Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,542

A Novel Instructive Role for the Entorhinal Cortex

Summary: Researchers have identified a new type of synaptic plasticity they call behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP). The study reveals how the entorhinal cortex sends instructive signals to the hippocampus and directs it to specifically reorganize the specific location and activity of a neural subset to achieve altered behavior in response to changes in environment and spatial cues.

Source: Texas Children’s Hospital.

A longstanding question in neuroscience is how mammalian brains (including ours) adapt to external environments, information, and experiences.

Fluorescence achieved in light-driven molecular motors

Rotary molecular motors were first created in 1999, in the laboratory of Ben Feringa, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Groningen. These motors are driven by light. For many reasons, it would be good to be able to make these motor molecules visible. The best way to do this is to make them fluoresce. However, combining two light-mediated functions in a single molecule is quite challenging. The Feringa laboratory has now succeeded in doing just that, in two different ways. These two types of fluorescing light-driven rotary motors were described in Nature Communications (September 30) and Science Advances (November 4).

“After the successful design of molecular motors in the past decades, an important next goal was to control various functions and properties using such motors,” explains Feringa, who shared in the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016. “As these are light-powered rotary motors, it is particularly challenging to design a system that would have another function that is controlled by , in addition to the rotary motion.”

Feringa and his team were particularly interested in since this is a prime technique that is widely used for detection, for example in biomedical imaging. Usually, two such photochemical events are incompatible in the same molecule; either the light-driven motor operates and there is no fluorescence or there is fluorescence and the motor does not operate. Feringa says, “We have now demonstrated that both functions can exist in parallel in the same molecular system, which is rather unique.”

HUSH gene-silencing complex contributes to normal brain development and function

The gene-silencing complex HUSH might be involved in complex disorders affecting the brain and neurons. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) now uncover the in vivo targets and physiological functions of a component of the HUSH gene-silencing complex and one of its associated proteins.

The work, conducted in laboratory mouse models and human organoids, links the HUSH complex to normal , neuronal individuality and connectivity, as well as mouse behavior. The findings are published in Science Advances.

The human silencing hub (HUSH) complex was recently identified to be of key importance for silencing repetitive genetic elements including transposons in mammals. The HUSH complex contains MPP8, a protein that binds the histone modification mark H3K9me3. Additionally, HUSH is known to recruit other proteins including the zinc finger protein MORC2.

Breaking Through to the Brain

Traumatic brain injuries might have faded from the headlines since the NFL reached a $765 million settlement for concussion-related brain injuries, but professional football players aren’t the only ones impacted by these injuries. Each year, between 2 million and 3 million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injuries—from elderly people who fall and hit their head, to adolescents playing sports or falling out of trees, to people in motor vehicle accidents.

There are currently no treatments to stop the long-term effects of a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and accurate diagnosis requires a visit to a medical center for a CT scan or MRI, both of which involve large, expensive equipment.

UC San Diego bioengineering Professor Ester Kwon, who leads the Nanoscale Bioengineering research lab at the Jacobs School of Engineering, aims to change that. Kwon’s team is developing nanomaterials—materials with dimensions on the nanometer scale—that could be used to diagnose traumatic brain injury on the spot, be it a sports field, the scene of a car accident, or a clinical setting. They’re also engineering nanoparticles that could target the portion of the patient’s brain that was injured, delivering specific therapeutics to treat the injury and improve the patient’s long-term quality of life.

Organoids Reveal How SARS-CoV-2 Damages Brain Cells — and a Potential Treatment

Using human brain organoids, an international team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Sanford Consortium, has shown how the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 infects cortical neurons and specifically destroys their synapses — the connections between brain cells that allow them to communicate with each other.

The findings, published in the November 3, 2022 issue of PLOS Biology, also report that the antiviral drug sofosbuvir, already an approved treatment for hepatitis C, effectively inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication and reversed neuronal alterations in infected brain organoids.

“Vaccines and emerging treatments have reduced the health consequences of COVID-19 in most patients,” said senior study author Alysson R. Muotri, PhD, professor in departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “But the phenomenon of Long COVID, characterized by persisting symptoms that include neurological impairment, remains poorly understood and without any specific remedy.

Brett Anderson, MSG, MSW — Journey From Rock Musician To Rethinking Aging, Longevity & Mental Health

Is a Gerontologist and Clinical Social Worker on a mission to rethink aging, longevity & mental health.

Ms. Anderson was also the former lead singer of the American Rock group, The Donnas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Donnas), where she was the lead vocalist for 20 years, performing throughout the U.S., as well as internationally, and had performances / appearances on major network shows including Saturday Night Live, David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Ms. Anderson received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Stanford University, her MSG, Gerontology from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and her Master of Social Work — MSW, from the.
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Now pursuing a career as a licensed geriatric social worker, Ms. Anderson hopes to integrate her creative and business experience, with her gerontological knowledge, to better meet the needs of our rapidly aging population.

New Molecule Destroys Alzheimer’s-Causing Amyloid Tangles

A molecule found in green tea helped UCLA biochemists in the discovery of multiple molecules capable of destroying tau fibers.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers used a molecule present in green tea to uncover more molecules that may break up protein tangles in the brain, which are known to cause Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that attacks the brain, causing a decline in mental ability that worsens over time. It is the most common form of dementia and accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. There is no current cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but there are medications that can help ease the symptoms.

Sci-fi no more: Introducing the contact lenses of the future

More and more companies and scientists are working to equip contact lenses with applications that not long ago still seemed like science fiction, such as the ability to record videos or diagnose and even treat diseases. Mojo Vision, an American startup, is one company that has been improving its prototypes since 2015. It is currently developing an ambitious project involving augmented reality lenses that, in addition to correcting your vision, will let you consult all kinds of information, from the trails on a ski slope to your pace when you run, all through microLED displays the size of a grain of sand.

“In the short term, it sounds like a futuristic idea, but 20 years ago we couldn’t even imagine many of the technological advances that we have today,” says Ana Belén Cisneros del Río, deputy dean of the College of Opticians-Optometrists in the Spanish region of Castilla y León, of the Mojo Vision project. However, Daniel Elies, a specialist in cornea, cataract and refractive surgery and medical director of the Institute of Ocular Microsurgery (IMO) Miranza Group in Madrid, does not believe that this type of contact lens will become part of everyday life anytime soon, “especially due to cost issues.”

One of the companies interested in manufacturing augmented reality contacts is Magic Leap. Sony, for its part, applied a few years ago for a patent for lenses that can record videos, and Samsung did the same for lenses equipped with a camera and a display that projects images directly into the user’s eye. Some researchers are trying to create robotic lenses that can zoom in and out with the blink of an eye, and yet others are working on night vision contact lenses, which could be useful in military applications.

/* */