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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1476

United Parcel Service is taking package delivery to new heights, literally, with the purchase of 10 electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from Beta Technologies.

In an announcement Wednesday, Atlanta-based UPS said it will test the eVTOLs for use in its Express Air delivery network, focusing on small and medium markets. The company will operate the eVTOLs under its Flight Forward division, which is also exploring drone delivery.

The new type of aircraft, which looks like a cross between a plane and a helicopter, “unlocks new business models that don’t exist today,” Bala Ganesh, vice president of the UPS Advanced Technology Group, told CNBC. “For example, you can see a future where it’s carrying, let’s say 1000 pounds, 1500 pounds to rural hospitals,” and landing on a helipad instead of an airport.

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Cystic fibrosis is diagnosed in infants by use of sweat testing as elevated chloride concentrations in sweat are indicative of cystic fibrosis. The current approach can have poor sensitivity and require repeated testing. Toward the goal of developing a noninvasive, simple test for cystic fibrosis, Ray et al. devised an adhesive microfluidic device, or “sweat sticker,” to capture and analyze sweat in real time with colorimetric readout. Benchtop testing and validation in patients with cystic fibrosis showed that smartphone imaging of sweat stickers adhered to the skin could monitor sweat chloride concentrations. Results support further testing of the sweat stickers in larger studies.

The concentration of chloride in sweat remains the most robust biomarker for confirmatory diagnosis of cystic fibrosis (CF), a common life-shortening genetic disorder.

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In this study we aimed to generate mouse antibodies against epitopes found on NPCs. We isolated one antibody (NSC-6) and characterized it in detail. Mass spectrometry using human hippocampal tissue revealed the identity of the recognized antigen as BASP1, a signaling protein that plays a key role in neurite outgrowth and plasticity14,15,16,17,18,19, but here, we demonstrate that it might be utilized as a marker of NSCs in the adult brain.

Similar approaches to developing antibodies against mouse embryonic stem cells have been attempted in the past utilizing mice46,47 and rabbits48. Major drawbacks in mice include immune tolerance to mouse embryonic stem cell surface antigens leading to low antibody production, which could be overcome by immunizing rabbits instead. Regardless of the animal used as a host, a significant number of antibodies are typically generated against intracellular epitopes when animals are immunized with whole cells as was observed in our study.

We found that NSC-6-labeled BASP1 localizes to all radial glia at the E12 stage of brain development, while postnatally, it restricts to the neurogenic areas of the mouse brain but not the cortex. This expression pattern contrasts previous study using DAB-based immunolabeling for NAP-22 (BASP1 alias) in the adult rat brain, which demonstrated robust labeling of cerebral cortex27. While we do not know the basis of this difference in immunolabeling of cortex, possibilities include species variations between rat and mouse expression of BASP1, or differences in epitope recognition between the two antibodies used that could yield distinct patterns of immunoreactivity. Indeed, the two commercial BASP1 polyclonal antibodies did not immunolabel NSCs and in general, exhibited poor staining of the mouse brain tissue.

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We do a fundraiser for the collection of support signatures for the admissions of the German Party for Health Research to the German federal election and to the state elections in Berlin and Thuringia. Those three elections take place on September 26th 2021.

Attention: According to the law, we are not allowed to receive more than 1000 Euro per year per donor from donors, who live outside the European Union.

Unlike in other countries, in Germany parties with 5 % of the votes or more get into parliament and can be part of the government (a government coalition). Also parties get funds from the state, if they receive at least 0.5 % of the votes in the federal election or at least 1 % of the votes in a state election.

The donations are needed in a large part to hire people, who help to collect the required support signatures.

The goal of the fundraiser is 45 thousand Euro. That is 3000 Euro per state for the federal election for our 13 state associations and 3000 Euro for each of the two state elections.

Continue reading “Super Election Year Fundraising Campaign” | >

EPFL scientists have developed AI-powered nanosensors that let researchers track various kinds of biological molecules without disturbing them.

The tiny world of biomolecules is rich in fascinating interactions between a plethora of different agents such as intricate nanomachines (proteins), shape-shifting vessels (lipid complexes), chains of vital information (DNA) and energy fuel (carbohydrates). Yet the ways in which biomolecules meet and interact to define the symphony of life is exceedingly complex.

Scientists at the Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory in EPFL’s School of Engineering have now developed a new biosensor that can be used to observe all major biomolecule classes of the nanoworld without disturbing them. Their innovative technique uses nanotechnology, metasurfaces, infrared light and . The team’s research has just been published in Advanced Materials.

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Telomeres are large nucleoproteins structures that cap the ends of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. When a cell divides, a small portion of the telomere is lost due to the inherently incomplete process of genome replication. If left unchecked, over time the telomeres will reach a critically short length and the cell will face genomic instability, deterioration or death. To offset this shortening, an essential enzyme called telomerase rebuilds the telomeres by synthesizing new telomeric DNA repeats at chromosome ends. Kelly Nguyen’s group, in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, has solved the first complete atomic model of this enzyme and discovered a histone dimer as novel telomerase subunits.

Telomeres act as a barrier to protect the genetic information from progressive degradation arising from incomplete DNA replication. Additionally, telomeres distinguish the natural chromosome ends from DNA double-strand breaks, thereby avoiding an illicit DNA damage response and preventing intrachromosomal fusion. This makes telomeres essential for the preservation of genome and chromosome stability. In previous research, Kelly had discovered the architecture and composition of human holoenzyme at 8 Å (Ångströms) resolution using cryo-EM. However, to understand the governing telomerase mediated maintenance, a high-resolution structure of the complex was required.

To conduct this study, Kelly’s group, in collaboration with Kathleen Collins at the University of California, Berkeley, and Rhiju Das at Stanford University, prepared telomerase by extracting it from cultured human cells, before imaging using cryo-EM—resulting in the collection of almost 44000 images. This data was analyzed using RELION—a complex computer program developed at the LMB—in order to achieve the 3.4−3.8 Å structure of telomerase. From this Kelly and members of her group, George Ghanim, Adam Fountain, and Marike van Roon, were able to build the first complete atomic model of telomerase, with 12 protein subunits and telomerase RNA. By completing the structure to such a high resolution, the group was not only able to illuminate how common RNA and protein motifs work together, but also to highlight new interactions.

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