Lifeboat Foundation

The digital universe — all the data contained in our computer files, historic archives, movies, photo collections and the exploding volume of digital information collected by businesses and devices worldwide — is expected to hit 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020.

Researchers have developed one of the first complete systems to store digital data in DNA — allowing companies to store data that today would fill a big box store supercenter in a space the size of a sugar cube.

If you trace our evolutionary tree way back to its roots — long before the shedding of gills or the development of opposable thumbs — you will likely find a common ancestor with the amazing ability to regenerate lost body parts.

Researchers have built a running list of the genes that enable regenerating animals to grow back a severed tail or repair damaged tissues. Surprisingly, they have found that genes important for regeneration in these creatures also have counterparts in humans. The key difference might not lie in the genes themselves but in the sequences that regulate how those genes are activated during injury.

A Duke study appearing April 6 in the journal Nature has discovered the presence of these regulatory sequences in zebrafish, a favored model of regeneration research. Called “tissue regeneration enhancer elements” or TREEs, these sequences can turn on genes in injury sites and even be engineered to change the ability of animals to regenerate.

Continue reading “Limb regeneration activation genes found in mammals and regenration of heart tissue and paws activitated in mice” »

Researchers in China have edited the genes of human embryos to make cells resistant to HIV infection.

Researchers in China deploy CRISPR to alter genes in human embryos again — this time to make cells HIV-resistant.

Along with equipment and supplies for the astronauts, the rocket was supposed to deliver several scientific experiments, including one Grattoni and his team spent five years perfecting: a study of how drug-like particles disperse through 100 tiny channels etched in a dime-sized microchip. […] it hit him: the rocket — and his work — was gone. Led by Grattoni, the center has secured coveted approval to conduct several experiments in coming years aboard the $100 billion space station, where scientists can exploit the lack of gravity about 200 miles above the Earth’s surface to perform studies they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to do on Earth.

Most traditional vaccines have safety and efficacy issues, whereas particulate vaccine delivery systems—which utilize nano- or micro-particulate carriers to protect and deliver antigens—are efficient, stable, include molecules to bolster immune responses, and minimize adverse reactions due to the use of biocompatible biomaterials.

A new review, titled “Particulate delivery systems for vaccination against bioterrorism agents and emerging infectious pathogens,” summarizes the current status of research efforts to develop particulate vaccine delivery systems against bioterrorism agents and emerging infectious pathogens.

How the human brain processes the words we hear and constructs complex concepts is still somewhat of a mystery to the neuroscience community. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can alter our language processing, allowing for faster comprehension of meaningful word combinations, according to new research from the department of Neurology the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The work is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“Integrating conceptual knowledge is one of the neural functions fundamental to human intelligence,” said the study’s first author Amy Price, a neuroscience graduate student at Penn. “For example, when we read or listen to a sentence, we need to combine, or integrate, the meaning of the words to understand the full idea of the sentence. We perform this process effortlessly on a daily basis but it is quite a complex process and little is known about the brain regions that support this ability.”

Semantic memory is our stored knowledge about the world, such as the meaning of words and objects. “We sought to understand how and in what part of the brain semantic representations are integrated into more complex ideas” said senior author Roy Hamilton, MD, MS, an assistant professor in the departments of Neurology and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and director of the Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation at Penn. Recent findings from functional MRI scans (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have suggested the angular gyrus, a region of the brain known to be involved in language, number processing and spatial cognition, memory retrieval and attention, as a potential hub for semantic memory integration, specifically the left angular gyrus.

Continue reading “Transcranial direct current stimulation can boost language comprehension: Stimulation of the brain’s left angular gyrus enhanced the comprehension of simple, two-word phrases” »

The blood-brain barrier has stymied direct treatment of brain disorders. In a recently published study, a researcher reports finding a way to pass therapeutics through the barrier, using readily-available agents.

Who needs memory cards when you have DNA? A team of scientists has been able to store images within the life-defining molecules then retrieve them perfectly.

Researchers from the University of Washington have been working out how to take digital files and convert them into strings of DNA that can be easily read back. Luis Ceze, one of the researchers, explains in a press release:

“Life has produced this fantastic molecule called DNA that efficiently stores all kinds of information about your genes and how a living system works — it’s very, very compact and very durable. We’re essentially repurposing it to store digital data — pictures, videos, documents — in a manageable way for hundreds or thousands of years.”

Continue reading “Scientists Stored These Images in DNA—Then Flawlessly Retrieved Them” »

Very cool.

For more than a decade, biomedical researchers have been looking for better ways to deliver cancer-killing medication directly to tumors in the body. Tiny capsules, called nanoparticles, are now being used to transport chemotherapy medicine through the bloodstream, to the doorstep of cancerous tumors. But figuring out the best way for the particles to get past the tumor’s “velvet rope” and enter the tumor is a challenge scientists are still working out. Drexel University researchers believe that the trick to gaining access to the pernicious cellular masses is to give the nanoparticles a new look—and that dressing to impress will be able to get them past the tumor’s biological bouncers.

Targeted cancer therapy is most effective when the medication is released as close as possible to the interior of a tumor, to increase its odds of penetrating and killing off cancerous cells. The challenge that has faced cancer researchers for years is making a delivery vehicle that is sturdy enough to safely get the medication through the bloodstream to tumors—which is no smooth ride—but is also lithe enough to squeeze through the tumor’s dense extra cellular space—a matrix stuffed with sugars called hyaluronic acid.

Continue reading “Dressed to kill: Tailoring a suit for tumor-penetrating cancer meds” »