Lifeboat Foundation

Autoimmune disorders are among the most prevalent chronic diseases across the globe. Emerging treatments for autoimmune disorders focus on “adoptive cell therapies,” or those using cells from a patient’s own body to achieve immunosuppression. These therapeutic cells are recognized by the patient’s body as “self,” therefore limiting side effects, and are specifically engineered to localize the intended therapeutic effect.

In treating autoimmune diseases, current adoptive cell therapies have largely centered around the regulatory T cell (T_reg), which is defined by the expression of the Forkhead box protein 3, orFoxp3. Although T_regs offer great potential, using them for therapeutic purposes remains a major challenge. In particular, current delivery methods result in inefficient engineering of T cells.

T_regs only compose approximately 5%–10% of circulating peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Furthermore, T_regs lack more specific surface markers that differentiate them from other T cell populations. These hurdles make it difficult to harvest, purify and grow T_regs to therapeutically relevant numbers. Although there are additional tissue-resident T_regs in non-lymphoid organs such as in skeletal muscle and visceral adipose tissue, these T_regs are severely inaccessible and low in number.

Every cell in the human body contains the same genetic instructions, encoded in its DNA. However, out of about 30,000 genes, each cell expresses only those genes that it needs to become a nerve cell, immune cell, or any of the other hundreds of cell types in the body.

Each cell’s fate is largely determined by chemical modifications to the proteins that decorate its DNA; these modification in turn control which genes get turned on or off. When cells copy their DNA to divide, however, they lose half of these modifications, leaving the question: How do cells maintain the memory of what kind of cell they are supposed to be?

A new MIT study proposes a theoretical model that helps explain how these memories are passed from generation to generation when cells divide. The research team suggests that within each cell’s nucleus, the 3D folding pattern of its genome determines which parts of the genome will be marked by these chemical modifications.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and KU Leuven have discovered a suite of genes that influence head shape in humans. These findings, published this week in Nature Communications, help explain the diversity of human head shapes and may also offer important clues about the genetic basis of conditions that affect the skull, such as craniosynostosis.

By analyzing measurements of the cranial vault —the part of the skull that forms the rounded top of the head and protects the brain—the team identified 30 regions of the genome associated with different aspects of head shape, 29 of which have not been reported previously.

“Anthropologists have speculated and debated the genetics of cranial vault shape since the early 20th century,” said co-senior author Seth Weinberg, Ph.D., professor of oral and craniofacial sciences in the Pitt School of Dental Medicine and co-director of the Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics.

The core–mantle boundary (CMB) is the interface between the Earth’s iron metal core and the thick rocky layer of mantle just above the core. It is a world of extremes—temperatures thousands of degrees Fahrenheit and pressures over a million times the pressure at the surface of the Earth. While it may seem far away from our environment on Earth’s surface, plumes of material from the CMB can ascend upwards through the planet over tens of millions of years, influencing the chemistry, geologic structure, and plate tectonics of the surface world where we live.

Though scientists cannot travel to the center of the Earth to study the CMB, they can get clues about what lies beneath the planet’s surface by measuring earthquakes. Seismic waves travel at different speeds depending on the material they are traveling through, allowing researchers to infer what lies deep below the surface using seismic signatures. This is analogous to how ultrasound uses waves of sound to image inside of the human body.

Recent research shows that the base of Earth’s mantle is actually complex and heterogeneous—in particular, there are mountain-like regions where seismic waves mysteriously slow down. These blobs, named ultralow velocity zones (ULVZs) and first discovered by Caltech’s Don Helmberger, are dozens of kilometers thick and lie around 3,000 kilometers beneath our feet.

For the first time in space, scientists have produced a mixture of two quantum gases made of two types of atoms. Accomplished with NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the International Space Station, the achievement marks another step toward bringing quantum technologies currently available only on Earth into space.

Physicists at Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), part of a collaboration led by Prof. Nicholas Bigelow, University of Rochester, provided the theoretical calculations necessary for this achievement. While quantum tools are already used in everything from cell phones to GPS to medical devices, in the future, quantum tools could be used to enhance the study of planets, including our own, as well as to help solve mysteries of the universe and deepen our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

The new work, performed remotely by scientists on Earth, is described in Nature.

In an article published yesterday in MIT Technology Review, Rachel Nuwer wrote a thought provoking piece exploring the boundaries between life and death.

Beyond the brain and brain death itself, related efforts are studying and attempting to develop techniques for restoring metabolic function in a number of organs other than the brain after death, including the heart and kidneys, which could greatly enhance organ donation capabilities.

While these developments are promising, researchers caution against overpromising. The path to these medical advancements is paved with years of research and ethical considerations. The exploration into the dying process will surely challenge not only scientific and medical fields but also societal, theological, and legal considerations, as it reshapes our understanding of one of life’s most profound phenomena. At some point, policy and regulations will need to follow—further adding to the complexity of the topic.

Continue reading “Re-Thinking The ‘When’ And ‘How’ Of Brain Death” »

EPFL scientists have crafted a biological system that mimics an electronic bandpass filter, a novel sensor that could revolutionize self-regulated biological mechanisms in synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology holds the promise of enhancing and modifying biological systems into innumerable new technologies for the benefit of society. This engineering approach to biology has already reaped benefits in the fields of drug delivery, agriculture, and energy production.

In a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology, EPFL researchers at the Laboratory of Protein Design and Immunoengineering (LPDI) at the School of Engineering have taken an important step in designing more performative biological systems.

As we learned in middle school science classes, inside this common variety of greens—and most other plants—are intricate circuits of biological machinery that perform the task of converting sunlight into usable energy. Or photosynthesis. These processes keep plants alive. Boston University researchers have a vision for how they could also be harnessed into programmable units that would enable scientists to construct the first practical quantum computer.

A quantum computer would be able to perform calculations much faster than the classical computers that we use today. The laptop sitting on your desk is built on units that can represent 0 or 1, but never both or a combination of those states at the same time. While a classical computer can run only one analysis at a time, a quantum computer could run a billion or more versions of the same equation at the same time, increasing the ability of computers to better model extremely complex systems—like weather patterns or how cancer will spread through tissue—and speeding up how quickly huge datasets can be analyzed.

The idea of using photosynthetic molecules from, say, a spinach leaf to power quantum computing services might sound like science fiction. It’s not. It is “on the fringe of possibilities,” says David Coker, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of chemistry and a College of Engineering professor of materials science and engineering. Coker and collaborators at BU and Princeton University are using computer simulations and experiments to provide proof-of-concepts that photosynthetic circuits could unlock new technological capabilities. Their work is showing promising early results.

Abrain is nothing if not communicative. Neurons are the chatterboxes of this conversational organ, and they speak with one another by exchanging pulses of electricity using chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. By repeating this process billions of times per second, a brain converts clusters of chemicals into coordinated actions, memories, and thoughts.

Researchers study how the brain works by eavesdropping on that chemical conversation. But neurons talk so loudly and often that if there are other, quieter voices, it might be hard to hear them.