These are the molecular machines inside your body that make cell division possible. Animation by Drew Berry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. http://wehi.tv.
Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Joshua Abenir, Tony Fadell, Donal Botkin, Jeff Straathof, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal, Nathan Hansen.
Every day in an adult human roughly 50–70 billion of your cells die. They may be damaged, stressed, or just plain old — this is normal, in fact it’s called programmed cell death.
Gravity is the most familiar of the known forces, but it seems to be eternal and unchanging. However, scientists believe that gravity moves with a specific speed. In this video, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln describes a fascinating observation that definitively measures the speed of gravity.
In this video students of the Maastricht Science Program NanoBiology Course 2020, show their explanation of the SARS-CoV-2 viral budding. Using CellPAINT, UCFS Chimera and their creativity they explain the nanobiology of how the SARS-CoV-2 virion can bud and leave the cell.
Viruses are not living things. They are just complicated assemblies of molecules, in particular macromolecules such as proteins, oligonucleotides, combined with lipids and carbohydrates. A virus cannot function or reproduce by itself. It needs a host cell.
When a virus enters the host cell, a series of chemical reactions occur that lead to the production of new viruses. A virus needs to find a host cell, attach to it, enter it, and reprogram it such that it will replicate its genome and produce new proteins that allow the assembly of a new virus. Once new viruses have been assembled, they need to get out of the original host cell, on their way to the next host cell they can exhaust. Some viruses have an easy way out: they use up all the resource of the host cells until it dies and lyse. This would only work for naked viruses such as polyomavirus and adenovirus, which lacks a lipid membrane.
Washing hands has been a standard measure since the start of this COVID-19 pandemic. The soap will disintegrate the lipid envelop of the SARS-CoV2 viral particles, as this is an enveloped virus. Enveloped viruses need envelopment, a process in which the capsids become surrounded by a lipid bilayer. This process takes place prior to release. Two mechanisms for envelopment exist. First, envelopment can proceed sequentially after the completion of capsid assembly. The fully assembled capsids are recruited to the membrane by interaction of the viral capsids with viral envelope glycoprotein. Examples of this include herpesvirus and hepatitis B virus. Secondly, the envelopment can occur simultaneously with the capsid assembly. Retrovirus is the representative of this coupled mechanism.
“Like a lock and key” — this is the description of how viruses can get into our cells. Viruses use special proteins on their surface to enter cells. They do this because they need our cells to reproduce. But viruses can only enter certain cells. They use proteins on their surface that act like keys to unlock human cell receptors to invade and infect cells.
If life is common in our Universe, and we have every reason to suspect it is, why do we not see evidence of it everywhere? This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox, a question that has plagued astronomers and cosmologists almost since the birth of modern astronomy.
It is also the reasoning behind the Hart-Tipler Conjecture, one of the many (many!) proposed resolutions, which asserts that if advanced life had emerged in our galaxy sometime in the past, we would see signs of their activity everywhere we looked. Possible indications include self-replicating probes, megastructures, and other Type III-like activity.
On the other hand, several proposed resolutions challenge the notion that advanced life would operate on such massive scales. Others suggest that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would be engaged in activities and locales that would make them less noticeable.
Feb 9 (Reuters) — (This Feb. 9 story has been refiled to add ‘U.S.’ in the first sentence to reflect the closure of the U.S. service only)
Crypto exchange Kraken agreed to shut down its U.S. cryptocurrency staking service and pay $30 million in penalties to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it failed to register the program, the agency said on Thursday, in a move that could cause headaches for platforms with similar offerings.
The settlement marks the SEC’s first crackdown on staking, a common service offered at both centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges, including most of the major exchanges in the United States such as Coinbase (COIN.O) and Binance US.
