Typhus and other infectious illnesses hit homeless communities.
- By Anna Gorman, Kaiser Health News on March 15, 2019
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2258
“The modern people of Basque Country, in northern Spain, are genetically similar to the Iberian Iron Age people with ancestry from the Russian steppe. While people around them mixed with different groups and changed, the Basques held on to their heritage.”
Ancient DNA is uncovering the secrets of the unique populations of what are now Portugal and Spain. Two studies published this week include unexpected findings from the DNA of people who lived thousands of years ago on the Iberian Peninsula.
The rugged peninsula is positioned between North Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean on the westernmost edge of the continent, so the DNA of its ancient population shows how it was affected by migration over time.
Iberia was also relatively warm during the last Ice Age, between 18,000 and 24,000 years ago, presenting a more welcoming climate for animals and people who retreated from the rest of Europe.
A new clock that analyzes the age of the immune system may be the next big thing in aging biomarkers.
Measuring the age of your immune system
As we age, our immune systems begin to decline due to many factors, including the thymus shrinking and producing ever-fewer T cells, the ever-increasing chronic inflammation called “inflammaging”, dysfunctional immune cells doing more harm than good, and a lifetime of microbial burden taking its toll. This gradual decline of the immune system is known as immunosenescence.
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The Nobel Prize
Posted in biotech/medical
Today’s Daily Dose of Science Tu Youyou won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with her groundbreaking anti-malarial drug research, saving millions of lives. #womenshistorymonth
Born: 30 December 1930, Zhejiang Ningbo, China
Affiliation at the time of the award: China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
Prize motivation: “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria.”
Humans may one day have the ability to regrow limbs after scientists at Harvard University uncovered the DNA switch that controls genes for whole-body regeneration.
Some animals can achieve extraordinary feats of repair, such as salamanders which grow back legs, or geckos which can shed their tails to escape predators and then form new ones in just two months.
Planarian worms, jellyfish, and sea anemones go even further, actually regenerating their entire bodies after being cut in half.
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With the announcement today that Mammoth Biosciences has received the exclusive license from the University of California, Berkeley to the new CRISPR protein Cas14, the company now has the last piece of its diagnostics toolkit in place.
Cas14 is a newly discovered protein from the lab of Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer in gene-editing research and a member of the first research team to identify and unlock the power of CRISPR technology.
Doudna and Mammoth Biosciences co-founder Lucas Harrington were part of the team of researchers to identify the new Cas14 protein, which can identify single-stranded DNA. The journal Science published their findings in October 2018.
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Chinese doctors have reported success with a new type of immunotherapy for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer: 33 out of 35 patients in a clinical trial had clinical remission within two months.
The researchers used a type of T cell called “chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T.” In a phase I clinical trial in China, the patient’s own T cells were collected, genetically reprogrammed in a lab, and injected back into the patient. The reprogramming involved inserting an artificially designed gene into the T-cell genome, which helped the genetically reprogrammed cells find and destroy cancer cells throughout the body.
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In 2015, in a secret medical procedure carried out in Bogota, Colombia, the 44-year-old woman got dozens of experimental gene-therapy injections. Why? Because Parrish, the creator of a longevity company called BioViva, believes that science is on the cusp of delivering radically longer lifespans—and she wants to help bring on the revolution.
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Today, we want to point out a new study suggesting that senescent cells in bone marrow cell populations contribute to the decline of the hematopoietic system, particularly the hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that live in the bone marrow and produce our blood cells [1].
The hematopoietic system and immunosenescence
The hematopoietic system is the system of organs and tissues, including the bone marrow, spleen, thymus and lymph nodes, involved in the creation of cellular blood components.
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