Lifeboat Foundation

An international research team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has measured the size of a star dating back 2 billion years after the Big Bang, or more than 11 billion years ago. Detailed images show the exploding star cooling and could help scientists learn more about the stars and galaxies present in the early universe. The paper is published in Nature.

“This is the first detailed look at a supernova at a much earlier epoch of the universe’s evolution,” said Patrick Kelly, a lead author of the paper and an associate professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “It’s very exciting because we can learn in detail about an individual star when the universe was less than a fifth of its current age, and begin to understand if the stars that existed many billions of years ago are different from the ones nearby.”

The red supergiant in question was about 500 times larger than the sun, and it’s located at redshift three, which is about 60 times farther away than any other supernova observed in this detail.

A new study at Monash University illustrates how substrates affect strong electronic interactions in two-dimensional metal-organic frameworks.

Materials with strong electronic interactions can have applications in energy-efficient electronics. When these materials are placed on a substrate, their electronic properties are changed by charge transfer, strain, and hybridization.

The study also shows that electric fields and applied strain could be used to “switch” interacting phases such as magnetism on and off, allowing potential applications in future energy-efficient electronics.

Coronaviruses have brought about three massive outbreaks in the past two decades. Each step of its life cycle invariably depends on the interactions among virus and host molecules. The interaction between virus RNA and host protein (IVRHP) is unique compared to other virus-host molecular interactions, and has emerged to be a very hot topic in recent studies.

These studies provide essential information for a deeper understanding of IVRHP, which represents not only an attempt by viruses to promote their translation/replication, but also the host’s endeavor to combat viral pathogenicity. In other words, there is an urgent need to have a panorama of coronavirus RNA-Host protein interactions, which will then aid in the discovery of new antiviral therapies.

On October 6, 2022, Prof. Zhu Feng from College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Zhejiang University, Prof. Han Lianyi from College of Life Sciences in Fudan University and Prof. Lin Tao from College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Hangzhou Normal University published an article titled “CovInter: Interaction Data between Coronavirus RNAs and Host Proteins” in Nucleic Acids Research.

A team of scientists at Whitehead Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have systematically evaluated the functions of more than 5,000 essential human genes using a novel, pooled, imaged-based screening method. Their analysis harnesses CRISPR/Cas9 to knock out gene activity and forms a first-of-its-kind resource for understanding and visualizing gene function in a wide range of cellular processes with both spatial and temporal resolution.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Cell, span over 31 million individual cells and include quantitative data on hundreds of different parameters that enable predictions about how genes work and operate together.

“For my entire career, I’ve wanted to see what happens in cells when the function of an essential gene is eliminated,” said Iain Cheeseman, a senior author of the study and a member of Whitehead Institute. “Now, we can do that, not just for one gene but for every single gene that matters for a human cell dividing in a dish, and it’s enormously powerful. The resource we’ve created will benefit not just our own lab but labs around the world.”

Using an approach based on CRISPR proteins, MIT researchers have developed a new way to precisely control the amount of a particular protein that is produced in mammalian cells.

This technique could be used to finely tune the production of useful proteins, such as the monoclonal antibodies used to treat cancer and other diseases, or other aspects of cellular behavior. In their new study, which appears in Nature Communications, the researchers showed that this system can work in a variety of mammalian cells, with very consistent results.

“It’s a highly predictable system that we can design up front and then get the expected outcome,” says William C.W. Chen, a former MIT research scientist. “It’s a very tunable system and suitable for many different biomedical applications in different cell types.”

A team of researchers at Umeå University has discovered that an enzyme in human cells has probably evolved from an ancient single-celled organism. The enzyme’s unique properties mean that it could be used as a building block in the design of new enzymes, for example in processing wood raw materials. The discoveries are presented in Science Advances.

Life on Earth is divided into three groups of organisms: bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, with humans belonging to the last group, the eukaryotes. One theory is that we evolved from archaea, which in turn may have evolved from bacteria.

Now, a team of researchers from the Department of Chemistry at Umeå University has discovered clear traces of an archaea (odinarchaeota) in an enzyme found in the nucleus of human cells. The human enzyme is called AK6 and has a variety of functions, such as energy metabolism, genome stabilization and programmed cell death.

The human genome has just over 20,000 genes coding for proteins. Yet, it produces at least ten times that many different non-coding RNA molecules, which can often take on more than one shape. At least some of this RNA structurome is functional in physiology or pathophysiology.

In an invited review for Nature Reviews Genetics, Danny Incarnato, a molecular geneticist from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), and his colleague Robert C. Spitale from the University of Irvine in California (USA) describe ways to develop the, as yet, largely untapped potential of RNA structures.

RNA is perhaps best known as the intermediate between genome and protein synthesis: messenger RNA molecules copy the genetic code of a gene in the cell’s nucleus and transport it to the cytoplasm, where ribosomes translate the code into a protein. However, RNA is also a key regulator of almost every cellular process and the structures that are adopted by RNA molecules are thought to often be key to their functions.

Artificial intelligence has long been a hot topic: a computer algorithm “learns” by being taught by examples: What is “right” and what is “wrong.” Unlike a computer algorithm, the human brain works with neurons—cells of the brain. These are trained and pass on signals to other neurons. This complex network of neurons and the connecting pathways, the synapses, controls our thoughts and actions.

Biological signals are much more diverse when compared with those in conventional computers. For instance, neurons in a biological neural network communicate with ions, biomolecules and neurotransmitters. More specifically, neurons communicate either chemically—by emitting the messenger substances such as neurotransmitters—or via electrical impulses, so-called “action potentials” or “spikes”.

Artificial neurons are a current area of research. Here, the efficient communication between the biology and electronics requires the realization of artificial neurons that emulate realistically the function of their biological counterparts. This means artificial neurons capable of processing the diversity of signals that exist in biology. Until now, most artificial neurons only emulate their biological counterparts electrically, without taking into account the wet biological environment that consists of ions, biomolecules and neurotransmitters.

A paralyzed man who cannot speak or type was able to spell out over 1,000 words using a neuroprosthetic device that translates his brain waves into full sentences, US researchers said Tuesday.

“Anything is possible,” was one of the man’s favorite phrases to spell out, said the first author of a new study on the research, Sean Metzger of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

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