antibiotic treatment were those involved in making neurotransmitters, the molecules that cells in the brain use to communicate with each other. For example, the tryptophan–serotonin pathway was almost totally shut down; the microbiota-depleted mice had more tryptophan than controls, but almost zero serotonin. This shows that without important gut microbes, the mice could not make any serotonin from the tryptophan they were eating. The team also found that the mice were deficient in vitamin B6 metabolites, which accelerate production of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine.

Adagrasib demonstrated an acceptable safety profile and promising clinical activity in pretreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and other solid tumors with a KRAS G12C mutation.

An unorthodox symbiotic theory about the origin of eukaryotes’ defining characteristic may soon be put to the test.

Scientists today are quick to point out that they are still basing their models on life as we know it: Carbon-based and reliant on organic compounds and water…

In 2001, the first author (S.N.) led the publication of a book entitled “Geochemistry and the origin of life” in collaboration with Dr. Andre Brack aiming to figure out geo- and astro-chemical processes essential for the emergence of life. Since then, a great number of research progress has been achieved in the relevant topics from our group and others, ranging from the extraterrestrial inputs of life’s building blocks, the chemical evolution on Earth with the aid of mineral catalysts, to the fossilized records of ancient microorganisms. Here, in addition to summarizing these findings for the origin and early evolution of life, we propose a new hypothesis for the generation and co-evolution of photosynthesis with the redox and photochemical conditions on the Earth’s surface. Besides these bottom-up approaches, we introduce an experimental study on the role of water molecules in the life’s function, focusing on the transition from live, dormant, and dead states through dehydration/hydration. Further spectroscopic studies on the hydrogen bonding behaviors of water molecules in living cells will provide important clues to solve the complex nature of life.

Keywords: building blocks, biopolymers, polymerization, extraterrestrial inputs, mineral surfaces, metabolism, photosynthesis, water, hydrogen bonding (9: 3–10)

Life is generally characterized by the following three functions [1]: metabolism: the ability to capture energy and material resources, staying away from thermodynamic equilibrium, replication: the ability to process and transmit heritable information to progeny, and compartmentalization: the ability to keep its components together and distinguish itself from the environment. These functions are operated by biopolymers such as proteins, DNAs, RNAs, and phospholipids ( Figure 1 ). Proteins are made of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds. DNAs and RNAs are made of nucleotides (composed of (deoxy)ribose and nucleobases) bound by phosphodiester linkages. Phospholipids are made of two fatty acids esterified to a glycerol phosphate molecule.

Knowing which proteins are key to protection from disease, and the deficiencies in expression or activity that are hallmarks of disease, can inform individualized medicine and the development of new therapies.

Twenty years after the release of the human genome, the genetic “blueprint” of human life, an international research team, including the University of British Columbia’s Chris Overall, has now mapped the first draft sequence of the human proteome.

Their work was published Oct. 16 in Nature Communications and announced today by the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO).

“Today marks a significant milestone in our overall understanding of human life,” says Overall, a professor in the faculty of dentistry and a member of the Centre for Blood Research at UBC. “Whereas the human genome provides a complete ‘blueprint’ of human genes, the human proteome identifies the individual building blocks of life encoded by this blueprint: proteins. ” Proteins interact to shape everything from life-threatening diseases to cellular structure in our bodies.”

Several startups are now pursuing the potential of enzymatic synthesis as a faster and more efficient route for synthesizing longer DNA sequences than is possible with traditional chemical means.

Analysis revealed that variants in the HMGCR gene region, which represent proxies for statin treatment, were associated with overall cancer risk, suggesting that statins could lower overall cancer risk.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins may reduce cancer risk in humans through a pathway unrelated to cholesterol, says a study published today in eLife.

Statins reduce levels of LDL-cholesterol, the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol, by inhibiting an enzyme called HMG-CoA-reductase (HMGCR). Clinical trials have previously demonstrated convincing evidence that statins reduce the risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases. But evidence for the potential effect of statins to reduce the risk of cancer is less clear.

“Previous laboratory studies have suggested that lipids including cholesterol play a role in the development of cancer, and that statins inhibit cancer development,” explains lead author Paul Carter, Cardiology Academic Clinical Fellow at the Department of Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, UK. “However, no trials have been designed to assess the role of statins for cancer prevention in clinical practice. We decided to assess the potential effect of statin therapy on cancer risk using evidence from human genetics.”

Scientists long believed its function was simply to coordinate movements. Now they suspect it could do much more.

Match and mix.

The origin of species is more complex than Darwin envisaged.

Science & technology Oct 3rd 2020 edition.