Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 21

Summary: While humans share over 95% of their genome with chimpanzees, our brains are far more complex due to differences in gene expression. Research shows that human brain cells, particularly glial cells, exhibit higher levels of upregulated genes, enhancing neural plasticity and development.

Oligodendrocytes, a glial cell type, play a key role by insulating neurons for faster and more efficient signaling. This study underscores that the evolution of human intelligence likely involved coordinated changes across all brain cell types, not just neurons.

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An ancient brain circuit, which enables the eyes to reflexively rotate up as the body tilts down, tunes itself early in life as an animal develops, a new study finds.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study revolves around how vertebrates, which include humans and animals spanning evolution from primitive fish to mammals, stabilize their gaze as they move. To do so, they use a that turns any shifts in orientation sensed by the balance (vestibular) system in their ears into an instant counter-movement by their eyes.

The research is published in the journal Science.

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Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have developed a breakthrough method of adding a single nitrogen atom to molecules, unlocking new possibilities in drug research and development. Now published in the journal Science, this research is already gaining international attention from drug manufacturers.

Nitrogen atoms and nitrogen-containing chemical structures, called heterocycles, play a pivotal role in medicinal chemistry and . A team led by OU associate professor Indrajeet Sharma has demonstrated that by using a short-lived chemical called sulfenylnitrene, researchers can insert one nitrogen atom into bioactive molecules and transform them into new pharmacophores that are useful for making drugs.

This process is called skeletal editing and takes inspiration from Sir Derek Barton, the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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Geophysicists at ETH Zurich are using models of the lower mantle to identify areas where earthquake waves behave differently than previously assumed. This indicates the presence of zones of rocks that are colder, or have a different composition, than the surrounding rocks. This finding challenges our current understanding of the Earth’s plate tectonics—and presents the researchers with a major mystery.

No one can see inside the Earth. Nor can anyone drill deep enough to take rock samples from the mantle, the layer between the Earth’s core and outermost, rigid layer, the lithosphere, or measure temperature and pressure there. That’s why geophysicists use indirect methods to see what’s going on deep beneath our feet.

For example, they use seismograms, or earthquake recordings, to determine the speed at which propagate. They then use this information to calculate the internal structure of the Earth. This is very similar to how doctors use ultrasound to image organs, muscles or veins inside the body without opening them up.

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A recent study from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research shows how interests can modulate language processing in children’s brains and paves the way for personalized brain research.

The paper, which appears in Imaging Neuroscience, was conducted in the lab of MIT professor and McGovern Institute investigator John Gabrieli, and led by senior author Anila D’Mello, a recent McGovern postdoc who is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas.

“Traditional studies give subjects identical stimuli to avoid confounding the results,” says Gabrieli, who is the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. “However, our research tailored stimuli to each child’s interest, eliciting stronger—and more consistent—activity patterns in the brain’s language regions across individuals.”

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Just like your body has a skeleton, every cell in your body has a skeleton—a cytoskeleton to be precise. This provides cells with mechanical resilience, as well as assisting with cell division. To understand how real cells work, e.g. for drug and disease research, researchers create artificial cells in the laboratory.

However, many artificial cells to date cannot be used to study how cells respond to forces as they don’t have a . TU/e researchers have designed a polymer-based network for artificial cells that mimics a real cytoskeleton, thus making it possible to study with greater accuracy in artificial cells how cells respond to forces.

The research is published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

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