Lifeboat Foundation

Central to a lot of scientific research into aging are tiny caps on the ends of our chromosomes called telomeres. These protective sequences of DNA grow a little shorter each time a cell divides, but by intervening in this process, researchers hope to one day regulate the process of aging and the ill health effects it can bring. A Harvard team is now offering an exciting pathway forward, discovering a set of small molecules capable of restoring telomere length in mice.

Telomeres can be thought of like the plastic tips on the end of our shoelaces, preventing the fraying of the DNA code of the genome and playing an important part in a healthy aging process. But each time a cell divides, they grow a little shorter. This sequence repeats over and over until the cell can no longer divide and dies.

This process is linked to aging and disease, including a rare genetic disease called dyskeratosis congenita (DC). This is caused by the premature aging of cells and is where the team focused its attention, hoping to offer alternatives to the current treatment that involves high-risk bone marrow transplants and which offers limited benefits.

Depending on who you ask and where you are, wearing a mask can be an important part of the strategy to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

With the CDC recommending surgical and N95 masks should be kept for medical personnel on the front line, if you do want or need a mask, you should be purchasing or making a cloth one.

But when looking at cloth masks, which materials work best for keeping your germs in and other people’s germs out?

Around the world, scientists race to develop a vaccine or treatment against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Now, a team of researchers has found that a drug already available around the world can kill the coronavirus in a lab setting in just 48 hours.

Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (green) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (yellow), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID.

During the 1918 flu, San Francisco lifted its lockdown early — and paid a dire price.
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In US news and current events today, the coronavirus pandemic, the COVID-19 outbreak has had people around the world in lockdown. People in the United States and the world at large have had to quarantine and practice social distancing and self-isolation when necessary.

Continue reading “San Francisco Paid the Price for Lifting Spanish Flu Lockdown Early | NowThis” »

Built in about 24 hours, this robot is undergoing in-hospital testing for coronavirus disinfection.

UV disinfection is one of the few areas where autonomous robots can be immediately and uniquely helpful during the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of these robots to fulfill demand right now, and although companies are working hard to build them, it takes a substantial amount of time to develop the hardware, software, operational knowledge, and integration experience required to make a robotic disinfection system work in a hospital.

Continue reading “Akara Robotics Turns TurtleBot Into Autonomous UV Disinfecting Robot” »

Software bugs have been a concern for programmers for nearly 75 years since the day programmer Grace Murray Hopper reported the cause of an error in an early Harvard Mark II computer: a moth stuck between relay contacts. Thus the term “bug” was born.

Bugs range from slight computer hiccups to catastrophes. In the Eighties, at least five patients died after a Therac-25 radiation therapy device malfunctioned due to an error by an inexperienced programmer. In 1962, NASA mission control destroyed the Mariner I space probe as it diverted from its intended path over the Atlantic Ocean; incorrectly transcribed handwritten code was blamed. In 1982, a software bug later alleged to have been implanted into the Soviet trans-Siberian gas pipeline by the CIA triggered one of the largest non–nuclear explosions in history.

According to data management firm Coralogix, programmers produce 70 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, with each bug solution demanding 30 times more hours than it took to write the code in the first place. The firm estimates the United States spends $113 billion a year identifying and remediating bugs.

The recent infective outbreak caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), now officially defined as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has already affected over 1million people from nearly all countries worldwide, causing approximately 66,000 deaths. 1 The clinical characteristics of this pandemic disease may be complicated by the onset of a severe form of intestinal pneumonia in 10–15% of infected patients, which may then progress toward acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and eventually in multi-organ failure (MOF) and death. 2 Since laboratory hematology is a mainstay for screening, diagnosis, but also for prognostication and therapeutic monitoring of a kaleidoscope of human disorders, 3 the aim of this article was to investigate whether or not hemoglobin values may be a predictive factor of worse clinical progression in patients with COVID-19.

We performed an electronic search in Medline, Web of Science and Scopus, using the keywords “laboratory” OR “hemoglobin” AND “coronavirus 2019” OR “2019-nCoV” OR “SARS-CoV-2”, between 2019 and the present time (i.e., March 4, 2020), with no language restriction. The title, abstract and full text of documents identified according to these search criteria were analyzed and those reporting information on the hemoglobin values in COVID-19 patients with or without severe disease (i.e., those needing mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit (ICU) admission or those who died), were meta-analyzed. The reference list of all documents was examined to identify additional eligible studies. The final meta-analysis entailed the estimation of the weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of hemoglobin values between subjects with or without severe disease. The statistical analysis was performed with the MetaXL software, Version 5.3 (EpiGear International Pty Ltd.

The movie Avatar evoked an imaginary world of lush bioluminescent jungles. Now the popular fascination for sustainably glowing foliage is being realized through advances in designer genetics. This week in Nature Biotechnology, scientists have announced the feasibility of creating plants that produce their own visible luminescence.

The scientists revealed that bioluminescence found in some mushrooms is metabolically similar to the natural processes common among plants. By inserting DNA obtained from the mushroom, the scientists were able to create plants that glow much brighter than previously possible.

This biological light can be used by scientists for observing the inner workings of plants. In contrast to other commonly used forms of bioluminescence, such as from fireflies, unique chemical reagents are not necessary for sustaining mushroom bioluminescence. Plants containing the mushroom DNA glow continuously throughout their lifecycle, from seedling to maturity.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2 has been observed to cause a higher incidence and greater severity of disease in males, as seen in multiple cohorts across the globe. The reasons for gender disparity in disease severity is unclear and can be due to host factors. To determine whether males have delayed viral clearance after infection, we evaluated the time to clearance in symptomatic patients tested by serial oropharyngeal/nasopharyngeal swabs followed by RT-PCR at a reference lab in Mumbai, India. A total of 68 subjects with median age of 37 years (3−75 range) were examined and included 48 (71%) males and 20 (29%) females. We observed that females were able to achieve viral clearance significantly earlier than males, with a median difference of 2 days in achieving a negative PCR result (P value = 0.038). Furthermore, examination of 3 families with both male and female patients followed serially, demonstrated that female members of the same household cleared the SARS-CoV2 infection earlier in each family. To determine reasons for delayed clearance in males, we examined the expression patterns of the SARS-CoV2 receptor, Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), in tissue specific repositories. We observed that the testes was one of the highest sites of ACE2 expression in 3 independent RNA expression databases (Human Protein Atlas, FAMTOM5 and GETx). ACE2 was also determined to be highly expressed in testicular cells at the protein levels. Interestingly, very little expression of ACE2 was seen in ovarian tissue. Taken together, these observations demonstrate for the first time that male subjects have delayed viral clearance of SARS-CoV2. High expression of ACE2 in testes raises the possibility that testicular viral reservoirs may play a role in viral persistence in males and should be further investigated.

The authors have declared no competing interest.