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Category: genetics – Page 21

Chemotherapy leaves detectable DNA fingerprints in childhood tumors within 18 months

Nearly half of childhood tumors treated with common types of chemotherapy showed detectable DNA changes linked to treatment within 18 months, according to a new international study led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). Researchers say these changes could eventually help clinicians spot treatment resistance earlier, before cancer returns or spreads, opening the door to more precise use of chemotherapy.

For their study published in Nature, researchers analyzed more than 600 tumors from 544 patients in Canada, Australia and the United States. By combining whole-genome sequencing with detailed medical records and advanced computational methods developed at SickKids, the team found distinct genomic signatures of DNA changes left behind by different chemotherapies. Some of these patterns appeared as early as 91 days after treatment began.

“There’s a long-standing belief that pediatric cancers are genetically quiet because they haven’t had much time to mutate,” says lead author Dr. Adam Shlien, senior scientist, Genetics & Genome Biology, and a lab director in Genome Diagnostics at SickKids. “Instead, it was mind-blowing to see how many mutations found in tumors that had relapsed or spread were linked to the chemotherapy used to treat the cancer in the first place.”

The Divergent Effects of Nicotinamide Riboside and High‐Intensity Exercise Training on Skeletal Muscle Epigenetic Aging

This study investigated the effects of nicotinamide riboside supplementation and high-intensity interval training on skeletal muscle epigenetic aging. Our findings reveal that both interventions may…

Did Eating Too Many Sardines Increase Homocysteine?

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Experimental plague vaccine strategy protects mice with missing key immune defenses

The plague has killed more people than World War II. The bacterium Yersinia pestis (Yp), which causes plague, has triggered three major pandemics throughout history, leaving behind a casualty toll of more than 200 million people. Although the plague no longer causes pandemics on the scale seen in history, it still occurs in many parts of the world today. Vaccination remains our best defense against the disease, but approved options remain scarce.

In a new study, scientists tested two live-attenuated plague vaccines, LMA and LMP—weakened forms of the plague bacterium that cannot cause disease—both alone and in combination with the virus-based vaccine Ad5-YFV.

They genetically engineered the mice to completely lack a signaling protein called interferon-gamma, which plays a crucial role in activating immune cells. Despite lacking a key immune protein, the vaccines protected 80% to 100% of mice exposed to highly lethal doses of the pneumonic plague-causing Yp CO92 strain, while triggering strong antibody and immune responses in all vaccinated animals.

Tiny BAP1 mutations can disrupt internal signals that suppress tumor growth

Scientists at the Institute of Biochemical Sciences at National Taiwan University have uncovered how tiny genetic changes can disable one of the body’s most important tumor-suppressing proteins. Their study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how cancer-associated mutations interfere with the function of BRCA1-associated protein 1 (BAP1), a protein that helps maintain normal cell growth and is frequently mutated in cancers such as mesothelioma, uveal melanoma and kidney cancer.

Although many cancer mutations in BAP1 have been identified over the years, it has remained unclear exactly how they impair the protein. To answer this question, the research team examined nearly 50 cancer-associated mutations using advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, computer simulations and biochemical experiments.

Aspirin reverses diet-driven depression-like behavior in mice

Depression is among the most common psychiatric disorders, estimated to affect between 280 million and 332 million people worldwide. This disorder is characterized by persistent sadness and hopelessness, low energy, a loss of interest in everyday activities and sometimes changes in appetite or sleep.

Several factors can contribute to the onset of depression, including genetics, chronic stress, traumatic or challenging life events and biochemical imbalances in the brain. Recent studies suggest that people’s diets can also sometimes influence their mental health and may play a role in the emergence of depressive symptoms.

Some research findings suggest that the long-term consumption of foods rich in fat is linked to an increased risk of depression. The biological processes underpinning this relationship, however, have not yet been clearly elucidated.

Neutrophilderived itaconate facilitates tiered pulmonary inflammation via Kdm5bassociated epigenetic remodeling in alveolar macrophages

Lim et al. identify neutrophil-derived itaconate as a key environmental factor shaping tiered inflammatory responses in ALI. Itaconate metabolically promotes KDM5B-associated epigenetic activation of proinflammatory genes in alveolar macrophages, coordinating later-stage immune cell infiltration, including monocytes and T cells.

Team uses AlphaFold AI to redesign geneediting proteins to make them safer

A couple of decades after the discovery of systems that could selectively target DNA, we’re starting to see the first therapies based on gene editing. One challenge these developments have faced is safety. While we can make them pretty specific to the gene we want edited, the human genome is very large, and even rare DNA sequences can appear a couple of times by chance.

As a result, all the original gene-editing systems had known rates of what are called off-target effects, in which they simply edit the wrong sequence. This may be a low-probability event, but edit enough cells—and therapies generally have to edit many—and errors become inevitable.

A lot of effort has gone into finding ways to minimize or eliminate off-target edits. In a recent issue of Nature, researchers described modifying the AI protein-folding software AlphaFold to help identify key areas of gene-editing proteins responsible for off-target effects. Those areas were then modified to reduce the problems.

Inside the World’s First Age Reversal Trial | Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair — S2, Ep. 4

At Lifespan, our mission is to help you and your loved ones live your longest, healthiest lives while supporting medical research into breakthroughs to improve all lives.

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In this episode of Lifespan, Dr. David Sinclair, A.O., Ph.D. – Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and pioneer in longevity research – explores the science of eye aging, vision loss, and emerging strategies to preserve vision throughout life.

Dr. Sinclair shares an inside update on ER-100, including his team’s successful restoration of vision in non-human primates and the launch of the world’s first FDA-cleared age reversal human clinical trial. This Phase 1 clinical trial will evaluate the safety of epigenetic cellular restoration as a therapy.

Additionally, drawing on decades of research, Dr. Sinclair explains why the eyes may offer one of the earliest windows into biological aging, how everyday factors such as sleep position, alcohol consumption, and intraocular pressure influence long-term eye health, and what the latest evidence reveals about nutrition, supplements, and the connection between the eyes and the brain.

Continue reading “Inside the World’s First Age Reversal Trial | Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair — S2, Ep. 4” | >

Programmable platform enables on-demand design of plant immune receptors against crop pathogens

Crop production faces threats from plant pathogens. Traditional disease-resistance breeding relies heavily on natural plant resistance genes that encode immune receptors adapted to particular pathogens. However, rapidly evolving pathogens frequently overcome these natural defenses, and the limited diversity of naturally occurring immune receptors makes it difficult to develop crops with durable resistance.

Now, a team led by Professor Gao Caixia at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a programmable platform for the on-demand design of synthetic plant immune receptors (SPIRs) that recognize proteins from diverse plant pathogens.

The study was published online in Science on July 23.