It seems everyday more and more information is being uncovered about trees and the many mysteries within them. We know that they are alive, but it seems they are even more alive than we may have thought. Trees are interconnected underground, we also now know that trees can communicate with one another, but recently scientists have discovered that trees actually have a sort of heartbeat, it is just so slow that they’ve never noticed before.

Up until recently scientists had thought that water moved through trees by the process of osmosis, in a sort of continuous matter, but now they’ve discovered that the trunks and branches of the trees are actually contracting and expanding and essentially pumping water up from the roots to the leaves, kind of like how our heart pumps blood throughout our bodies.

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New gene therapy in trials for Danon disease.

“The only available treatment option for Danon disease is a heart transplant. Currently, there are no specific therapies available for the treatment of Danon disease.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the clinical hold it placed on Rocket Pharmaceuticals’ experimental gene therapy for Danon disease. Patient enrollment in the Phase I study will resume, the company announced this morning.

New Jersey-based Rocket Pharmaceuticals said it intends to resume the Phase I program as quickly as possible. Dosing of patients in the pediatric cohort that was receiving the lowest-level of the medication will resume in the third quarter.

The FDA placed the clinical hold on Rocket’s RP-A501 in May of this year. The regulatory agency halted the study to ensure the company modified the study protocol, as well as other supporting documents that included revised guidelines for patient selection and safety management. The trial was not halted due to concerns over safety of the gene therapy. Rocket noted that no drug-related safety events have been observed in cohorts that received low and high doses.

Summary: In order to understand life’s full range of forms, new theoretical frameworks must be developed, researchers say.

Source: Santa Fe Institute.

The history of life on Earth has often been likened to a four-billion-year-old torch relay. One flame, lit at the beginning of the chain, continues to pass on life in the same form all the way down. But what if life is better understood on the analogy of the eye, a convergent organ that evolved from independent origins? What if life evolved not just once, but multiple times independently?