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Category: biological – Page 61

How early is your first memory?

For many of us, it is difficult to remember much of what went on before the age of two. But a new study from Trinity College Dublin has found that this memory loss might be preventable and reversible, with light.

“Infantile amnesia is the most ubiquitous form of ‘forgetting,’” Tomas Ryan, an associate professor at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and senior author of the paper, told Newsweek. “Despite its widespread relevance, little is known about the biological conditions underpinning this amnesia. As a society, we assume infant forgetting is an unavoidable fact of life, so we pay little attention to it.”

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Lasers are essential tools for observing, detecting, and measuring things in the natural world that we can’t see with the naked eye. But the ability to perform these tasks is often restricted by the need to use expensive and large instruments.

In a newly published cover-story paper in the journal Science, researcher Qiushi Guo demonstrates a novel approach for creating high-performance ultrafast lasers on nanophotonic chips. His work centers on miniaturizing mode-lock lasers—a unique laser that emits a train of ultrashort, coherent light pulses in femtosecond intervals, which is an astonishing quadrillionth of a second.

Ultrafast mode-locked lasers are indispensable to unlocking the secrets of the fastest timescales in nature, such as the making or breaking of molecular bonds during chemical reactions, or light propagation in a turbulent medium. The high-speed, pulse-peak intensity and broad-spectrum coverage of mode-locked lasers have also enabled numerous photonics technologies, including optical atomic clocks, biological imaging, and computers that use light to calculate and process data.

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A recent study published in AGU Advances examines how the conservation and protection of two Alaskan forests, Tongass and Chugach, are essential in fighting the effects of climate change due to their expanse for wildlife habitats, abundant carbon stocks, and landscape integrity. This study was led by researchers from Oregon State University and holds the potential to help scientists better understand the steps that need to be taken to mitigate the long-term effects of climate change by preserving the resources of today.

Tongass National Forest (Credit: Logan Berner)

“More thoroughly safeguarding those forests from industrial development would contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and species adaptation in the face of the severe ecological disruption that’s expected to occur over the next few decades as the climate rapidly gets warmer,” said Dr. Beverly Law, who is a Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology & Terrestrial Systems Science at Oregon State University and lead author of the study.

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A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines the use of Softbotics to mimic the movements of the ancient marine organism, pleurocystitid, which is estimated to have existed approximately 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first marine invertebrates to control their movements with a muscular stem. This study was led by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and holds the potential to help scientists use a new field known as Paleobionics to better understand the evolutionary history of extinct organisms with paleontological evidence.

Image of a Pleurocystitid fossil (inset) and the pleurocystitid robot replica developed for the study. (Credit: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering)

“Softbotics is another approach to inform science using soft materials to construct flexible robot limbs and appendages,” said Dr. Carmel Majidi, who is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of the study. “Many fundamental principles of biology and nature can only fully be explained if we look back at the evolutionary timeline of how animals evolved. We are building robot analogues to study how locomotion has changed.”

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Aging is a natural process that affects all living organisms, prompting gradual changes in their behavior and abilities. Past studies have highlighted several physiological factors that can contribute to aging, including the body’s immune responses, an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen (i.e., free radicals) and antioxidants, and sleep disturbances.

While the link between aging and these different factors is well-document, the connection between them is still poorly understood. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis recently identified an immune molecule that could play a key role in modulating the process of aging and the duration living organism’s lifespan.

Their paper, published in Neuron, was inspired by two independent research efforts at the university.

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Julia Eckert, biophysicist at the University of Queensland, recently uncovered nested forms of symmetry in mammalian tissues. This work is bringing the powerful math of fluid dynamics to the messy world of biology.

After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move.

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An excellent short review on structure and function of the hypothalamus, one of my favorite regions of the brain! Link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8488 #neuroscience #biology

The hypothalamus (“hypo” meaning below, and “thalamus” meaning bed) consists of regulatory circuits that support basic life functions that ensure survival. Sitting at the interface between peripheral, environmental, and neural inputs, the hypothalamus integrates these sensory inputs to influence a range of physiologies and behaviors. Unlike the neocortex, in which a stereotyped cytoarchitecture mediates complex functions across a comparatively small number of neuronal fates, the hypothalamus comprises upwards of thousands of distinct cell types that form redundant yet functionally discrete circuits. With single-cell RNA sequencing studies revealing further cellular heterogeneity and modern photonic tools enabling high-resolution dissection of complex circuitry, a new era of hypothalamic mapping has begun. Here, we provide a general overview of mammalian hypothalamic organization, development, and connectivity to help welcome newcomers into this exciting field.

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Toxins high-cite paper🤩

Title: ☎Dr. Sara Ragucci and Dr. Antimo Di Maro.

Read this review to have an overview of Mushrooms:

Here, we report the current status of the bioactive peptides isolated and characterized from mushrooms during the last 20 years, considering ‘peptide’ a succession from to 2 to 100 amino acid residues. According to this accepted biochemical definition, we adopt ~10 kDa as the upper limit of molecular weight for a peptide. In light of this, a careful revision of data reported in the literature was carried out. The search revealed that in the works describing the characterization of bioactive peptides from mushrooms, not all the peptides have been correctly classified according to their molecular weight, considering that some fungal proteins (10 kDa MW) have been improperly classified as ‘peptides’. Moreover, the biological action of each of these peptides, the principles of their isolation as well as the source/mushroom species were summarized.

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Progress update: Our latest AlphaFold model shows significantly improved accuracy and expands coverage beyond proteins to other biological molecules, including ligands.

Since its release in 2020, AlphaFold has revolutionized how proteins and their interactions are understood. Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs have been working together to build the foundations of a more powerful AI model that expands coverage beyond just proteins to the full range of biologically-relevant molecules.

Today we’re sharing an update on progress towards the next generation of AlphaFold. Our latest model can now generate predictions for nearly all molecules in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), frequently reaching atomic accuracy.

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