A new discovery could add to a “checklist” of options to make sure women with ovarian cancer get the right treatment.
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2349
Leon Lederman, the former head of the Fermi National Accelerator Lab and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988, died at a nursing home in Idaho on October 3rd. He was 96.
Lederman will perhaps best be remembered for coining the phrase “the God particle,” referring to the Higgs boson, which was theorized for decades before it was finally observed in 2012.
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Scarlet protein has a protective effect against Parkinson’s disease in fruit flies.
Researchers at the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, discovered that a protein known as Scarlet has protective effects against the fruit fly version of Parkinson’s disease [1].
Abstract
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons, resulting in progressive locomotor dysfunction. Identification of genes required for the maintenance of these neurons should help to identify potential therapeutic targets. However, little is known regarding the factors that render dopaminergic neurons selectively vulnerable to PD. Here we show that Drosophila melanogaster scarlet mutants exhibit an age-dependent progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons, along with subsequent locomotor defects and a shortened lifespan. Knockdown of Scarlet specifically within dopaminergic neurons is sufficient to produce this neurodegeneration, demonstrating a unique role for Scarlet beyond its well-characterized role in eye pigmentation.
Today, we want to bring your attention to a recent mouse study on fisetin, a commonly available supplement that has proven effective at destroying senescent cells.
What are senescent cells?
As we age, increasing amounts of our cells enter into a state known as senescence. Normally, these cells destroy themselves by a self-destruct process known as apoptosis and are disposed of by the immune system. Unfortunately, as we age, the immune system declines, and increasing numbers of senescent cells escape apoptosis and accumulate in the body.
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Humans aren’t built for deep space exploration. We’ve evolved to live here on Earth with an atmosphere, gravity, and a vitally important magnetic field that deflects high-energy cosmic radiation. It will take all our technological prowess to expand on to other worlds, and it won’t simply be a matter of physically getting there. We also need to preserve delicate human biology. A new study from Georgetown University and NASA suggests it may be much harder than we thought to ensure astronauts maintain healthy gastrointestinal (GI) tract tissue in space.
While doctors expect long-term exposure to high-energy radiation will have myriad effects, it’s difficult to study them in a lab on Earth. The effects of the GI tract are easier to assess because the cells lining this body system are replaced every few days. New cells migrate upward from a structure called a “crypt” to take their places lining the gut. Any disturbance of this mechanism can lead to dysfunction.
The study assessed mice under exposure to different radiation conditions as an analog for humans. They’re much smaller, so they can’t handle as much radiation has a human. However, their GI tracts respond much like ours would from exposure to high-energy particles. The researchers used the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Brookhaven National Laboratory to bombard the mice with either simulated galactic cosmic radiation (sometimes called cosmic rays), gamma rays, or no radiation (control group).
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They were right. Last week, writing in Science, a Japanese team reported a formula that transforms human blood cells into immature eggs. With the help of an artificial womb made from mouse ovary cells, the human cells underwent changes to their DNA that mimics those in a 10-week-old, normal human egg.
The resulting eggs are far from full-blown eggs, and they can’t yet be fertilized to create human embryos.
But “this cannot be denied as a spectacular next step,” said Dr. Eli Adashi at Brown University, who was not involved in the study. “Considering how difficult this has been in a human, [this new study] in a way broke the ice.”
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Not sure about this, microbiome is known to be quite stable and to revert back to some kind of base line…even after faecal swaps… Curious what that could mean over time.
By Clare Wilson
The key to organ transplants might lie in an unexpected place – the gut. Giving mice a faecal transplant made them more tolerant of a subsequent heart transplant.
The explanation could be that bacteria in the bowel help regulate the immune system and stop it from launching an attack against the unfamiliar transplanted tissue. Finding the mechanism could lead to new medicines to stop organ rejection, says Jonathan Bromberg at the University of Maryland. “It’s a way to turn down the volume knob on the immune system.”
From space colonization to resurrection of dinosaurs to machine intelligence, the most awe-inspiring visions of humanity’s future are typically born from science fiction.
But among an abundance of time travel, superheroes, space adventures, and so forth, biotech remains underrepresented in the genre.
This selection highlights some outstanding works (new and not so new) to fill the sci-fi gap for biotech aficionados.
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