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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,327

The DNA clouds that shield unkillable tardigrades from radiation

It takes something truly extraordinary, like maybe the death of the Sun, to kill the near-indestructible invertebrate known as the tardigrade. Crash-landings on the Moon, a lack of oxygen and conditions in the darkest corners of the ocean don’t appear pose a threat to this critter’s livelihood. Scientists studying these so-called water bears have uncovered a neat trick they employ to endure inhospitable conditions, using a unique protein to generate protective clouds around their DNA.

Tardigrades measure no more than a millimeter long, but possess an indomitability that would make even nature’s largest and hardiest creatures jealous. Key to their survival is an ability to enter a suspended and extremely dehydrated state of being called anhydrobiosis, in which their metabolism is put on hold until the surrounding conditions are more favorable to a regular life.

This capability has seen tardigrades endure temperatures as high as 150º C (302º F) and as low as −272º C (−457.6º F). It has seen them studied in the vacuum of space and exist amongst intense pressures at the bottom of the ocean. When an Israeli spacecraft carrying tardigrades crash-landed on the Moon in August, it inspired some dramatic headlines around the possibility of the near-indestructible creatures colonizing Earth’s only natural satellite.

Could a robot be prime minister? Machines will soon be smart enough to run the world, says futurist

Radio program The Current had me on this morning discussing #transhumanism, specifically #robots & #AI running for political office. It’s Canada’s most listened to radio program with millions of listeners. Here’s a fun write-up of it:

We ask if we should ditch flesh-and-blood politicians, and give the robots a go at leadership.

2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Researchers Who Unraveled How Cells Sense Oxygen

A trio of researchers from the U.S. and the UK has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the first of five prizes to be announced this week. On Monday in Sweden, the Nobel committee announced that Americans William Kaelin Jr. and Gregg Semenza, along with Peter Ratcliffe, would split the nearly million-dollar prize for their work in unraveling a fundamental aspect of life: how our cells keep track of and respond to fluctuating oxygen levels.

This year’s prize was decades in the making.

Though we’ve long known that our cells need oxygen to produce energy and keep us alive, we were largely in the dark on how cells sensed oxygen, or how they managed to adapt in times of low oxygen, a state known as hypoxia. In the early 1990s, Gregg Semenza, currently of Johns Hopkins University, and his team discovered some of the key genetic machinery that cells use to detect hypoxia and then respond by producing a hormone called erythropoietin (EPO).

New treatment under trial could restore brain cells in Parkinson’s

A series of clinical trials have tested an experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease that uses a novel approach: administering the drug straight into the brain via implanted ports. The leading researchers believe this may be a “breakthrough” therapeutic strategy for neurological conditions.

Newly trialed therapy could launch a fresh chapter in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

In a new series of studies that culminated with an open-label trial (where participants were aware of what treatment they would receive), scientists have begun testing the effectiveness of a new treatment — and method of delivery — for Parkinson’s disease.

Three-drug combo almost doubles fruit fly lifespan

The complex interplay of various processes and mechanisms that contribute to aging means it’s unlikely we’ll discover a single “magic bullet” to prevent age-related diseases. But new research led by University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Biology and Ageing is potentially as close as anything we’ve seen. The scientists have been able to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by 48 percent using a triple drug combination made up of drugs already used in people.

“As life expectancies increase, we are also seeing an increase of age-related diseases so there is an urgent need to find ways to improve health in old age,” says study co-lead author, Dr Jorge Castillo-Quan. “Here, by studying fruit flies which age much more rapidly than people, we have found that a combination drug treatment targeting different cellular processes may be an effective way to slow down the aging process.”

The three drugs making up the combo include lithium, which is used as a mood stabilizer, trametinib, a cancer drug that inhibits MEK1 and MEK2 enzymes, and rapamycin, an immune system regulator produced by bacteria that was first found in a soil sample from Easter Island and has been found to improve learning and memory in mice.