Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 855

The universe is awash in billions of possible chemicals. But even with a bevy of high-tech instruments, scientists have determined the chemical structures of just a small fraction of those compounds, maybe 1%.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are taking aim at the other 99%, creating new ways to learn more about a vast sea of unknown compounds. There may be cures for disease, new approaches for tackling climate change, or new chemical or biological threats lurking in the chemical universe.

The work is part of an initiative known as m/q, or “m over q” —shorthand for mass divided by charge, which signifies one of the ways that scientists measure chemical properties in the world of .

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A newly created real-life Transformer is capable of reconfiguring its body to achieve eight distinct types of motion and can autonomously assess the environment it faces to choose the most effective combination of motions to maneuver.

The new , dubbed M4 (for Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot) can roll on four wheels, turn its wheels into rotors and fly, stand on two wheels like a meerkat to peer over obstacles, “walk” by using its wheels like feet, use two rotors to help it roll up on two wheels, tumble, and more.

A robot with such a broad set of capabilities would have applications ranging from the transport of injured people to a hospital to the exploration of other planets, says Mory Gharib (Ph. D. ‘83), the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering and director of Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST), where the robot was developed.

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While mitochondria play a crucial role in producing the energy our cells need to carry out their various functions, when damaged, they can have profound effects on cellular function and contribute to the development of various diseases.

Broken-down are usually removed and recycled through a garbage disposal process known as “mitophagy.”

PINK1 and Parkin are two proteins vital to this process, responsible for “tagging” malfunctioning mitochondria for destruction. In Parkinson’s disease, mutations in these proteins can result in the accumulation of damaged mitochondria in the brain, which can lead to motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness and difficulty with movement.

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Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used powerful new brain imaging techniques to reveal a neurochemical imbalance within regions of the frontal lobes in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The research findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The study shows that the balance between glutamate and GABA—two major neurotransmitter chemicals—is “disrupted” in OCD patients in two frontal regions of the brain.

Researchers also found that people who do not have OCD but are prone to habitual and compulsive behavior have increased glutamate levels in one of these brain regions.

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Prof. Yossi Buganim and his research team at the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have achieved a groundbreaking milestone in the field of cell reprogramming. Their latest study, published in Nature Communications, reveals a remarkable breakthrough in converting skin samples into functional human placenta cells. This achievement has significant implications for understanding pregnancy development, studying pregnancy-related diseases, and advancing cell therapies.

The research opens new avenues for investigating the causes of infertility, complications during pregnancy, and long-term health implications for both mothers and babies.

Reprogramming cells to assume new identities has been a focus of Prof. Buganim’s lab, which utilizes specialized proteins to modify . By transforming skin cells into other , the team enables the study of specific diseases and the potential development of cell-based therapies. However, accessing cells from the placenta, a critical organ in pregnancy, has long been a challenge due to technical and ethical constraints.

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A two-faced protein in a chain that regulates iron and other elements in cells could provide a new target to treat cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

A team of researchers at Rice University, the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of North Texas detailed the structure of a protein called mitochondrial inner NEET (MiNT), part of a pathway that stabilizes mitochondria, the organelles that produce energy for cells.

Their report appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Huge libraries of drug compounds may hold potential treatments for a variety of diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. Ideally, scientists would like to experimentally test each of these compounds against all possible targets, but doing that kind of screen is prohibitively time-consuming.

In recent years, researchers have begun using computational methods to screen those libraries in hopes of speeding up drug discovery. However, many of those methods also take a long time, as most of them calculate each target protein’s three-dimensional structure from its amino-acid.

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Recent advances in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and management have resulted in a growing number of cancer survivors. Researchers constantly strive to understand new ways to support cancer survivors and help them lead a healthy and happy life post-treatment. This has led to our understanding that cancer survivors have different healthcare needs than their counterparts with no history of cancer.

One concern facing cancer survivors involves cardiovascular disease (CVD), a general term including conditions that inflict the heart or blood vessels. Many cancer survivors face a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than from cancer itself.

Despite the well-known adverse effects of tobacco use associated with both cancer and CVD, about 20% of cancer survivors continue smoking after diagnosis. How smoking cessation impacts CVD risk after cancer diagnosis remains poorly understood. To address this, a team of researchers recently published their study investigating the cardiovascular consequences of quitting smoking after a cancer diagnosis in the European Heart Journal.

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During the experiment, pluripotent stem cells – a special kind of stem cells that have the potential to grow into all major human cells – were brought into the Wentian lab module on the space station, where some of them successfully grew into hematopoietic stem cells – another kind of stem cells that produce blood cells.

Dozens of other science experiments were also conducted by the Shenzhou-15 crew during their stay at the China Space Station.

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