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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,929

UK to launch world’s largest genetic study into chronic fatigue syndrome

The world’s largest genetic study into chronic fatigue syndrome is to be launched in the UK after receiving £3.2m of funding from the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research.

The research aims to shine a light on the debilitating long-term condition, about which little is known, by collecting DNA samples from 20,000 people who have CFS, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

CFS is believed to affect about 250,000 people in the UK and has been estimated to cost the economy billions of pounds each year. Individuals experience exhaustion that is not helped by rest, with one in four so severely affected they are unable to leave the house and, frequently, unable to leave their bed. Other symptoms include, pain, mental fogginess, light and noise sensitivities, as well as trouble with memory and sleep. No effective treatment exists.

Highly parallel lab evolution reveals that epistasis can curb the evolution of antibiotic resistance

Genetic perturbations that affect bacterial resistance to antibiotics have been characterized genome-wide, but how do such perturbations interact with subsequent evolutionary adaptation to the drug? Here, we show that strong epistasis between resistance mutations and systematically identified genes can be exploited to control spontaneous resistance evolution. We evolved hundreds of Escherichia coli K-12 mutant populations in parallel, using a robotic platform that tightly controls population size and selection pressure. We find a global diminishing-returns epistasis pattern: strains that are initially more sensitive generally undergo larger resistance gains. However, some gene deletion strains deviate from this general trend and curtail the evolvability of resistance, including deletions of genes for membrane transport, LPS biosynthesis, and chaperones. Deletions of efflux pump genes force evolution on inferior mutational paths, not explored in the wild type, and some of these essentially block resistance evolution. This effect is due to strong negative epistasis with resistance mutations. The identified genes and cellular functions provide potential targets for development of adjuvants that may block spontaneous resistance evolution when combined with antibiotics.

Scientists Declare an Unprecedented ‘Anthropause’ Due to The Pandemic

The current pandemic isn’t just affecting humans, it’s also impacting wildlife. As the world locks down to avoid further spread of the devastating coronavirus, there are suddenly far fewer cars on the road, planes in the sky and ships in the water. And nature has surely noticed.

Recently, pumas have been spotted ambling down the streets of Santiago, Chile and coyotes have been combing through San Francisco, while rats have grown increasingly aggressive in their hunt for ever-dwindling scraps, and starving urban monkey gangs brawl over diminishing resources.

Some people started calling it the ‘Great Pause’. Now, scientists have come up with a more precise and technical way to describe these exceptional circumstances, outlining what we might learn from their effects.

Agriculture: Sustainable Agriculture through Film Farming

ebiol, Inc. has invented a film called “Imec” made of hydrogel for growing vegetables with less water. Using this method, agriculture can be done virtually anywhere — even on desert land or concrete. The film prevents harmful viruses and germs from getting in, rendering pesticides unnecessary. The film also creates a “water stress” that helps crops such as tomatoes synthesize large amounts of sugar, amino acids, and other nutrients. This, in turn, leads to more natural sweetness and higher nutritional value. In addition, Imec eliminates soil contamination that can negatively impact crop productivity and quality.

Genetic malfunction of brain astrocytes triggers migraine

“Despite their abundance, astrocytes have been relatively overlooked by neuroscientists,” says Mirko Santello, last author of the study. Yet these cells are extremely important to clear transmitters released by neurons. In their study the researchers were able to show that in familial migraine the astrocytes cannot remove excessive transmitters released by neurons. “The impairment in astrocytic glutamate uptake in the cingulate cortex strongly enhances cortical dendritic excitability and thus enhances firing of the neurons,” Santello says…

Migraine is a complicated disorder that affects part of the nervous system. “Our results provide a clear example of how astrocyte dysfunction produced by a genetic defect affects neuronal activity and sensitivity to head pain triggers,” explains Mirko Santello. The findings help to better understand migraine pathophysiology and suggest that the cingulate cortex may represent a critical hub in the disease. The demonstration of the link between dysfunction of astrocytes in the cingulate cortex and familial migraine could help in devising new migraine treatment strategies.

Neuroscientists of the University of Zurich shed a new light on the mechanisms responsible for familial migraine: They show that a genetic dysfunction in specific brain cells of the cingulate cortex area strongly influences head pain occurrence.

Stem Cells: The Key to Reversing Biological Age

Fantastic article on Dr Yuancheng Ryan Lu’s age reversal experiment.

“ It suggests that it is entirely possible to reverse aging in cells with the use of a molecular mechanism already present in the cells. And so, scientists are now off to the races in the hopes of finding this cellular mechanism, and ways to activate this correction system in living beings…”

In 2006, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese stem cell researcher, published his paper on induced pluripotent stem cells, and it changed the medical world. Dr. Yamanaka had found a way to convert a mature skin cell into a stem cell by injecting just a few genes. And for this, Dr. Yamanaka received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012, sharing it with another Sir John B. Gurdon, who found another method of inducing pluripotency.

Thirteen years after this paper was published (in 2019), Dr. Yuancheng Lu from the Sinclair Lab at Harvard University authored another paper (still being peer-reviewed) where he had used Dr. Yamanaka’s breakthrough to reverse aging.

To first explain what stem cells are (for those of you that don’t have much biology experience), we’re going to go back in time to when you were just a small mass of cells in your mother’s womb.

MIT Automated Tabletop Fast Protein Synthesis Machine May Accelerate Drug Development

Automated tabletop machine could accelerate the development of novel drugs to treat cancer and other diseases.

Many proteins are useful as drugs for disorders such as diabetes, cancer, and arthritis. Synthesizing artificial versions of these proteins is a time-consuming process that requires genetically engineering microbes or other cells to produce the desired protein.

MIT chemists have devised a protocol to dramatically reduce the amount of time required to generate synthetic proteins. Their tabletop automated flow synthesis machine can string together hundreds of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, within hours. The researchers believe their new technology could speed up the manufacturing of on-demand therapies and the development of new drugs, and allow scientists to design artificial proteins by incorporating amino acids that don’t exist in cells.

Cancer drug cures COVID-19 patient with acute respiratory distress

“We knew from Chinese publications that patients with a severe and even fatal course of the disease are characterized by a so-called cytokine storm,” Neubauer says. “During a cytokine storm, the body is flooded with substances that stimulate the immune system.” This overreaction of the body’s own defense system damages the tissue—making it all the easier for the invading virus to spread.

Neubauer suspected that the patient might respond to ruxolitinib, a drug originally used in cancer treatment. It inhibits enzymes in the body involved in excessive inflammatory reactions. “We suggested to our colleagues who were treating the patients that the cancer drug might be able to prevent the life-threatening effects brought on by the inflammatory damage to lung tissue,” Neubauer says.

Although the spreading SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus usually causes only mild respiratory symptoms, the COVID-19 disease progresses so severely in around five percent of those affected that acute respiratory distress can occur. “The mortality rate in these cases is high,” says Dr. Thomas Wiesmann, who attended the patient along with the intensive care team in the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care at Marburg University Hospital.

Study illustrates huge potential of human, artificial intelligence collaboration in medicine

A.i assisting the doctors.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in medicine to support human expertise. However, the potential of these applications and the risks inherent in the interaction between human and artificial intelligence have not yet been thoroughly researched. The fear is often expressed that in future, as soon as AI is of sufficient quality, human expertise will become dispensable and therefore fewer doctors will be needed. These fears are further fuelled by the popular portrayal of this as a “competition” between humans and AI. An international study led by MedUni Vienna has now illustrated the enormous potential of human/computer collaboration.

The international study led by Philipp Tschandl and Harald Kittler (Department of Dermatology, MedUni Vienna) and Christoph Rinner (CeMSIIS/Institute for Medical Information Management, MedUni Vienna) now debunks the idea of this alleged competition, highlighting instead the of combining human expertise with Artificial Intelligence. The study published in Nature Medicine examines the interaction between doctors and AI from various perspectives and in different scenarios of practical relevance. Although the authors restrict their observations to the diagnosis of skin cancers, they stress that the findings can also be extrapolated to other areas of medicine where Artificial Intelligence is used.

AI does not always improve diagnosis

In an experiment created by the study authors, 302 examiners and/or doctors had to assess dermoscopic images of benign and malignant skin changes, both with and without the support of Artificial Intelligence. The AI assessment was provided in three different variants. In the first case, AI showed the examiner the probabilities of all possible diagnoses, in the second case the probability of a malignant change and, in the third case, a selection of similar images with known diagnoses, similar to a Google image search. As a main finding the authors observed that only in the first case did collaboration with AI improve the examiners’ diagnostic accuracy, although this was significant, with a 13% increase in correct diagnoses.

Dexamethosone: Upcoming Treatment for the Coronavirus | The State of Science

Until recently, there has not been a treatment for the deadly coronavirus. However, that is about to change with the discovery of a new compound: Dexamethosone! With this compound, the worst cases of the coronavirus have seen an increased survival rate.

PS: The stock footage from this photo comes from Videvo!

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