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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,137

Have you ever heard of the yeast Candida auris? If not, you are most likely not the only one since it hasn’t garnered much attention. Yet. That could change.

Candida auris’s story begins in 2009 when a Japanese woman in her 70s is admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital. Her ear sometimes discharges something, and the doctors routinely use a cotton swab to collect samples of it. To determine what is causing the infection, they analyze the sample.

It turns out that a yeast, different from other known yeasts, is at play. We’ve all heard of baker’s yeast, a friendly microorganism used to make beer and bread. Candida auris and other Candida yeast species are extremely different; they cause serious and persistent infections that are difficult to treat with known antibiotics.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When it comes to predicting disasters brought on by extreme events (think earthquakes, pandemics or “rogue waves” that could destroy coastal structures), computational modeling faces an almost insurmountable challenge: Statistically speaking, these events are so rare that there’s just not enough data on them to use predictive models to accurately forecast when they’ll happen next.

But a team of researchers from Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology say it doesn’t have to be that way.

In a new study in Nature Computational Science, the scientists describe how they combined statistical algorithms — which need less data to make accurate, efficient predictions — with a powerful machine learning technique developed at Brown and trained it to predict scenarios, probabilities and sometimes even the timeline of rare events despite the lack of historical record on them.

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BERLIN — A biotechnologist in Germany is developing the world’s first artificial womb facility, and it lets you choose baby’s characteristics from a menu. EctoLife, able to grow 30,000 babies a year, is said to be based on over fifty years of groundbreaking scientific research.

The concept is the brainchild of Berlin-based Hashem Al-Ghaili. He says the facilities would allow infertile couples to conceive a baby and become the true biological parents of their own offspring.

A so-called ‘Elite Package’ would allow you to genetically engineer the embryo before implanting it into the artificial womb. Everything from eye and hair color to strength, height, and intelligence can be chosen, and inherited genetic diseases can be avoided.

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Many medical treatments have toxicities, sometimes called adverse events, which can complicate a patient’s treatment regimen. Treatment-related adverse events can range from mild symptoms, like transient fatigue or nausea, to severe and lethal occurrences, including cardiac toxicity.

Cardiac toxicity, which manifests as indications like acute myocardial infarction (MI), and angina pectoris (AP), can occur in cancer survivors, even several years following successful treatment. The onset of heart-related adverse events long after treatment is known as late cardiac toxicity, which can become a lethal complication of cancer therapies like radiation and chemotherapy.

The mechanism underlying late cardiac toxicity remains poorly understood. Further, limited interventions to prevent or minimize these symptoms exist. This creates an urgent need to study this relationship and develop therapeutics which can stop or prevent late cardiac toxicity in cancer survivors.

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S cientifically, it’s called ectogenesis, a term coined by J.B.S. Haldane in 1924. A hugely influential science popularizer, Haldane did for his generation what Carl Sagan did later in the century. He got people thinking and talking about the implications of science and technology on our civilization, and did not shy away from inventing new words in order to do so. Describing ectogenesis as pregnancy occurring in an artificial environment, from fertilization to birth, Haldane predicted that by 2074 this would account for more than 70 percent of human births.

His prediction may yet be on target.

In discussing the idea in his work Daedalus –a reference to the inventor in Greek mythology who, through his inventions, strived to bring humans to the level of the gods–Haldane was diving into issues of his time, namely eugenics and the first widespread debates over contraception and population control.

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It was once thought that inflammation and immune responses in the brain were limited; that is was a so-called immune privileged organ. But there is increasing evidence to the contrary. New research has shown that immune cells called mucosal-associated invariant T cells (MAITs) can serve critical roles in the brain that reduce the levels of damaging reactive oxygen species, which prevents neuroinflammation, and protects learning and memory. The findings have been reported in Nature Immunology.

In this study, researchers genetically engineered mice so MAITs would no longer be produced. These mice were compared to a normal group and mice and while cognitive function was the same in both groups to start with, difference appeared as the mice approached middle age. The MAIT-deficient mice had difficulty forming new memories.

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But even junk has hidden treasures. Studies found variations in these unsequenced regions were intricately involved in human health, from aging to conditions like cancer and developmental disorders like autism. In 2022, a landmark study finally resolved the genomic unknown, completely sequencing the remaining eight percent of undeciphered DNA remaining.

Now, scientists are discovering that some genetic sequences encode proteins that lack any obvious ancestors, what geneticists call orphan genes. Some of these orphan genes, the researchers surmise, arose spontaneously as we evolved, unlike others that we inherited from our primate ancestors. In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, researchers in Ireland and Greece found around 155 of these smaller versions of DNA sequences called open reading frames (or ORF) make microproteins potentially important to a healthy cell’s growth or connected to an assortment of ailments like muscular dystrophy and retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease affecting the eyes.

“This is, I think, the first study looking at the specific evolutionary origins of these small ORFs and their microproteins,” Nikolaos Vakirlis, a scientist at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming” in Greece and first author of the paper, tells Inverse. It’s an origin, he says, that’s been mired in much question and mystery.

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Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have discovered that the energy management of inhibitory brain cells is different than that of excitatory cells in our brain. Why is that the case and what is the link with multiple sclerosis?

Brain cells are connected to each other by , the parts of the neuron that transmit electrical signals. To do this efficiently, axons are wrapped in myelin, a lipid-rich material which increases the speed at which electrical pulses are conducted. The importance of myelin becomes apparent in diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), where myelin is broken down, which has detrimental effects on .

As a result of myelin loss, the conduction of is disrupted, which also means that the energy costs of this process become much higher.

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