Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,258

A joint study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Maryland (UMD) has revealed a previously undocumented protective function of the telomerase enzyme.

Telomerase is used by somatic cells too

It was thought for a long time that telomerase is only active in certain cell types, such as stem cells, immune cells, and embryonic cells, in order to protect them from aging. Aside from a few cell types and, of course, cancer cells, which are able to hijack the telomerase enzyme in order to replicate uncontrollably, researchers believed that the enzyme is switched off in other types of cells.

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Providing a glimpse the hidden workings of evolution, a group of researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that embryos that appear the same can start out with surprisingly different instructions.

“We found that a lot of undercover evolution occurs in ,” said Joel Rothman, a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, who led the team.

Indeed, although members of the same species are identical across the vast majority of their genomes, including all the genetic instructions used in development, Rothman and his colleagues found that key parts of the assembly instructions used when embryos first start developing can differ dramatically between individuals of the same species.

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Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developing new method to deliver #cancer medication.

An experimental patch designed to deliver cancer medications through the skin showed promise in mice and human skin samples, according to new research presented Sunday at the American Chemical Society conference in California, San Diego.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed the patch to fight melanoma, a deadly but highly treatable form of skin cancer. The patch is less than a centimeter long and coated with a sticky film, which allows it to be applied and removed from the skin in a minute.

The researchers used the device to deliver an antigen in healthy mice and then compared the immune response to treatment methods often used to vaccinate against the flu and measles. The researchers said the patch elicited “a robust antibody response” and “show promise in eliciting a strong immune response in human skin.”

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Results from the new study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) have shown that telomerase is reactivated in normal adult cells at the latter stage of cell aging, and this activity reduces the potential for DNA damage that could lead cells to become cancerous. “This study reshapes the current understanding of telomerase’s function in normal cells,” said Kan Cao, PhD, an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD, who is senior author of the study. “Our work shows, for the first time, that there is a role for telomerase in adult cells beyond promoting tumor formation.

University of Maryland-led team found that telomerase, which immortalizes cancer cells, also prevents tumors and slows a key stage in normal cell death.

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The human body is an incredible machine. It is impossible to determine which is the essential body part for sustaining life — because there is no single indispensable part. If your heart stops beating, you will die. If your lungs stop working, your brain — and thus all of your cells — will eventually die. Without a stomach or intestines you cannot acquire nutrients and you will die. All parts are critical for optimal function, for sustaining life.

Synthetic biology as a field is no different. There are those that supply DNA — arguably the critical building block for every single synthetic biology application. There are those that automate and scale components of the design-build-test cycle to enable innovation to effect change in meaningful timelines. But when all of those parts come together with a single goal, the power of synthetic biology reaches new levels.

Such potential is exactly what Arzeda — through a collaboration with TeselaGen, Twist Bioscience, and Labcyte — has brought to us. Each company, a giant in its own right, provides an essential, needed component to an elegant, efficient workflow that can best be described as a “DNA assembly line” for more rapid, efficient protein design and production. The companies’ products work seamlessly: Twist produces the DNA fragments needed to make protein-expressing plasmids, Labcyte’s acoustic liquid handler (the Echo 525) facilitates rapid DNA assembly, and TeselaGen’s DNA assembly design and laboratory automation software connects the two, designing plasmids and ordering the necessary sequences from Twist while generating worklists for the Echo to execute.

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