Lifeboat Foundation

Using a self-built inverted microscope complete with laser optical tweezers to capture DNA, Yale Cancer Center and University of California Davis researchers for the first time created a visualization of the full-length human BRCA2 protein at the single molecule level.

Mutations in the breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA2, can significantly increase an individual’s lifetime risk of developing cancer. Approximately one in every 400 people carry a BRCA gene mutation accounting for a significant proportion of cancer that is heritable. The study was published on March 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“If you carry a BRCA mutation, you have this incredibly high risk for breast and ovarian cancer, and also for men, prostate and pancreatic cancer,” said Yale Cancer Center member and co-author of the paper, Ryan Jensen, Ph.D., who is also an associate professor of therapeutic Radiology at Yale School of Medicine.

Researchers at Boston University, U.S. report that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain is linked to waking brain activity. Led by Stephanie Williams, and publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on March 30, the study demonstrates that manipulating blood flow in the brain with visual stimulation induces complementary fluid flow. The findings could impact treatment for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, which have been associated with declines in cerebrospinal fluid flow.

Just as our kidneys help remove toxic waste from our bodies, cerebrospinal fluid helps remove toxins from the brain, particularly while we sleep. Reduced flow of cerebrospinal fluid is known to be related to declines in brain health, such as occur in Alzheimer’s disease. Based on evidence from sleep studies, the researchers hypothesized that brain activity while awake could also affect the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. They tested this hypothesis by simultaneously recording human brain activity via fMRI and the speed of cerebrospinal fluid flow while people were shown a checkered pattern that turned on and off.

Researchers first confirmed that the checkered pattern induced brain activity; blood oxygenation recorded by fMRI increased when the pattern was visible and decreased when it was turned off. Next, they found that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid negatively mirrored the blood signal, increasing when the checkered pattern was off. Further tests showed that changing how long the pattern was visible affected blood and fluid in a predictable way, and that the blood-cerebrospinal fluid link could not be accounted for by only breathing or heart rate rhythms.

The number of people under 50 with cancer is increasing in many countries and for many different tumour types. Why this is occurring isn’t entirely clear, but it may be due to some aspects of modern life.

By Clare Wilson

Advanced materials are urgently needed for everyday life, be it in high technology, mobility, infrastructure, green energy or medicine. However, traditional ways of discovering and exploring new materials encounter limits due to the complexity of chemical compositions, structures and targeted properties. Moreover, new materials should not only enable novel applications, but also include sustainable ways of producing, using and recycling them.

Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE) review the status of physics-based modelling and discuss how combining these approaches with artificial intelligence can open so far untapped spaces for the design of complex materials.

They published their perspective in the journal Nature Computational Science (“Accelerating the design of compositionally complex materials via physics-informed artificial intelligence”).

Futurist Ray Kurzweil is predicting that by 2030, microscopic gelbots in our bodies will make it possible to cure disease and live forever. You’re 40 years old, but you’re not Dwayne Johnson; it’s the time in life when your body doesn’t bounce back from a good workout as fast as it used to; when you eat a pizza, it sits with you for longer, and sleeping wrong could jumpstart a week of back pain.

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PLEASE CLICK ON LINK TO DONATE: http://cryoprize.info 3 Minute video detailing our efforts to make organ transplants safer, less costly and more available to those in need by offering a prize, beginning at $50,000, to the first person or group to successfully freeze, and restore to full function, one of several mammalian organs.

Simple calculations, such as factoring low numbers, can be made by mixing together differently shaped strands of DNA

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

There are approximately 30 trillion cells in a human body and our health is predicated on them properly interacting with and supporting each other, with the immune system playing a particularly pivotal role. One of the defining characteristics of aging is a decline in the proper functioning of our immune system. Centenarians, a rare population of individuals who reach 100 years or more, experience delays in aging-related diseases and mortality which suggests their immune systems remain functional into extreme old age.

Led by researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Tufts Medical Center, a new study finds centenarians harbor distinct immune cell type composition and activity and possess highly functional immune systems that have successfully adapted to a history of sickness allowing for exceptional longevity. These immune cells may help identify important mechanisms to recover from disease and promote longevity.

“Our data support the hypothesis that centenarians have protective factors that enable to recover from disease and reach extreme old ages,” said lead author Tanya Karagiannis, Ph.D., senior bioinformatician, Center for Quantitative Methods and Data Science, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center.

MIT researchers built DiffDock, a diffusion generative model that could potentially find new drugs faster than traditional methods and reduce the potential for adverse side effects.