Lifeboat Foundation

As brain activity-dependent human genes are of great importance in human neuropsychiatric disorders we also examined the expression of these genes to postmortem RNAseq databases from patients suffering from various neurological and psychiatric disorders (Table 1). Datasets were chosen based on similarities in tissue processing and RNAseq methodology to our own protocol. We performed a PCA (Principal Component Analysis) of our fresh brain compared to postmortem brain from healthy, Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, Huntington’s, and Autism brains for the top 500 brain activity-dependent genes that showed the greatest reduction in the healthy postmortem samples. The PCA revealed a significant separation between the 4 fresh samples and the postmortem samples, independent of whether or not the fresh tissue was from epileptic (high activity, H) or non-epileptic (low activity, L) brain regions (Fig. 2 J). This further demonstrates a selective reduction of activity-dependent genes in postmortem brain independent of whether the underlying tissue is electrically active or not.

The sudden removal of brain tissue from a living person in many ways mimics a catastrophic event that occurs with a hypoxic brain injury or a traumatic death with exsanguination. The human brain has high energy needs, estimated to be 10 times that of other tissues²¹. As a means to understand how the postmortem interval selectively affects some genes and not others in human neocortex, we performed RNAseq and histological analyses in cortical brain tissue as a function of time from 0–24 h at 24 °C in order to simulate a postmortem interval. Neuropathological examination of the tissue used for this study showed a normal-appearing cortical pattern with no histopathologic abnormalities. RNAseq analysis showed a loss of brain activity-dependent genes that were 3-times more prone to be degraded than expected by chance compared to more stable housekeeping genes (Table 2). The threshold to detect activity-dependent genes was related to the probability of being affected by the PMI. The higher the relative expression of the brain activity gene, the more it was enriched in the population of genes affected by the PMI. These findings confirm that genes involved in brain activity are more prone to degradation during the PMI.

One possible explanation for the selective loss of activity-dependent genes could relate to the stability of various cell populations during the simulated PMI. As a means to implicate specific cell populations that could be responsible for the reduction of genes during the simulated PMI we used a clustering algorithm as we have previously described⁹. We found that 1427 genes (71% known brain activity-dependent genes) could be clustered across the seven time points of the simulated PMI. For these clusters, we used AllegroMcode to identify two main clusters. One cluster of 317 rapidly declining genes was predicted to be neuronal and strongly overlapped with the activity-dependent genes. A second cluster of 474 genes was predicted to be glial, including astrocytes and microglia (Fig. 3A). Remarkably, as the neuronal cell cluster rapidly fell, there was a reciprocal and dramatic increase in the expression of the glial cell cluster (Fig. 3B).

Human memory is fallible and malleable. In forensic settings in particular, this poses a challenge because people may falsely remember events with legal implications that never actually happened. Despite an urgent need for remedies, however, research on whether and how rich false autobiographical memories can be reversed under realistic conditions (i.e., using reversal strategies that can be applied in real-world settings) is virtually nonexistent. The present study therefore not only replicates and extends previous demonstrations of false memories but, crucially, documents their reversibility after the fact: Employing two ecologically valid strategies, we show that rich but false autobiographical memories can mostly be undone. Importantly, reversal was specific to false memories (i.e., did not occur for true memories).

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Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective against the virus in children ages 12 to 15, the companies announced in a press release Wednesday.

In a placebo-controlled trial of 2260 adolescents, none of the participants who received the real vaccine developed COVID-19, the companies said.

SPARKS, Nev. (KOLO) — Their headquarters sits on a hill overlooking east Sparks, but Sierra Nevada Corporation’s sights are set much higher.

Long known for the development of high-tech equipment for applications here on Earth, they are also a major player in space exploration and research.

They provided some key parts to the latest Mars rover, Perseverance, and in a virtual press conference from their plant in Colorado Wednesday they announced an ambitious timeline for their latest projects—commercial flights with its Dreamchaser spaceplane to the International Space Station next year…and by 2028, a replacement for the space station itself.

Company officials say it will likely be summer before the ship begins glide flight testing at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic has reached space twice before — the first time from California in December 2018. The company marked its second successful glide flight over Spaceport America last June.

RELATED: 1st private space crew paying $55M each to fly to International Space Station

Continue reading “Virgin Galactic rolls out latest generation of spaceship” »

In Wednesday’s announcement, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer said the COVID-19 pandemic created new demand for her company’s expertise. “When the pandemic first hit, we reached out to the federal government and started looking at ways we could help take seven of our laboratories around the United States and start offering COVID testing on a local basis, not only to support nursing homes, but Indian Tribal Communities as well as just the general public.”

PayCertify is a financial technology (FinTech) firm that “encompasses both a complete merchant and consumer experience front to back, pulling analytics and valuable insights to connect data sets in real-time from both the consumer and merchant side of the transaction.”

The two companies are expected to bring a combined 200 biotech and fintech jobs to the region.

Traffic in and around big cities is getting more clogged, and the rising levels of pollution definitely don’t help with the quality of life in these areas. But what if there was a clean, efficient means of transportation that didn’t require new infrastructure or significant urban change?

An ancient crater lake in the southern highlands of Mars appears to have been fed by glacial runoff, bolstering the idea that the Red Planet had a cold and icy past.

The earliest bones, however, were very different from human skeletons today. In the prehistoric past, bone was more like concrete, growing on the exterior of fish to provide a protective shell. But according to a new study in the journal Science Advances, the first bones with living cells—like those found in humans—evolved about 400 million years ago and acted as skeletal batteries: They supplied prehistoric fish with minerals needed to travel over greater distances.

The fossilized creatures in the analysis are known as osteostracans. “I affectionately call them beetle mermaids,” says Yara Haridy, a doctoral candidate at the Berlin Museum of Nature and lead author of the study. These fish had a hard, armor-encased front end and a flexible tail growing out the back. They had no jaws, and their bone tissue encased their bodies. These kinds of fish are critical to understanding the origins of the hard parts that shaped vertebrate evolution.