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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 2, 2018 at 9:18am

According to new research diabetes could be five  separate types.

The results, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, showed the patients could be separated into five distinct clusters.

• Cluster 1 - severe autoimmune diabetes is broadly the same as the classical type 1 - it hit people when they were young, seemingly healthy and an immune disease left them unable to produce insulin
• Cluster 2 - severe insulin-deficient diabetes patients initially looked very similar to those in cluster 1 - they were young, had a healthy weight and struggled to make insulin, but the immune system was not at fault
• Cluster 3 - severe insulin-resistant diabetes patients were generally overweight and making insulin but their body was no longer responding to it
• Cluster 4 - mild obesity-related diabetes was mainly seen in people who were very overweight but metabolically much closer to normal than those in cluster 3
• Cluster 5 - mild age-related diabetes patients developed symptoms when they were significantly older than in other groups and their disease tended to be milder

This new classification makes treatment better and scientists think treating these groups differently would produce better outcomes.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 10, 2018 at 9:22am

Lichens redefined...

For 150 years, scientists believed lichen were defined by a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and algae. The fungus provides structure and support for the organism, while the algae produces food through photosynthesis. However, researchers recently discovered that certain lichen have an additional fungus in the mix. This threesome was revealed after a team set out to explain what made one type of lichen toxic versus another that was seemingly identical.

Lichens may be a symbiosis of three organisms!

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/07/20/science.aaf8287

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 10, 2018 at 8:50am

Sunday, 11 February, is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

In order to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/70/212 declaring 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

http://www.un.org/en/events/women-and-girls-in-science-day/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 24, 2018 at 6:35am

For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The agency’s report, released on January 18, documents the United States’ increasing competition from China and other developing countries that are stepping up their investments in science and technology. Nonetheless, the report suggests that the United States remains a scientific powerhouse, pumping out high-profile research, attracting international students and translating science into valuable intellectual property.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 18, 2017 at 11:43am

A new wave of thought to fight super bugs

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 7, 2017 at 10:52am

http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/70/3/479.full
Report of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on the Role of Microbiota in Blood Pressure Regulation

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 5, 2017 at 8:11am

Antibiotic weakness: When the medicines you take themselves help microbes survive?

A new study has found that medications can change body chemistry to make it more hospitable to invading microbes! 

Antibiotics save lives, but they are not fail-safe. Even when microbes haven’t acquired drug-evading genetic mutations—a hallmark of antibiotic resistance—the medications don’t always clear infections. A new study identifies a surprising reason why: At infection sites, antibiotics change the natural mixture of chemicals made by the body in ways that protect infecting bacteria. They also thwart the ability of the host’s immune cells to fight off the intruders.

These chemical changes were incited not by bacterial cells, but by the animals’ own cells. The researchers learned this after giving antibiotics to so-called “germ-free” mice that had no bacteria and saw the same chemical changes. 

Scientists are not sure how the chemicals elicit these effects. But they note some of the compounds slow down aspects of bacterial metabolism, making the antibiotics less lethal. Most antibiotics speed up bacterial metabolism while also de-stabilizing the metabolic process, leading to the build-up of toxic molecules inside the bacteria that help to kill them. With this process dampened, bacteria more easily survive.

The findings do suggest infections are complicated environments, and that antibiotics influence more than just bacterial cells, often in unexpected ways. And it is important to understand these complications for effective treatments.

These findings, published recently in Cell Host & Microbe, could help scientists “build more effective treatments''.

http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(17)30455-9

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 5, 2017 at 6:59am

The existence of Yeti as described in the folklore and mythology in the Tibetan Plateau–Himalaya region has been shrouded in mystery. According to the stories in the Himalayan region, Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman is an ape-like creature taller than a human being.

Though previous attempts in the biological identification of Yeti were not successful, a recent research report published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that Yeti is a bear. A multinational team of investigators led by Dr. Charlotte Lindqvist of the University of Buffalo at New York, report on new analyses of 24 field-collected and museum specimens, including hair, bone, skin and fecal samples, collected from bears or purported yetis in the Tibetan Plateau–Himalaya region. Of the nine samples of ostensibly "yeti" origin, eight turned out to be from bears native to the area.

The investigators used a set of genetic elements called mitochondria to characterize the genetic identify of the animal. The bulk of the genetic information in a cell is stored in the DNA which is contained in the nucleus. All nucleated cells also have a small circular DNA outside of the nucleus, within another cytoplasmic organelle called mitochondria. These DNA copies are therefore called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA. As these mtDNAs are outside of the nucleus, only the maternal mtDNAs will be transferred to the offsprings. Therefore, mtDNA serves as a marker of ancestry.

Based on both amplified mtDNA loci as well as complete mitogenomes, they reconstructed maternal phylogenies to increase knowledge about the phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary history of Himalayan and Tibetan bears. The scientists were able to determine the clade affinities of all the purported yeti samples in this study and inferred their well-supported and resolved phylogenetic relationships among extant bears in the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding Himalayan Mountains.

Tianying Lan, Stephanie Gill, Eva Bellemain, Richard Bischof, Muhammad Ali Nawaz, Charlotte LindqvistEvolutionary history of enigmatic bears in the Tibetan Plateau–Himalaya region and the identity of the yeti. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Published 29 November 2017.DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1804 

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 23, 2017 at 8:28am

New solution to antibiotic resistance

One of the ways antibiotic resistance genes spread in hospitals and in the environment is that the genes are coded on plasmids that transfer between bacteria. A plasmid is a DNA fragment found in bacteria or yeasts. It carries genes useful for bacteria, especially when these genes encode proteins that can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics.Now a team of scientists at UdeM's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine has come up with a novel approach to block the transfer of resistance genes. The study by Bastien Casu, Tarun Arya, Benoit Bessette and Christian Baron was published in early November in Scientific Reports.

The researchers screened a library of small chemical molecules for those that bind to the TraE protein, an essential component of the plasmid transfer machinery. Analysis by X-ray crystallography revealed the exact binding site of these molecules on TraE. Having precise information on the binding site enabled the researchers to design more potent binding molecules that, in the end, reduced the transfer of antibiotic-resistant, gene-carrying plasmids.

Building on their encouraging new data, Baron and his colleagues are now working with the medicinal chemists at UdeM's IRIC (Institut de recherche en immunologie et cancérologie) to develop the new molecules into powerful inhibitors of antibiotic resistance gene transfer. Such molecules could one day be applied in clinics in hospitals that are hotbeds of resistance, the researchers hope.

Ultimately, reducing the transfer of antibiotic-resistance plasmids could help preserve the potency of antibiotics, contributing to an overall strategy to help improve human health

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 16, 2017 at 6:35am

Pollution might increase lightening strikes

Scientists have already linked aerosol emissions to increases in lightning over areas of the Amazon prone to forest fires (pdf) as well as regions of China with thick air pollution. The clearest example yet of humanity’s influence on atmospheric electrostatic discharges, however, surfaced recently when researchers discovered dense trails of lightning in the soot-filled skies over two of the world’s busiest shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

Poring over 12 years of detailed data, atmospheric scientists Joel Thornton  at the University of Washington, postdoc Katrina Virts of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and their colleagues found lightning flashes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily trafficked shipping lanes as they do elsewhere over the ocean. The increased frequency of lightning follows the exhaust from ships and cannot be explained by meteorological factors such as winds or the atmosphere’s temperature structure, according to a study, published in Geophysical Research Letters in September.

The team noticed a greater density of lightning in locations where ships blast emissions, including sulfur and nitrogen oxides, into the air. Then the researchers tracked instances of lightning using the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN)—a system of acoustic sensors that detect electrical disturbances all around the globe.

Lightning is a natural feature of storms that occurs when certain conditions are met. Particles in a cloud rub together, gathering opposite charges that eventually separate into positive and negative regions. These two poles create a space across which a transfer of charge—or lightning bolt—may then occur. Sometimes the bolts transmit the charge to the ground and lightning strikes.

But we are now learning the amount of lightning generated may be influenced by factors that go beyond natural meteorology, including aerosols. Other recent studies have given credence to the idea aerosols are linked to more lightning. 

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