An innovative study has confirmed that quantum mechanics plays a role in biological processes and causes mutations in DNA.
Quantum biology is an emerging field of science, established in the 1920s, which looks at whether the subatomic world of quantum mechanics plays a role in living cells. Quantum mechanics is an interdisciplinary field by nature, bringing together nuclear physicists, biochemists and molecular biologists.
In a research paper published by the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, a team from Surrey’s Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre used state-of-the-art computer simulations and quantum mechanical methods to determine the role proton tunneling, a purely quantum phenomenon, plays in spontaneous mutations inside DNA.
The Future Of Food And Beverage Innovation And Venturing — Dr. Ellen De Brabander, Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, R&D, PepsiCo
Dr. Ellen de Brabander, is Senior Vice President, Research and Development, at PepsiCo, the American multinational food, snack, and beverage company.
Dr. de Brabander has broad set of responsibilities at Pepsico and currently leads their global R&D functions including the Food Safety, Quality, Strategy & Portfolio Management, and their Sensory and Regulatory Affairs teams. She also leads their R&D Digital Transformation initiatives to transform the innovation process to bring new, innovative products to the market.
Dr. de Brabander is also a member of the board of governors at the New York Academy of Sciences and has served as Treasurer and board member International Life Science Institute of North America, an organization that brings together scientists from government, academia and industry to uphold the scientific integrity and objectivity of nutrition and food safety science in order to ethically improve food systems for the betterment of public health.
Additionally, Dr. de Brabander has also served as the interim and founding CEO of EIT Food (part of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation and Technology), which is a unique $1.5 Billion Euro innovation consortium with more than 50 partners from industry and academia, focused on transforming the food sector by designing and delivering unique and high impact research, innovation, business creation and education programs.
A large international team of scientists from various research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a method that dramatically improves the already ultrafast time resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). It could lead to breakthroughs on how to design new materials and more efficient chemical processes.
The Wyss Institute’s eRapid electrochemical sensor technology now enables sensitive, specific and multiplexed detection of blood biomarkers at low cost with potential for many clinical applications.
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature’s design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing that are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and formation of new startups. The Wyss Institute creates transformative technological breakthroughs by engaging in high risk research, and crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers, working as an alliance that includes Harvard’s Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Arts & Sciences and Design, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, Tufts University, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University of Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. John Torday, Ph.D. is an Investigator at The Lundquist Institute of Biomedical Innovation, a Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Faculty, Evolutionary Medicine, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Director of the Perinatal Research Training Program, the Guenther Laboratory for Cell-Molecular Biology, and Faculty in the Division of Neonatology, at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Torday studies the cellular-molecular development of the lung and other visceral organs, and using the well-established principles of cell-cell communication as the basis for determining the patterns of physiologic development, his laboratory was the first to determine the complete repertoire of lung alveolar morphogenesis. This highly regulated structure offered the opportunity to trace the evolution of the lung from its unicellular origins forward, developmentally and phylogenetically. The lung is an algorithm for understanding the evolution of other physiologic properties, such as in the kidney, skin, liver, gut, and central nervous system. Such basic knowledge of the how and why of physiologic evolution is useful in the effective diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Dr. Torday received his undergraduate degree in Biology and English from Boston University, and his MSc and PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He did a post-doctoral Fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI.
Dr. Torday’s research has led to the publication of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and 350 abstracts. More recently, he has gained an interest in the evolutionary aspects of comparative physiology and development, leading to the publication of 12 peer-reviewed articles on the cellular origins of vertebrate physiology, culminating in the book Evolutionary Biology, Cell-Cell Communication and Complex Disease.
Dr. Torday is also the co-author / co-editor on several volumes including: Evolution, the Logic of Biology, Evidence-Based Evolutionary Medicine, Morphogenesis, Environmental Stress and Reverse Evolution, and most recently, The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
In the search for ways to effectively combat age-related human disease, the enzyme sirtuin 6 (Sirt6) has recently become a focus of biochemical research. A targeted activation of Sirt6 could prevent or mitigate such diseases, for example some types of cancer. In a paper for the journal Nature Chemical Biology, biochemists from the University of Bayreuth have now shown how the small molecule MDL-801 binds to the enzyme Sirt6 and influences its activity. These findings stand to aid the development of new drugs.
A team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Southern University of Science and Technology, has discovered a thought-provoking pattern in cross-sections observed in an F + HD → HF + D reaction. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their double-pronged approach to learning more about the role of relativistic spin-orbit interactions in chemical reactions. T. Peter Rakitzis, with the University of Crete, and IESL-FORTH, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the difficulty of studying chemical reactions at the quantum level and the work done by the team in China.
Innovative silicon solutions provider HPQ Silicon Resources Inc. (“HPQ” or the “Company”), announced that it has received the TREKHY® system, a portable hydrogen-based mini-power generator, jointly developed by the French companies Apollon Solar SAS (“Apollon”) and Pragma Industries SAS (“Pragma”).
While continuing to work with Apollon on the development of new generations of more efficient silicon powders for hydrogen production, HPQ signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Apollon and Pragma to study the commercial potential of the TREKHY® autonomous power generator in Canada.
The TREKHY® provides energy on demand. The system uses a compact fuel cell to provide electrical power. The integrated fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to provide useful electricity + H2O. Hydrogen is produced through a chemical reaction resulting from contact between water and a powder bag. Each bag delivers 30W of power for more than one hour. (Video of the system in operation). In January 2021, a Japanese distributor purchased 300 TREKHY® systems to equip the survival shelters of the Japanese Civil Security.
“Scientists found that a caterpillar called the tomato fruit worm not only chomps on tomatoes and their leaves, but also deposits enzyme-laden saliva on the plant, interfering with its ability to cry for help. If it all sounds a bit improbable, starting with the concept of plants crying for help, scientists also scoffed at that idea when it was first proposed a few decades ago. But it has been shown time and time again that when under attack, plants can emit chemical distress signals, causing their peers to mount some sort of defense. A classic example is the smell of a freshly mown lawn, which prompts the release of protective compounds in nearby blades of grass that have yet to be cut. In some cases, plant distress signals can even summon help from other species. That’s what happens with the tomato. When caterpillars nibble on the plant’s leaves, the leaf pores release volatile chemicals that are detected by a type of parasite: a wasp that lays eggs inside caterpillars. (Not to overwork the horror-movie analogy, but as with the hapless astronauts in the “Aliens” franchise, it doesn’t end well for the caterpillar.)”
While there’s a famous horror-movie spoof about killer tomatoes, no one seems to have made one about caterpillars—the insect pests that eat the juicy red fruits of summer.
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft, stretchy skin patch that can be worn on the neck to continuously track blood pressure and heart rate while measuring the wearer’s levels of glucose as well as lactate, alcohol, or caffeine. It is the first wearable device that monitors cardiovascular signals and multiple biochemical levels in the human body at the same time.
“This type of wearable would be very helpful for people with underlying medical conditions to monitor their own health on a regular basis,” said Lu Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and co-first author of the study published on February 152021, in Nature Biomedical Engineering. “It would also serve as a great tool for remote patient monitoring, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when people are minimizing in-person visits to the clinic.”
Such a device could benefit individuals managing high blood pressure and diabetes — individuals who are also at high risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. It could also be used to detect the onset of sepsis, which is characterized by a sudden drop in blood pressure accompanied by a rapid rise in lactate level.
