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Continue reading “Trials Begin For Lozenge That Rebuilds Tooth Enamel” »

Another surprising fact is that genes that control zinc levels within cells are known to be associated with cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, and hypertension is also a known side effect of zinc deficiency. This new research provides explanations for these previously known associations.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the leading modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and premature death worldwide. And key to treating patients with conditions ranging from chest pain to stroke is understanding the intricacies of how the cells around arteries and other blood vessels work to control blood pressure. While the importance of metals like potassium and calcium in this process are known, a new discovery about a critical and underappreciated role of another metal—zinc—offers a potential new pathway for therapies to treat hypertension.

The study results were published recently in Nature Communications.

Continue reading “Unexpected discovery opens a new way to regulate blood pressure” »

They need to speed these processes along.

Many modern fitness trackers and smartwatches feature integrated LEDs. The green light emitted, whether continuous or pulsed, penetrates the skin and can be used to measure the wearer’s heart rate during physical activity or while at rest.

These watches have become extremely popular. A team of ETH researchers now wants to capitalize on that popularity by using the LEDs to control genes and change the behavior of cells through the skin. The team is led by Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel. He explains the challenge to this undertaking: “No naturally occurring molecular system in human cells responds to green light, so we had to build something new.”

Continue reading “Activating Genes With a Smartwatch to Control Insulin Production” »

Hundreds of websites worldwide crashed this morning following a massive internet outage – with the UK government, Amazon and Spotify among those experiencing issues.

Millions of users across the globe reported problems trying to access web pages, with Netflix, Twitch and news websites including the BBC, Guardian, CNN and the New York Times hit by the problem.

Continue reading “Hundreds of websites worldwide go DOWN including Netflix and Spotify” »

The U.S. Department of Treasury and NASA did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Launched in 1998, the ISS serves as the largest hub for scientific research and collaboration in orbit. The U.S., Russia, Canada and Japan alongside a dozen countries participating in the European Space Agency work in support of the ISS.

Is the physical universe independent from us, or is it created by our minds, as suggested by scientist Robert Lanza?

During a recent #MQ25 T1 test asset flight, this unmanned aerial refueler for the @USNavy delivered fuel to an F/A-18 #SuperHornet — the first time an unmanned aircraft has ever refueled another aircraft.

June 10 marks the first solar eclipse of any kind viewable in North America since 2017.

The ring of fire annular solar eclipse in June is the first solar eclipse viewable in North America since 2017. Here’s how to watch and what makes it special.

While carrying out high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) analysis on stage 8 (s8) X. tropicalis embryos, we noticed that chromatin interactions plotted at 100-kilobase (kb) resolution using the reference genome v.9.1 showed inversions, misplacements and gaps in nearly every chromosome (Fig. 1a and Extended Data Fig. 1). Thus, to accurately characterize the genome folding patterns in X. tropicalis, we conducted a de novo genome assembly of X. tropicalis using Hi-C and single-molecule sequencing^42,43,44 (Fig. 1b). The newly assembled genome fixed most misplacements, inversions and gaps (Fig. 1c, d, Extended Data Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 1). This new version of the genome was also longer (Supplementary Table 1 and Fig. 1e) and centromere interactions can now be detected (Supplementary Fig. 2). During the preparation of this work, v.10.0 of the X. tropicalis genome was released. While both v.10.0 and our assembly fixed major errors, both versions are still flawed with visually identifiable errors (Supplementary Fig. 1; blue and green arrows). A comparison of the three versions is shown in Supplementary Table 1. Conclusions from the following analyses are the same whether we used v.10.0 or our assembled genome.

To examine when the 3D chromatin architecture is established in X. tropicalis, we generated in situ Hi-C maps on hand-picked s8 embryos (Fig. 2a). A high-resolution (5-kb) inspection of chromatin contact heatmaps failed to reveal any distinct patterns (Fig. 2b), indicating the lack of structural organization before MBT. Next, we determined whether chromatin structures will emerge when rapid synchronized cell division ends by carrying out in situ Hi-C on s9 embryos. Although weak, TAD-like structures appeared across chromatin contact heatmaps (Fig. 2b), suggesting that TAD structures start forming as MBT begins in X. tropicalis.

We continued to examine the changes in chromatin conformation at later developmental stages (stages 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, and 23) after major ZGA (Fig. 2b). TAD boundaries increased progressively from 2471 at s9 to 3000 at s11 (Extended Data Fig. 3a, b). This level was maintained throughout the later developmental stages and with relatively stable median TAD sizes (Extended Data Fig. 3a, b). Consistent with this pattern, the percentage of the genome folded into TADs positively correlated with the number of TADs established at each stage (Extended Data Fig. 3c). Overall, TAD borders were stable during development (Fig. 2c) and contained a high level of gene expression (Extended Data Fig. 3D, e).