Lifeboat Foundation

Mars’ mysterious and unexplored poles may also harbor pockets of biology, says one planetary scientist.

Rare mounds of a crystalline mineral have emerged above the surface of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, where they’re expected to remain just a few months before disappearing again.

Scientists think these mounds may be similar to mineral structures on Mars that could preserve traces of microbes that may have lived in the planet’s saltwater lakes billions of years ago.

#biophotonics #photonics

ONNA, Japan, Jan. 13, 2020 — Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University have developed a light-based device that can act as a biosensor, detecting biological substances in materials, such as harmful pathogens in food. The scientists said that their tool, an optical microresonator, is 280× more sensitive than current industry-standard biosensors, which can detect only cumulative effects of groups of particles, not individual molecules.

A new study shows drinking low-fat milk—both nonfat and 1% milk—is significantly associated with less aging in adults.

Research on 5,834 U.S. adults by Brigham Young University exercise science professor Larry Tucker, Ph.D., found people who drink low-fat milk experience several years less biological aging than those who drink high-fat (2% and whole) milk.

“It was surprising how strong the difference was,” Tucker said. “If you’re going to drink high-fat milk, you should be aware that doing so is predictive of or related to some significant consequences.”

Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., and Nanjing University in China, have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold in C. elegans, a nematode worm used as a model in aging research.

The increase in lifespan would be the equivalent of a human living for 400 or 500 years, according to one of the scientists.

The research draws on the discovery of two major pathways governing aging in C. elegans, which is a popular model in aging research because it shares many of its genes with humans and because its short lifespan of only three to four weeks allows scientists to quickly assess the effects of genetic and environmental interventions to extend healthy lifespan.

“If everything regenerated, there would be no death.” Richard J. Goss, Ph.D.Principles of Regeneration Richard J. Goss, Ph.D., author of Principles of Regeneration, was a visiting scientist at the MDI Biological Laboratory in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. But is the statement that there would be no death if everything regenerated correct? The zebrafish,…

“The team used an advanced imaging technology called “zero-mode waveguide single-molecule fluorescence microscopy,” which they have adapted in recent years for real-time tracking of RNAs and proteins. Ribosomes are made of both RNA and proteins, reflecting a molecular partnership that is widely believed to go back nearly to the dawn of life on Earth.

In a proof-of-principle study published last year, the researchers used their approach to record an early, brief and relatively well-studied stage of ribosome assembly from the bacterium E. coli. This involved the transcription, or copying out from its corresponding gene, of a ribosomal RNA, and initial interactions of this RNA strand with a ribosomal protein.

In the new study, the team extended this approach by tracking not only the transcription of a ribosomal RNA but also its real-time folding. The work provided a detailed look at a complex, and until-now mysterious, part of E. coli ribosome assembly — the formation of an entire major component, or domain, of the E. coli ribosome, with assistance from eight protein partners that end up incorporated into the structure.”

The achievement, reported in Cell, reveals in unprecedented detail how strands of ribonucleic acid (RNA), cellular molecules that are inherently sticky and prone to misfold, are “chaperoned” by ribosomal proteins into folding properly and forming one of the main components of ribosomes.

Continue reading “In a first for cell biology, scientists observe ribosome assembly in real time” »

Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., and Nanjing University in China, have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold in C. elegans, a nematode worm used as a model in aging research.

The increase in lifespan would be the equivalent of a human living for 400 or 500 years, according to one of the scientists.

The research draws on the discovery of two major pathways governing aging in C. elegans, which is a popular model in aging research because it shares many of its genes with humans and because its short lifespan of only three to four weeks allows scientists to quickly assess the effects of genetic and environmental interventions to extend healthy lifespan.