Scientists at the University of Liverpool have sequenced the genome of the bowhead whale, estimated to live for more than 200 years with low incidence of disease.
Published in the journal Cell Reports, the research could offer new insight into how animals and humans could achieve a long and healthy life.
Scientists compared the genome with those from other shorter-lived mammals to discover genetic differences unique to the bowhead whale.
In Project Apollo, life support was based on carrying pretty much everything that astronauts needed from launch to splashdown. That meant all of the food, air, and fuel. Fuel in particular took up most of the mass that was launched. The enormous three-stage Saturn-V rocket was basically a gigantic container for fuel, and even the Apollo spacecraft that the Saturn carried into space was mostly fuel, because fuel was needed also to return from the Moon. If NASA’s new Orion spacecraft takes astronauts back to the Moon, they’ll also use massive amounts of fuel going back and forth; and the same is true if they journey to a near-Earth asteroid. However, once a lunar base is set up, astronauts will be able use microorganisms carried from Earth to process lunar rock into fuel, along with oxygen. The latter is needed not just for breathing, but also in rocket engines where it mixes with the fuel.
Currently, there are microorganisms available naturally that draw energy from rock and in the process release chemical products that can be used as fuel. However, as with agricultural plants like corn and soy, modifying such organisms can potentially make a biologically-based lunar rock processing much more efficient. Synthetic biology refers to engineering organisms to pump out specific products under specific conditions. For spaceflight applications, organisms can be engineered specifically to live on the Moon, or for that matter on an asteroid, or on Mars, and to synthesize the consumables that humans will need in those environments.
In the case of Mars, a major resource that can be processed by synthetic biology is the atmosphere. While the Martian air is extremely thin, it can be concentrated in a biological reactor. The principal component of the Martian air is carbon dioxide, which can be turned into oxygen, food, and rocket fuel by a variety of organisms that are native to Earth. As with the Moon rocks, however, genetic techniques can make targeted changes to organisms’ capabilities to allow them to do more than simply survive on Mars. They could be made to thrive there.
Viruses are tiny invaders that cause a wide range of diseases, from rabies to tomato spotted wilt virus and, most recently, COVID-19 in humans. But viruses can do more than elicit sickness — and not all viruses are tiny.
Large viruses, especially those in the nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA virus family, can integrate their genome into that of their host — dramatically changing the genetic makeup of that organism. This family of DNA viruses, otherwise known as “giant” viruses, has been known within scientific circles for quite some time, but the extent to which they affect eukaryotic organisms has been shrouded in mystery — until now.
“Viruses play a central role in the evolution of life on Earth. One way that they shape the evolution of cellular life is through a process called endogenization, where they introduce new genomic material into their hosts. When a giant virus endogenizes into the genome of a host algae, it creates an enormous amount of raw material for evolution to work with,” said Frank Aylward, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Virginia Tech College of Science and an affiliate of the Global Change Center housed in the Fralin Life Sciences Institute.
Circa 2013
The Book of Genesis puts Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden, but geneticists’ version of the duo — the ancestors to whom the Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA of today’s humans can be traced — were thought to have lived tens of thousands of years apart. Now, two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all1, 2.
When the overall population size does not change (as is likely to have happened for long periods of human history), men have, on average, just one son. In this case, evolutionary theory predicts that for any given man there is a high probability that his paternal line will eventually come to an end. All of his male descendants will then have inherited Y chromosomes from other men. In fact, it is highly probable that at some point in the past, all men except one possessed Y chromosomes that by now are extinct. All men living now, then, would have a Y chromosome descended from that one man — identified as Y-chromosome Adam. (The biblical reference is a bit of a misnomer because this Adam was by no means the only man alive at his time.)
Similarly, the theory predicts that all mitochondrial genomes today should be traceable to a single woman, a ‘mitochondrial Eve’. Whereas the Y chromosome is passed from father to son, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed from mother to daughter and son.
A group of researchers from the Institute of Neurosciences UMH-CSIC, in Alicante, led by Dr. Eloísa Herrera, has discovered a genetic program essential for the formation of bilateral circuits, such as the one that makes possible 3D vision or the one enabling motor coordination. The finding, carried out in mice, is published today in Science Advances.
This new study not only clarifies how images are transmitted from the retina to the brain in order to see in 3D, but also helps us to understand how laterality is established in other neuronal circuits, such as the one that allows us to coordinate movements at both sides of the body, Dr. Herrera explains.
The work also reveals the important role of a protein known as Zic2 in the regulation of a signaling pathway called Wnt, which is fundamental for the correct development of the embryo and is highly conserved among species, from fruit flies to humans, including mice, in which this study has been carried out.
– and Why We Don’t Have To — A conversation with David Sinclair.
David Andrew Sinclair AO is an Australian biologist who is a professor of genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School.
The Italian version is “Longevità”, here: https://www.verduci.it/prodotto/longevita/
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Most newly-discovered species are easy to classify. They have features that are very consistent with well-known organisms and they fit neatly into one category or another. Every so often, one comes along that leaves scientists wondering, “What the hell is this thing?” Case in point: Dendrogramma. This new genus represents two species of deep-sea animals that resemble mushrooms but don’t really fit in with any other known animals. As a result, this organism could bring fairly large changes to the phylogenetic tree. The research was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the paper was published in PLOS ONE.
The 18 specimens were caught during an expedition in the Bass Strait, between Australia and Tasmania back in 1986. Two samples were dredged up from depths of 400 and 1000 meters. The samples had been fixed and preserved, rendering them unable to undergo genetic analysis. However, the preservation process was not done particularly well, causing them to become bleached and shrunken. They turned brittle over time.
A genetic disposition that plays a role in the development of the heart in the embryo also appears to play a key role in the human immune system. This is shown by a recent study led by the University of Bonn (Germany). When the gene is not active enough, the immune defense system undergoes characteristic changes, causing it to lose its effectiveness. Doctors speak of an aging immune system, as a similar effect can often be observed in older people. In the medium term, the results may contribute to reduce these age-related losses. The study is published in the journal Nature Immunology.
The gene with the cryptic abbreviation CRELD1 has so far been a mystery to science. It was known to play an important role in the development of the heart in the embryo. However, CRELD1 remains active after birth: Studies show that it is regularly produced in practically all cells of the body. For what purpose, however, was previously completely unknown.
The Bonn researchers used a novel approach to answer this question. Nowadays, scientific studies with human participants often include so-called transcriptome analyses. By these means, one can determine which genes are active to what extent in the respective test subjects. Researchers are also increasingly making the data they obtain available to colleagues, who can then use it to work on completely different matters. “And this is exactly what we did in our study,” says Dr. Anna Aschenbrenner from the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn and member of the ImmunoSensation² Cluster of Excellence.
Circa 2019
In the past decade, remarkable progress has been made in reprogramming terminally differentiated somatic cells and cancer cells into induced pluripotent cells and cancer cells with benign phenotypes. Recent studies have explored various approaches to induce reprogramming from one cell type to another, including lineage-specific transcription factors-, combinatorial small molecules-, microRNAs- and embryonic microenvironment-derived exosome-mediated reprogramming. These reprogramming approaches have been proven to be technically feasible and versatile to enable re-activation of sequestered epigenetic regions, thus driving fate decisions of differentiated cells. One of the significant utilities of cancer cell reprogramming is the therapeutic potential of retrieving normal cell functions from various malignancies. However, there are several major obstacles to overcome in cancer cell reprogramming before clinical translation, including characterization of reprogramming mechanisms, improvement of reprogramming efficiency and safety, and development of delivery methods. Recently, several insights in reprogramming mechanism have been proposed, and determining progress has been achieved to promote reprogramming efficiency and feasibility, allowing it to emerge as a promising therapy against cancer in the near future. This review aims to discuss recent applications in cancer cell reprogramming, with a focus on the clinical significance and limitations of different reprogramming approaches, while summarizing vital roles played by transcription factors, small molecules, microRNAs and exosomes during the reprogramming process.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is based on the mass release of sterilized male insects to reduce the pest population size via infertile mating. Critical for all SIT programs is a conditional sexing strain to enable the cost-effective production of male-only populations. Compared to current female-elimination strategies based on killing or sex sorting, generating male-only offspring via sex conversion would be economically beneficial by doubling the male output. Temperature-sensitive mutations known from the D. melanogaster transformer-2 gene (tra2ts) induce sex conversion at restrictive temperatures, while regular breeding of mutant strains is possible at permissive temperatures. Since tra2 is a conserved sex determination gene in many Diptera, including the major agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata, it is a promising candidate for the creation of a conditional sex conversion strategy in this Tephritid. Here, CRISPR/Cas9 homology-directed repair was used to induce the D. melanogaster-specific tra2ts SNPs in Cctra2. 100% female to male conversion was successfully achieved in flies homozygous for the tra2ts2 mutation. However, it was not possible, to identify a permissive temperature for the mutation allowing the rearing of a tra2ts2 homozygous line, as lowering the temperature below 18.5 °C interferes with regular breeding of the flies.
