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Category: biotech/medical – Page 565

These scientists want to safeguard Earth’s species by cryogenically preserving them on the moon

A group of scientists has devised a plan to safeguard Earth’s species in a cryogenic biorepository on the moon.

Intended to save species in the event of a disaster on Earth, the plan makes use of craters that are permanently in shadow and therefore cold enough to allow cryogenic preservation of biological material without using electricity or liquid nitrogen, according to research from a group led by scientists at the Smithsonian, published last week.

The paper, published in the journal BioScience, draws on the successful cryopreservation of skin samples from a fish, and outlines a method for creating a biorepository that would keep samples of other species safe.

New Study Sheds Light on Dispersion of Languages, Ancient DNA

The new groundbreaking Language Velocity Field (LVF) method is helping researchers trace dispersion patterns of languages, including Greek, across the world.

The spatial evolution of languages can help deepen our understanding of people diffusion and cultural spread. The language velocity field estimation is different from the frequently used phylogeographic approach which cannot fully explain the language evolution induced by the horizontal contact among languages, such as borrowing and areal diffusion.

The study of language evolution, particularly its spatial dispersion, offers valuable insights into our collective past. Traditional approaches, such as the phylogeographic approach, often miss the complexity of language evolution.

Cutting-Edge Quantum Sensor Unveils the Hidden Atomic World

A new quantum sensor developed by researchers from Korea and Germany can measure magnetic fields at the atomic scale with high precision. This technology uses a single molecule for detection, offering superior resolution and the potential for significant advancements in quantum materials and molecular systems analysis.

In a scientific breakthrough, an international research team from Korea’s IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) and Germany’s Forschungszentrum Jülich developed a quantum sensor capable of detecting minute magnetic fields at the atomic length scale. This pioneering work realizes a long-held dream of scientists: an MRI-like tool for quantum materials.

“You have to be small to see small.” —

Revolutionary DNA Nanotech Boosts Mass Cytometry by 500-Fold

ACE, a groundbreaking DNA-powered signal amplification technology, significantly enhances the sensitivity of mass cytometry, providing new insights into various biological and pathological processes.

Since the 1950s, researchers have employed “flow cytometry,” a renowned technique devised by Wallace Coulter, to characterize various types of immune cells in research studies and human blood samples. This method has significantly enhanced our understanding of immune cell development and provided innovative approaches for evaluating human health and diagnosing various blood cancers. Eventually, flow cytometry was extended to analyze other cell types as well.

In traditional flow cytometry, cell surface and intracellular proteins are detected with antibody molecules that are linked to fluorescent probes. However, while providing single-cell sensitivity, this method is limited in detecting multiple proteins by the number of fluorophores that can be clearly distinguished within the entire spectrum of fluorescent light.

Cell-type specific epigenetic clocks to quantify biological age at cell-type resolution

The ability to accurately quantify biological age could help monitor and control healthy aging. Epigenetic clocks have emerged as promising tools for estimating biological age, yet so far, most of these clocks have been developed from heterogeneous bulk tissues, and are thus composites of two aging processes, one reflecting the change of cell-type composition with age and another reflecting the aging of individual cell-types. There is thus a need to dissect and quantify these two components of epigenetic clocks, and to develop epigenetic clocks that can yield biological age estimates at cell-type resolution. Here we demonstrate that in blood and brain, approximately 35% of an epigenetic clock’s accuracy is driven by underlying shifts in lymphocyte and neuronal subsets, respectively. Using brain and liver tissue as prototypes, we build and validate neuron and hepatocyte specific DNA methylation clocks, and demonstrate that these cell-type specific clocks yield improved estimates of chronological age in the corresponding cell and tissue-types. We find that neuron and glia specific clocks display biological age acceleration in Alzheimer’s Disease with the effect being strongest for glia in the temporal lobe. The hepatocyte clock is found accelerated in liver under various pathological conditions. In contrast, non-cell-type specific clocks do not display biological age-acceleration, or only do so more marginally. In summary, this work highlights the importance of dissecting epigenetic clocks and quantifying biological age at cell-type resolution.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

The Illumina DNA methylation datasets analyzed here are all freely available from GEO (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo).

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