For now, the best advice that doctors have is to wash your hands to avoid transmitting infections — a small precaution to avoid the long-term after-effects of AFM.
“We have had a couple people who’ve had some pretty good recovery,” Marcus says. “Most people have had a little bit of recovery, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen anybody who’s had a full recovery from this. It’s really discouraging.”
And you thought needles were scary: Researchers are using scorpion venom to transport drugs to the brain.
The Peptides and Proteins lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) modified the amino acid chain chlorotoxin—present in scorpion venom—to carry medicine across humans’ blood-brain barrier (BBB).
An important mechanism for protecting the brain from harmful substances, the roadblock also prevents medication used to treat neurological diseases and tumors from entering the organ.
👀
About 15 years ago, UNC Lineberger’s Dale Ramsden, Ph.D., was looking through a textbook with one of his students when they stumbled upon a scientific mystery.
A small line in the book indicated that a protein that helps repair major breaks in our genetic code did so by adding DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, as expected. However, there were hints that it could also add RNA, or ribonucleic acid, at least in a test tube. It seemed unlikely that this would occur during repair of DNA in living cells, since RNA is normally used only as a messenger to carry information from the genetic code to make proteins.
“You would think they must only add DNA during repair of our genetic code, because that’s the core of the central dogma of life; genetic information has to be DNA all the time,” said Ramsden, who is a professor in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s what we’re taught in school.”
