A genomic analysis of the creepy parasite H. salminicola reveals that the creature has no mitochondrial DNA and no way to breathe — two animal firsts.
Diabetes is characterized by trouble producing or managing insulin, and one emerging treatment involves converting stem cells into beta cells that secrete the hormone. Now, scientists have developed a more efficient method of doing just that, and found that implanting these cells in diabetic mice functionally cured them of the disease.
The study builds on past research by the same team, led by Jeffrey Millman at Washington University. The researchers have previously shown that infusing mice with these cells works to treat diabetes, but the new work has had even more impressive results.
“These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood — levels that could be fatal for a person — and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, within two weeks their blood glucose levels had returned to normal and stayed that way for many months,” says Millman.
A new study of the genetic history of Sardinia, a Mediterranean island off the western coast of Italy, tells how genetic ancestry on the island was relatively stable through the end of the Bronze Age, even as mainland Europe saw new ancestries arrive. The study further details how the island’s genetic ancestry became more diverse and interconnected with the Mediterranean starting in the Iron Age, as Phoenician, Punic, and eventually Roman peoples began arriving to the island.
The research, published in Nature Communications, analyzed genome-wide DNA data for 70 individuals from more than 20 Sardinian archaeological sites spanning roughly 6,000 years from the Middle Neolithic through the Medieval period. No previous study has used genome-wide DNA extracted from ancient remains to look at the population history of Sardinia.
“Geneticists have been studying the people of Sardinia for a long time, but we haven’t known much about their past,” said the senior author John Novembre, Ph.D., a leading computational biologist at the Univeristy of Chicago who studies genetic diversity in natural populations. “There have been clues that Sardinia has a particularly interesting genetic history, and understanding this history could also have relevance to larger questions about the peopling of the Mediterranean.”
Built on decades of previous research, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison teased out a tiny chunk of brain tissue within the thalamus, a nub above the brain stem, as a critical part of NCC. As proof of concept, they gave it several bouts of electrical shocks, and restored awareness in unconscious monkeys under heavy anesthesia.
The crux? As soon as the electrical stimulation stopped, the monkeys’ awareness also slipped away.
Although the thalamus has long been thought of as somehow involved in supporting consciousness, the study is one of the first to pinpoint exact neural circuits—highways between the thalamus and parts of the cortex—as “switches” for consciousness that we can control using brain stimulation. And that’s wonderful news for comatose patients.
If you can’t defeat death, what if you could postpone it, or at least postpone the diseases commonly associated with getting old?
Many people, especially the ultra-wealthy in Silicon Valley, are investing money into companies trying to answer exactly those questions.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel have both invested in South San Francisco-based Unity Biotechnology, a company whose mission is to “extend human healthspan, the period in one’s life unburdened by the disease of aging.”
Super Market of Italy Empty fear of coronavirus.
La gente en milan Italia esta vaciando los supermercados después del brote de coronavirus al norte de italia.
“The possibility that 100 years old might become the new 60” : EXCELLENT SLOGAN that doesn’t resort to the troublesome” I word” (“Immortality”)! Good article to share with non-science friends: light on hard science, but good emotional impact, incl. that catchy slogan.
Technology hasn’t just improved our lives; it’s also extended them — considerably.
For most of history, humans lived about 25 years. Real acceleration emerged at the turn of the 20th century, when everything from the creation of antibiotics to the implementation of better sanitation to the increased availability of clean water, and the ability to tackle killers like cancer and heart disease has us living routinely into our 80s. But many scientists believe we’re not stopping there.
People with diabetes are at a higher risk of fracturing a bone than the general population. And if they do break one it also takes longer than normal to heal.
In the March issue of Biomaterials, Henry Daniell, Shuying (Sheri) Yang, and colleagues at Penn’s School of Dental Medicine share promising findings from an animal model in which a plant-grown protein drug sped healing of a bone fracture. The work, which used the protein insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), showed that an orally delivered, shelf-stable medication grown in lettuce plants could stimulate the growth of bone-building cells and promote bone regeneration.
“It’s amazing how one protein impacted fracture healing,” says Daniell, corresponding author on the paper. “The current drug for diabetic patients with a fracture requires repetitive injections and hospital visits and as a result patience compliance is low. Here we gave an oral drug once a day and saw healing to be greatly accelerated.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oJcX8ch_mLg
Four years ago, Todd Rider was on top of the world. The MIT-trained bioengineer had developed a radical idea for killing viruses. Initial test results showed that his therapy, called DRACO, could kill every virus he threw it at: 15 viruses were killed in human cells, and two in mice.
It seemed like there was a chance it could be the biggest discovery in medicine since the invention of antibiotics. Enthusiastic headlines praised the potentially world-changing panacea. “Todd Rider Has a Kill Switch for Viruses,” wrote Bloomberg Businessweek. The Verge: “Killing sickness: is DRACO a doomsday device for viruses?” Time magazine declared it one of the top 50 inventions of the year.
