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Category: biotech/medical

Unlike older methods that use things foreign to our bodies, this one doesn’t trigger our immune system and employs small molecules to interact with RNA.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a breakthrough technology to regulate gene expression in gene therapy, addressing the crucial issue of maintaining therapeutic gene levels within a safe range.

This is important because having too much or too little of a gene’s activity within a therapeutic window can cause problems. Their method uses tiny substances in amounts approved by the FDA to control the genes.

Current methods have issues

Continue reading “Gene on/off? New tech lets scientists control genes like a light switch” | >

Diets that are higher in fat and significantly lower in carbohydrates are known to have a drastic effect on reducing the incidence of seizures in individuals with drug-resistant forms of epilepsy, particularly among children.

While it’s becoming apparent the diet creates some sort of shift in the gut’s microflora, the precise nature of those changes and their connection to the prevalence of seizures remains a mystery.

In a prospective study on children and experiments involving mice, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) bring us a step closer to understanding how the foods we eat alter the functions of microbes in our digestive system, which in turn affect a variety of neurological functions suspected to play a role in epilepsy.

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Just as healthy organs are vital to our well-being, healthy organelles are vital to the proper functioning of the cell. These subcellular structures carry out specific jobs within the cell; for example, mitochondria power the cell, and lysosomes keep the cell tidy.

Although damage to these two organelles has been linked to aging, cellular senescence, and many diseases, the regulation and maintenance of these organelles have remained poorly understood. Now, researchers at Osaka University have identified a protein, HKDC1, that plays a key role in maintaining these two organelles, thereby acting to prevent cellular aging.

There was evidence that a protein called TFEB is involved in maintaining the function of both organelles, but no targets of this protein were known. By comparing all the genes of the cell that are active under particular conditions and by using a method called , which can identify the DNA targets of proteins, the team was the first to show that the gene encoding HKDC1 is a direct target of TFEB, and that HKDC1 becomes upregulated under conditions of mitochondrial or lysosomal stress.

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Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has spearheaded revolutionary research unveiling groundbreaking strides in cancer treatment and understanding disease mechanisms.

Their discoveries include CAR T cell therapy targeting specific antigens in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), insights into the genetic element LINE-1, revelations on blood stem cell regulation, and a promising immunotherapy technique targeting CD47, showcasing potential breakthroughs in cancer therapy.

In the battle against acute myeloid leukemia (AML), traditional CAR T cell therapies faced hurdles due to varying antigens in AML cells and their similarity to normal blood stem cells, risking broader immune system damage.

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Sunlight provides so much more than just Vitamin D: learn from Dr. Seheult of https://bit.ly/44MTKR2 about the myriad of benefits from optimizing our exposure to light.

Roger Seheult, MD is the co-founder and lead professor at https://bit.ly/44MTKR2

He is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, critical care, and sleep medicine and an associate professor at the university of california, riverside school of medicine.

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I believe nanomachines or new advanced rna antivirals that can target one’s own variants of viruses will be game changers to prevent future global pandemics. Also eventually new genetic engineering could allow for the end to all viruses with some sorta Omni vaccine.

Measurement(s) Pandemic-and epidemic-prone disease outbreaks Technology Type(s) Text mining using R Sample Characteristic — Organism Disease outbreaks Sample Characteristic — Environment spatiotemporal region Sample Characteristic — Location Global.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has been advancing rapidly, but its inner workings often remain obscure, characterized by a “black box” nature where the process of reaching conclusions is not visible. However, a significant breakthrough has been made by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bajorath and his team, cheminformatics experts at the University of Bonn. They have devised a technique that uncovers the operational mechanisms of certain AI systems used in pharmaceutical research.

Surprisingly, their findings indicate that these AI models primarily rely on recalling existing data rather than learning specific chemical interactions for predicting the effectiveness of drugs. Their results have recently been published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

Which drug molecule is most effective? Researchers are feverishly searching for efficient active substances to combat diseases. These compounds often dock onto protein, which usually are enzymes or receptors that trigger a specific chain of physiological actions.

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A long-awaited space mission in the coming year could herald the start of a new era where so many science fiction dreams finally begin to cement themselves as science fact. But first we must pass a critical test of our own making that pits our technological expansion into orbit against the sun itself.

It’s not that difficult to predict what science stories we’ll be talking about over the next year: artificial intelligence, climate change and advances in biotechnology will remain front of mind. But there’s a pair of happenings just beyond our planet that I’ll be watching closely, because they amount to tests of a sort that could determine the trajectory of our species.

The first story you’ve probably already heard about. NASA aims to launch its Artemis II mission by the end of the year, carrying humans on a journey around the moon and back. This marks the first time anyone has traveled farther than low-earth orbit in more than 50 years.

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