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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,058

Right now everyone is talking about mRNA vaccines, such as the Biontech-Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine — but what about DNA-vaccines? Will this be a vaccine type of the future?

Vaccines have saved millions of lives in the past century and for now, they’re the best way out of this crisis. There are exciting new prospects, waiting in the wings. The practice of vaccinating dates back thousands of years through rabbit spines, powdered cowpox and fearless scientists. Today, viral vectors and mRNA technology have been instrumental in fighting COVID-19. With DNA vaccines another technique is already been tested.

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A team of scientists from Korea and Egypt have discovered a better way to grow insect-hunting fungi in a lab, according to research published Wednesday in Frontiers in Microbiology.

The fungi can be grown using grains like brown rice but they do not produce much cordycepin, prompting the researchers to suggest insects—which are a richer protein source and the fungi target in nature—as a better alternative. fungi, which infect and zombify insects, are difficult to cultivate but contain chemicals that could help fight cancer and viruses and possibly help treat Covid-19.

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Have you ever suffered from jet lag or struggled after turning the clock forward or back an hour for daylight saving time? These are examples of you feeling the effects of what researchers call your biological clock, or circadian rhythm – the “master pacemaker” that synchronizes how your body responds to the passing of one day to the next.

This “clock” is made up of about 20,000 neurons in the hypothalamus. This area near the center of the brain coordinates your body’s unconscious functions, such as breathing and blood pressure. Humans aren’t the only lifeforms that have an internal clock system: All vertebrates – or mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish – have biological clocks, as do plants, fungi, and bacteria. Biological clocks are why cats are most active at dawn and dusk, and why flowers bloom at certain times of the day.

Chronobiology is the study of circadian rhythms, the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a 24-hour cycle. These natural processes respond principally to light and dark and affect most living things, including animals, plants, and microbes.

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Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have developed a new, machine learning-based technique to accurately classify the state of macrophages, which are key immune cells. Classifying macrophages is important because they can modify their behaviour and act as pro-or anti-inflammatory agents in the immune response. As a result, the work has a suite of implications for research and has the potential to one day make major societal impact.

For example, this new approach could be of use to drug designers looking to create therapies targeting diseases and auto-immune conditions such as diabetes, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis – all of which are impacted by cellular metabolism and macrophage function.

Because classifying macrophages allows scientists to directly distinguish between macrophage states – based only on their metabolic response under certain conditions – this new information could be used as a diagnosis tool, or to highlight the role of a particular cell type in a disease environment.

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The crystals are significantly larger than any that have ever been created previously. A hitherto unknown characteristic of colloidal crystals, highly organized three-dimensional arrays of nanoparticles, has been discovered by Northwestern University researchers very recently.

EVANSTON, Ill. — Northwestern University researchers have uncovered a previously unknown property of colloidal crystals, highly ordered three-dimensional arrays of nanoparticles.

The team engineered colloidal crystals with complementary strands of DNA and found that dehydration crumpled the crystals, breaking down the DNA hydrogen bonds. But when researchers added water, the crystals bounced back to their original state within seconds.

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