Lifeboat Foundation

The great white shark is one of the most recognized marine creatures on Earth, generating widespread public fascination and media attention, including spawning one of the most successful movies in Hollywood history. This shark possesses notable characteristics, including its massive size (up to 20 feet and 7,000 pounds) and diving to nearly 4,000 foot depths. Great whites are also a big conservation concern given their relatively low numbers in the world’s oceans.

In a major scientific step to understand the biology of this iconic apex predator and sharks in general, the entire genome of the white shark has now been decoded in detail.

A team led by scientists from Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center and Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI), Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, and Monterey Bay Aquarium, completed the white shark genome and compared it to genomes from a variety of other vertebrates, including the giant whale shark and humans.

LA JOLLA—(February 18, 2019) Aging is a leading risk factor for a number of debilitating conditions, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few. This makes the need for anti-aging therapies all the more urgent. Now, Salk Institute researchers have developed a new gene therapy to help decelerate the aging process.

The findings, published on February 18, 2019 in the journal Nature Medicine, highlight a novel CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing therapy that can suppress the accelerated aging observed in mice with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that also afflicts humans. This treatment provides important insight into the molecular pathways involved in accelerated aging, as well as how to reduce toxic proteins via gene therapy.

“Aging is a complex process in which cells start to lose their functionality, so it is critical for us to find effective ways to study the molecular drivers of aging,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the paper. “Progeria is an ideal aging model because it allows us to devise an intervention, refine it and test it again quickly.”

Continue reading “A new CRISPR/Cas9 therapy can suppress aging” »

In field trials, colonies fed mycelium extract from amadou and reishi fungi showed a 79-fold reduction in deformed wing virus and a 45,000-fold reduction in Lake Sinai virus compared to control colonies.

Though it’s in the early stages of development, the researchers see great potential in this research.

“Our greatest hope is that these extracts have such an impact on viruses that they may help varroa mites become an annoyance for bees, rather than causing huge devastation,” said Steve Sheppard, a WSU entomology professor and one of the paper’s authors. “We’re excited to see where this research leads us. Time is running out for bee populations and the safety and security of the world’s food supply hinges on our ability to find means to improve pollinator health.”

In a new study [1], researchers have identified the reason why cells become defective when they grow too large and why protein creation fails when cells grow larger than their original healthy size, as is typically seen in aged and senescent cells.

They demonstrate that in enlarged yeast and human cells, RNA and protein biosynthesis does not scale in proportion to the additional cell size, which then leads to a dilution of the cytoplasm. This phenomenon is also present in senescent cells, which display similar traits to those of large cells.

The research team concludes that the maintenance of a cell type-specific DNA-to-cytoplasm ratio is essential for the majority of cellular functions, and when cellular growth changes this ratio, it encourages cells to become senescent.

Continue reading “Excessive Cell Size Contributes to Senescence” »

To many of us, the great white shark is a mysterious and scary creature from the deep – but now it’s a little less mysterious. A team of scientists has sequenced the entire genome of the great white shark, revealing a few clues as to how these animals are so good at healing wounds and resisting cancer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just issued a new update to its ongoing investigation of a months-long Salmonella outbreak linked to turkey products. The update, which is the first since mid December of last year, adds over 60 new confirmed cases of Salmonella infection to the 200+ cases that were already logged.

A total of 279 cases have now been confirmed across 41 states, with over 100 hospitalized patients and one death resulting from the outbreak. Unfortunately, the bulletin brings more bad news as there’s still been no confirmed source of the Salmonella, and the investigation remains active.

Biological membranes, and man-made variants, consist of amphiphilic molecules, of which soap is an example. These molecules have a head that bonds with water, but a tail that turns away from water. You can imagine that a group of such molecules in water, preferably puts the tails together, and sticks the heads out, towards the water. Similar processes also dominate the creation of membranes. Often they are spherical, like liposomes, so you can, for example, put a medicine in it. And also the ultimate membrane, the cell wall, is constructed in a similar way.

How nano-droplets self-assemble

Until now, the formation of ‘micelles’ was considered to be the first step in membrane formation. A micelle is an extremely small spherical structure (about 100 nanometers) of amphiphilic molecules—all with the tails inwards and the heads outwards. However, researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology discovered a different beginning: the formation of nano-droplets in water with a higher concentration of amphiphilic molecules. At the interface of that drop, the amphiphilic molecules, as it were, take each others’ hands: first they form spheres, which then change into cylinders or plates, and then a closed membrane is created that encloses the nano-droplet. With this so-called ‘self-assembly’ process, the droplet has become a liposome.

Continue reading “Nano-droplets are the key to controlling membrane formation” »

Daydreaming, thinking about the past, planning for the future, or just letting your mind wander off from the current moment occupies our thoughts for a large part of every day. However, a new study has revealed patients suffering from a specific kind of early-onset dementia may have completely lost the ability to do this and seem perpetually “stuck in the moment”.