Lifeboat Foundation

A typical human cell is metabolically active, roaring with chemical reactions that convert nutrients into energy and useful products that sustain life. These reactions also create reactive oxygen species, dangerous by-products like hydrogen peroxide which damage the building blocks of DNA in the same way oxygen and water corrode metal and form rust. Similar to how buildings collapse from the cumulative effect of rust, reactive oxygen species threaten a genome’s integrity.

Cells are thought to delicately balance their energy needs and avoid damaging DNA by containing metabolic activity outside the nucleus and within the cytoplasm and mitochondria. Antioxidant enzymes are deployed to mop up reactive oxygen species at their source before they reach DNA, a defensive strategy that protects the roughly 3 billion nucleotides from suffering potentially catastrophic mutations. If DNA damage occurs anyway, cells pause momentarily and carry out repairs, synthesizing new building blocks and filling in the gaps.

Despite the central role of cellular metabolism in maintaining genome integrity, there has been no systematic, unbiased study on how metabolic perturbations affect the DNA damage and repair process. This is particularly important for diseases like cancer, characterized by their ability to hijack metabolic processes for unfettered growth.

A chemical reaction with the body’s own sugars turned a gel cocktail into a conducting material inside zebrafish brains, hearts and tail fins.

A new study finds a chemical formed when we digest a widely used sweetener is “genotoxic,” meaning it breaks up DNA. The chemical is also found in trace amounts in the sweetener itself, and the finding raises questions about how the sweetener may contribute to health problems.

At issue is sucralose, a widely used artificial sweetener sold under the trade name Splenda^®. Previous work by the same research team established that several fat-soluble compounds are produced in the gut after sucralose ingestion. One of these compounds is sucralose-6-acetate.

Our new work establishes that sucralose-6-acetate is genotoxic. We also found that trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate can be found in off-the-shelf sucralose, even before it is consumed and metabolized.

Thinking of X-rays might trigger memories of broken bones or dental check-ups. But this extremely energetic light can show us more than just our bones: it is also used to study the molecular world, even biochemical reactions in real-time. One issue, though, is that researchers have never been able to study a single atom with X-rays. Until now.

Scientists have been able to characterize a single atom using X-rays. Not only they were able to distinguish the type of atoms they were seeing (there were two different ones), but they also managed to study the chemical behavior these atoms were showing.

“Atoms can be routinely imaged with scanning probe microscopes, but without X-rays, one cannot tell what they are made of. We can now detect exactly the type of a particular atom, one atom-at-a-time, and can simultaneously measure its chemical state,” senior author Professor Saw Wai Hla, from the University of Ohio and the Argonne National Laboratory, said in a statement.

A team of engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder has designed a new class of tiny, self-propelled robots that can zip through liquid at incredible speeds—and may one day even deliver prescription drugs to hard-to-reach places inside the human body.

The researchers describe their mini healthcare providers in a paper published last month in the journal Small.

“Imagine if microrobots could perform certain tasks in the body, such as non-invasive surgeries,” said Jin Lee, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. “Instead of cutting into the patient, we can simply introduce the robots to the body through a pill or an injection, and they would perform the procedure themselves.”

In this interview conducted at Pittcon 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we spoke to Dr. Jeffrey Dick about his work studying the chemistry of small volumes and nano-electrochemical tools.

What is your background, and what first attracted you to this field?

My name is Jeffrey Dick, and I grew up in Muncie, Indiana. I studied chemistry at Ball State University and fell in love with research and education.

Researchers from the Max Born Institute in Berlin have successfully performed X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD) experiments in a laser laboratory for the first time.

Unlocking the secrets of magnetic materials requires the right illumination. Magnetic x-ray circular dichroism makes it possible to decode magnetic order in nanostructures and to assign it to different layers or chemical elements. Researchers at the Max Born Institute in Berlin have succeeded in implementing this unique measurement technique in the soft-x-ray range in a laser laboratory. With this development, many technologically relevant questions can now be investigated outside of scientific large-scale facilities for the first time.

Magnetic nanostructures have long been part of our everyday life, e.g., in the form of fast and compact data storage devices or highly sensitive sensors. A major contribution to the understanding of many of the relevant magnetic effects and functionalities is made by a special measurement method: X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD).

Every color, every flash, every sunray exacts a toll on the light-sensitive tissues at the back of our eyes, producing toxic materials that risk damaging the very cells that allow us to see.

Thankfully, the pigment responsible for darkening our hair, skin, and eyes moonlights as a clean-up crew, mopping up one such dangerous compound before it accumulates into damaging clumps.

An investigation by researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany and Yale University has revealed the removal process is somewhat unusual as far as biochemistry goes, relying upon a strange quirk of quantum-like behavior.

In two new studies, North Carolina State University researchers have designed and tested a series of textile fibers that can change shape and generate force like a muscle. In the first study, published in Actuators, the researchers focused on the materials’ influence on artificial muscles’ strength and contraction length. The findings could help researchers tailor the fibers for different applications.

In the second, proof-of-concept study published in Biomimetics, the researchers tested their fibers as scaffolds for live cells. Their findings suggest the fibers—known as “fiber robots”—could potentially be used to develop 3D models of living, moving systems in the human body.

“We found that our fiber robot is a very suitable scaffold for the cells, and we can alter the frequency and contraction ratio to create a more suitable environment for cells,” said Muh Amdadul Hoque, graduate student in textile engineering, chemistry and science at NC State. “These were proof-of concept studies; ultimately, our goal is to see if we can study these fibers as a scaffold for stem cells, or use them to develop artificial organs in future studies.”