Lifeboat Foundation

When DNA forms, it usually creates the characteristic double-helix that we’ve all come to recognize. However, given the right ingredients, DNA can fold with another pair of strands to create a quadruple-stranded structure that may have some pretty important roles. These structures, called G-quadruplexes (G4), have only been seen in chemistry lab experiments or in some cancer cells, so understanding exactly what their roles are has been difficult, until now.

Scientists have now produced the first visualization of a G-quadruplex formation in live, healthy cells. By developing a fluorescent marker that can bind to G4s, the researchers could track the formation of a quadruplex structure for the first time, with the results published in Nature. This provides confirmation that normal cellular processes produce these structures, and not a process gone haywire like those in cancer.

“For the first time, we have been able to prove the quadruple helix DNA exists in our cells as a stable structure created by normal cellular processes. This forces us to rethink the biology of DNA. It is a new area of fundamental biology, and could open up new avenues in diagnosis and therapy of diseases like cancer,” said one of the lead researchers Dr Marco Di Antonio in a statement.

Continue reading “Quadruple DNA Strands Discovered In Healthy Cells For The First Time” »

Following a marathon EU summit in Brussels, national leaders this morning agreed to a €1.8 trillion, 7-year budget and pandemic recovery fund that will spend €81 billion on Horizon Europe, the main EU research program. That’s far less than what researchers had hoped for—and €13.5 billion less than a proposal 2 months ago from the European Commission, the EU executive arm.

An €81 billion budget for Horizon Europe disappoints researchers.

Since January, construction has been underway on a huge Gundam robot—a popular fictional robot that appears in some 50 TV series and movies since 1979, not to mention a slew of video games and manga. Coming in at about 60 feet tall, the Gundam will be impossible to miss from the Port of Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, where it will call home for a full year.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has halted progress on various construction projects, worldwide, the Gundam perseveres. You can check out the progress for yourself in this YouTube video, uploaded by Michael Overstreet.

Continue reading “Watch Engineers Take Their 60-Foot-Tall Gundam for a Walk” »

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In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Recently, the Center for Health Security has received questions about whether that pandemic exercise predicted the current novel coronavirus outbreak in China. To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise. For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.

Continue reading “Statement about nCoV and our pandemic exercise” »

COVID19 has no treatment, yet people have been treating disease for centuries. How is that possible? Are people now just using the wrong treatment?

Colds, accompanied by coughing, running nose, sore throat, bronchitis, sinus infections, eardrum infections and infectious flu, do not occur only during the cold and wet seasons, but all through the year, according to your disposition. Himalayan Pink Salt applications not only help to relieve the cold (Infectious flu and sorethroat), but are also excellent preventive therapies.

Conversation Starter

The vaccine completed a phase 1 trial last week involving military personnel, but study’s results hasn’t been published.

TOKYO – Although scientists know many of the underlying symptoms which trigger Alzheimer’s disease, a cure remains elusive. Now, a new study suggests that oxytocin, a hormone best known for promoting feelings of love and wellbeing, may reverse some of the damage the degenerative illness causes.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disease causing the continuous deterioration of mental functions. Its primary symptoms include severely impaired thinking, memory loss, and confusion.

One of the primary culprits in Alzheimer’s is a protein known as amyloid β (Aβ). Researchers say Aβ clumps together to form plaques around neurons in the brain. These plaque build-ups disrupt normal neuron function and triggers the degeneration.

Continue reading “‘Love hormone’ oxytocin may reverse brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease” »

Extremophiles like the bacterium D. radiodurans that can withstand levels of radiation thousands of times what most animals can, are able to help us make vaccines faster, cheaper and safer. They use special molecular protectors to shield their repair proteins but not their DNA or RNA.

Scientists at Columbia University in New York screened antibodies from 40 Covid-19 patients and identified 61 types from five individuals that effectively wiped out coronavirus. Among them were nine that displayed “exquisite potency” for neutralising the pathogen.

Tests on cells showed that the antibodies killed off the virus, while experiments with hamsters revealed that an infusion of one of the more potent antibodies protected the animals from disease. “It shut off infectious virus completely in the lung tissue of the hamsters we treated,” said David Ho, a professor of medicine at Columbia who led the research.

“We specifically isolated very potent antibodies that can be mass produced and then administered,” Ho said. “We would assume that these could be used to prevent or treat Sars-Cov-2. We’d be looking to treat early in the course of infection, particularly those at risk of developing severe disease such as the elderly and those with underlying illness.”

Continue reading “New antibody mix could form ‘very potent’ Covid-19 treatment, say scientists” »