Lifeboat Foundation

Monday is NASA’s fourth attempt at the final prelaunch test for its Artemis 1 Moon rocket.

While most of us can expect to live to around 80, some people defy expectations and live to be over 100.

A long-running human trial has shown that CRISPR gene editing could prove to be a highly effective way of treating serious conditions.

The trial, which was kicked off in 2019 by an international team of scientists, found that a new gene-editing therapy called exagamglogene autotemcel, or ex-cel for short, was able to essentially “cure” patients with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT) or severe sickle cell disease (SCD), two blood disorders that are conventionally treated using blood transfusions.

It’s a promising new use of the technology. Around 100,000 Americans are affected by TDT, while SCD affects an estimated 300 to 3,000. And in a broader sense, the results suggest that tinkering with genetic code could come to be a practical, widespread new area of medicine.

The violent death throes of a nearby star so thoroughly disrupted its planetary system that the dead star left behind—known as a white dwarf—is sucking in debris from both the system’s inner and outer reaches, UCLA astronomers and colleagues report today.

This is the first case of cosmic cannibalism in which astronomers have observed a white dwarf consuming both rocky-metallic material, likely from a nearby asteroid, and icy material, presumed to be from a body similar to those found in the Kuiper belt at the fringe of our own solar system.

Continue reading “Dead star’s cannibalism of its planetary system is most far-reaching ever witnessed” »

It’s a given that certain bacteria and viruses can cause illness and disease, but the real culprits are the sequences of concern that lie within the genomes of these microbes.

Calling them out is about to get easier.

Years of work by Rice University computer scientists and their colleagues have led to an improved platform for DNA screening and pathogenic sequence characterization, whether naturally occurring or synthetic, before they have the chance to impact public health.

A team of researchers at the Institute of Biochemistry at Münster University discovered that by using so-called FlashCaps they were able to control the translation of mRNA by means of light. The results have been published in Nature Chemistry.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a long chain of molecules composed of many individual components, and it forms the basis of life on Earth. The function of DNA is to store all genetic information. The translation of this genetic information into proteins—which an organism needs to function, develop and reproduce—takes place via mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid). The DNA is transcribed to mRNA, and the mRNA in turn is translated into proteins (protein biosynthesis). In other words, the mRNA functions as an information carrier. Biochemists at the University of Münster have now developed a new biochemical tool that is able to to control the translation of RNA with the aid of light. These so-called FlashCaps enable researchers to control a variety of processes in cells both spatially and temporally and, as a result, to determine basic functions of proteins.

DNA is the basis of life on earth. The function of DNA is to store all the genetic information an organism needs to develop, function and reproduce. It is essentially a biological instruction manual found in every cell. Biochemists at the University of Münster have now developed a strategy for controlling the biological functions of DNA with the aid of light. This enables researchers to better understand and control the processes that take place in the cell—for example, epigenetics, the key chemical change and regulatory lever in DNA. The results have been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

The cell’s functions depend on enzymes. Enzymes are proteins that carry out chemical reactions in the cell. They help to synthesize metabolic products, make copies of the DNA molecules, convert energy for the cell’s activities, change DNA epigenetically and break down certain molecules. A team of researchers headed by Prof. Andrea Rentmeister from the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Münster used a so-called enzymatic cascade reaction to understand and track these functions better. This sequence of successive reaction steps involving different enzymes makes it possible to transfer so-called photocaging groups—chemical groups that can be removed by means of irradiation with light—to DNA. Previously, studies had shown that only small residues (small modifications such as methyl groups) could be transferred selectively to DNA, RNA (ribonucleic acid) or proteins.

“As a result of our work, it is now possible to transfer larger residues or modifications such as the photocaging groups just mentioned,” explains Nils Klöcker, one of the lead authors of the study and a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Biochemistry. Working together with structural biologist Prof. Daniel Kümmel, who also works at the Institute of Biochemistry, it was also possible to explain the basis for the changed activity at a molecular level.

New scientific results confirm an anomaly seen in previous experiments, which may point to an as-yet-unconfirmed new elementary particle, the sterile neutrino, or indicate the need for a new interpretation of an aspect of standard model physics, such as the neutrino cross section, first measured 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory is the lead American institution collaborating on the Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions (BEST) experiment, results of which were recently published in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review C.

“The results are very exciting,” said Steve Elliott, lead analyst of one of the teams evaluating the data and a member of the Los Alamos Physics division. “This definitely reaffirms the anomaly we’ve seen in previous experiments. But what this means is not obvious. There are now conflicting results about sterile neutrinos. If the results indicate fundamental nuclear or atomic physics are misunderstood, that would be very interesting, too.” Other members of the Los Alamos team include Ralph Massarczyk and Inwook Kim.

More than a mile underground in the Baksan Neutrino Observatory in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains, BEST used 26 irradiated disks of chromium 51, a synthetic radioisotope of chromium and the 3.4 megacurie source of electron neutrinos, to irradiate an inner and outer tank of gallium, a soft, silvery metal also used in previous experiments, though previously in a one-tank set-up. The reaction between the electron neutrinos from the chromium 51 and the gallium produces the isotope germanium 71.

The human middle ear—which houses three tiny, vibrating bones—is key to transporting sound vibrations into the inner ear, where they become nerve impulses that allow us to hear.

Embryonic and fossil evidence proves that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracle of fishes. However, the origin of the vertebrate spiracle has long been an unsolved mystery in vertebrate evolution.

Some 20th century researchers, believing that early vertebrates must possess a complete spiracular gill, searched for one between the mandibular and hyoid arches of early vertebrates. Despite extensive research spanning more than a century, though, none were found in any vertebrate fossils.