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Category: biotech/medical – Page 333

The single-celled organism Naegleria fowleri ranks among the deadliest human parasites. Matthias Horn and Patrick Arthofer of the University of Vienna’s Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, along with other researchers, have identified viruses that target this dangerous organism.

Named Naegleriavirus, these belong to the giant viruses, a group known for their unusually large particles and complex genomes. The team details their findings in the prestigious journal, Nature Communications.

Naegleri species are single-celled amoebae, found globally in water bodies. Notably, one species, Naegleria fowleri, thrives in warm waters above 30°C and causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a rare but almost invariably fatal brain infection. A research team led by Patrick Arthofer and Matthias Horn from the University of Vienna’s Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) has now isolated giant viruses that infect various Naegleria species.

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The new technology, which was created at the University of Turku and developed by the company CardioSignal, uses a smartphone to analyse heart movement and detect heart failure. The study involved five organisations from Finland and the United States.

Heart failure is a condition affecting tens of millions of people worldwide, in which the heart is unable to perform its normal function of pumping blood to the body.

It is a serious condition that develops as a result of a number of cardiovascular diseases and its symptoms may require repeated hospitalisation.

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Pacemakers are medical devices that make sure that someone’s heart beats the way it should. If the heart rhythm is off, the pacemaker delivers a surge of electricity to bring the heart back into rhythm. The pacemaker takes effort into account and delivers faster pulses when needed. For example, when you’re exercising. For these electric pulses, the pacemaker needs a capacitor to rapidly charge and discharge. This provides a high enough electric charge to reset the heart.

Researcher Minh Duc Nguyen and his colleagues worked on a new design strategy for these capacitors to improve their energy storage, decrease the amount of energy lost every time it is charged or discharged, and increase the number of times they can reliably charge and discharge.

“It needs to keep up with your heartbeat, so it should be able to charge and discharge up to billions of times. Otherwise, you’ll have to replace the pacemaker every few months”, explains Nguyen.

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Scientists have successfully engineered functional artificial cells in the lab that behave like living cells.

Advances in the development of cytoskeletal-like materials with modular structures and mechanics are pivotal for the engineering of synthetic cells. Now actin-mimetic supramolecular peptide networks have been designed using programmable peptide–DNA crosslinkers, giving rise to tunable tactoid-shaped bundles and mechanical properties that control spatial localization, the diffusion of payloads and shape changes within artificial cells.

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Read how Congress is pressing the DEA to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to Schedule III.

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning these are “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” However, a team of 21 bipartisan congressional leaders from both the Senate and House of Representatives hopes to change that as they recently sent a letter to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) pushing them to “promptly remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)”, noting that almost eight months had passed “since the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III — and 18 months since President Biden directed HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to begin the process of reviewing marijuana’s scheduling.”

Examples of other Schedule I drugs include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote, while Schedule III drugs include Tylenol, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone. Additionally, the penalties between Schedule I and Schedule III drugs also demonstrate stark contrasts, as well.

The 21 congressional leaders take it even farther than requesting marijuana be reclassified as a Schedule III drug, as they state, “As explained in our prior letters, while a move to Schedule III would be a meaningful improvement, the only way to remedy the most concerning consequences of marijuana prohibition is to deschedule marijuana altogether.”

Continue reading “Bipartisan Effort Demands DEA Action on Marijuana Scheduling” | >

A newly developed nanomaterial that mimics the behavior of proteins could be an effective tool for treating Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. The nanomaterial alters the interaction between two key proteins in brain cells—with a potentially powerful therapeutic effect.

The innovative findings, recently published in the journal Advanced Materials, were made possible thanks to a collaboration between University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists and nanomaterial engineers at Northwestern University.

The work centers around altering the interaction between two proteins that are believed to be involved in setting the stage for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

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In the quest for more efficient and sustainable energy solutions, a multi-university research team has reached a significant milestone in capacitor technology. Researchers from the University of Houston, Jackson State University and Howard University have developed a new type of flexible high-energy-density capacitor, which is a device that stores energy.

Though the prototype device is just 1-inch by 1-inch, scaled-up versions of this innovation could potentially revolutionize energy storage systems across various industries, including medical, aviation, auto (EV), consumer electronics and defense.

The researchers shared the study details in a paper titled “Ultrahigh Capacitive Energy Density in Stratified 2D Nanofiller-Based Polymer Dielectric Films,” published in the journal ACS Nano.

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Scientists champion global genomic surveillance using the latest technologies and a ‘One Health’ approach to protect against novel pathogens like avian influenza and antimicrobial resistance, catching epidemics before they start.

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down. In fighting it, one of our most important weapons was genomic surveillance, based on whole genome sequencing, which collects all the genetic data of a given microorganism. This powerful technology tracked the spread and evolution of the virus, helping to guide public health responses and the development of vaccines and treatments.

But genomic surveillance could do much more to reduce the toll of disease and death worldwide than just protect us from COVID-19. Writing in the journal Frontiers in Science, an international collective of clinical and public health microbiologists from the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) calls for investment in technology, capacity, expertise, and collaboration to put genomic surveillance of pathogens at the forefront of future pandemic preparedness.

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