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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 15 minutes ago

The findings may also have implications beyond viral infections.

Researchers have observed RNA accumulation in a variety of conditions—including some cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and age-related disorders—suggesting that mitochondrial damage may be one way excess RNA contributes to those conditions.

Perturbation of RNA homeostasis impairs mitochondrial respiration during poxvirus infection through excess RNA accumulation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.26051941

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 16 minutes ago

Too much RNA can starve cells of energy, study finds

Why do you feel very weak after viral infections?

A new study by researchers has uncovered a previously unknown consequence of viral infection: Too much RNA inside a cell can disrupt its ability to produce energy.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study found that when excess RNA builds up inside cells during poxvirus infection, it can impair mitochondria—the structures responsible for generating most of a cell's energy—reducing the cell's ability to function normally.

The discovery could have broad implications for understanding viral infections, age-related diseases and RNA-based therapeutics, including mRNA vaccines, because excess RNA can accumulate in each of these conditions.
Scientists have long known that RNA degradation helps control protein production and remove defective RNA. This new study reveals another important role: It helps cells maintain the energy they need to function properly.
The findings suggest that RNA degradation serves a broader purpose than scientists once realized. In addition to controlling protein production, supporting RNA quality control and helping cells regulate immune responses, it also helps protect the cell's ability to generate energy.

RNA exists in many forms. Messenger RNA (mRNA) carries the genetic instructions cells use to make proteins, which help cells perform their normal functions. Another form, double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), is commonly produced during viral infections and alerts the immune system that something is wrong.

During viral infection, viruses can produce large amounts of RNA. If cells cannot break down the excess RNA quickly enough, the buildup can damage mitochondria and reduce the cell's ability to generate energy.

While scientists already knew that excess dsRNA can trigger immune responses and that cells need to control dsRNA levels, the effects of mRNA came as a surprise.

mRNA is a normal component of our cells, but it seems like with many good things, if we get too much, that can become a problem for the cell. When too much RNA builds up, including mRNA, it can damage the mitochondria and interfere with the cell's ability to produce energy.
Viruses rely entirely on host cells for energy and protein production, but producing too much viral RNA can overwhelm the very cells viruses depend on to survive.
poxviruses—the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox—appear to use RNA cleanup systems to degrade RNAs and keep infected cells functioning long enough for the virus to continue replicating.

If the cell is not healthy, the virus would not replicate well. The virus needs to keep RNA levels balanced inside the cell.
The team also found that mitochondrial impairment occurred before major immune responses were activated and did not depend on the immune system's usual response to infection, further supporting the idea that RNA itself contributes to the damage.
Researchers think the negatively charged RNA may accumulate around mitochondria and disrupt the electrical balance needed for energy production, although how it happens is unknown.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 1 hour ago

To test whether that antibody fingerprint could reveal vaccine readiness, the researchers analyzed antibody responses to 185 antigens. These included SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, other common viruses and bacteria, and targets associated with autoimmune diseases.

The study included 8,687 samples from 4,089 participants, spanning healthy volunteers and people with conditions or treatments linked to immune suppression, such as HIV, multiple myeloma, solid organ malignancy, autoimmune disease, inflammatory bowel disease and solid organ transplantation.

The researchers found that several immunosuppressed groups were more likely to have blunted responses to COVID-19 vaccination. But those categories were imperfect predictors. Some immunosuppressed participants mounted strong responses, while about 5% to 6% of healthy participants had weak responses.
The study found that higher levels of certain preexisting antibodies, including antibodies to common microbes such as Staphylococcus aureus, RSV and human respirovirus 3, were associated with stronger COVID-19 vaccine responses.

The researchers describe these as "sentinel" antibodies because they may indicate a person's baseline immune readiness. They are not necessarily fighting the vaccine target directly. Instead, they may reflect how responsive the antibody-producing arm of the immune system is likely to be.

The researchers then asked whether the full antibody fingerprint, not just a few individual markers, could help identify people likely to have weak vaccine responses. Their deep-learning model analyzed patterns across the antibody panel, combining many measurements into a broader immune profile.

The study highlights a key strength of AI in health research: its ability to find subtle, predictive patterns in millions of biological data points that might otherwise remain hidden. The approach suggests that vaccine readiness may be better understood by looking at the immune system as a whole, rather than focusing only on a single disease or a single antibody.

The work also highlights the value of newer technologies that can measure large numbers of antibody responses at once. Instead of asking whether someone has antibodies to one pathogen, the method can scan a wider immune landscape, capturing patterns formed by many previous encounters with viruses, bacteria and other immune targets.
Sentinel antibody profiling could help guide vaccine testing, vaccine development and clinical care for people at risk of weak immune responses.

The approach might eventually help doctors identify patients who need additional vaccine doses, closer follow-up or alternative protective measures. It could also help researchers better understand why some people respond well to vaccination while others do not.

Pre-vaccine sentinel antibodies predict blunted vaccine responses, Cell Press Blue (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cpblue.2026.100088. www.cell.com/cell-press-blue/f … 3051-3839(26)00086-1

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 1 hour ago

Why immune responses to vaccines vary from person to person

Vaccines protect most people from serious illness, but the strength of that protection can vary considerably from one person to another. A new study helps us understand why.
Before a vaccine ever enters the body, the immune system may already hold clues to how strongly it will respond. In blood samples from more than 4,000 people, researchers measured antibodies against 185 antigens—targets recognized by the immune system, including those from common viruses and bacteria as well as targets associated with autoimmune diseases.

They then used artificial intelligence to analyze patterns in samples collected before and after COVID-19 vaccination, identifying antibody signatures that helped distinguish strong vaccine responders from weak ones.

The research opens a possible path toward more personalized vaccination strategies.
What this study found is that certain biomarkers, when analyzed with AI, can predict who is likely to respond well to a vaccine, even before they receive it. This suggests that some people may be more immune-ready than others.
Usually, scientists evaluate vaccine response after the shot by measuring whether the immune system produces antibodies against the target. Here, the researchers asked a different question: Could patterns already present in the blood predict the response before vaccination?

Age, sex, genetics, prior illnesses and underlying health conditions have all been linked to how strongly people respond to vaccines. People with immune-compromising conditions are often at higher risk of weaker responses. But even within these groups, outcomes can differ sharply.

The new approach is one of the first to use a broad, pre-vaccine antibody "fingerprint" to assess immune readiness. Unlike some prediction methods that rely on genetic analyses, this strategy uses antibody patterns in blood, which may be easier to adapt for clinical use.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 1 hour ago

Simple mouth rinse may help detect stomach and colorectal cancer signals
It's widely understood that the microbiome—especially microbes found in the mouth and the gut—can have a profound effect on health. In a study published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe on Aug. 20, researchers report that by analyzing the makeup of oral microbes, they may be able to detect signals associated with gastric (stomach) and colorectal cancer. These findings could lead to the development of new, less invasive screening tests for gastrointestinal cancers.
Many species of microbes associated with the mouth are also present in the gut and may flourish there. These observations made the researchers

wonder whether oral microbes reach and persist in the gastrointestinal tract differently in people with cancer.
To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 507 volunteers to donate both oral and fecal samples, using a highly standardized collection process. The cohort included 129 healthy individuals; 215 people with metabolic disorders such as metabolic syndrome, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and type 2 diabetes; 77 people with gastric cancer; and 86 people with colorectal cancer. For the volunteers with cancer, samples were collected before the start of any treatment.

The team used gene sequencing to create what they called a mouth-to-feces (MF) index, which measures the extent to which identical microbial sequence variants are found in oral and fecal samples from the same person. They then evaluated how well the MF index could distinguish cancer patients from healthy individuals. The analysis revealed distinct signatures in people with gastric or colorectal cancer.

The findings were more nuanced than a simple cancer-versus-healthy comparison. The MF index was significantly elevated in patients with gastric or colorectal cancer but not in people with metabolic disorders. After accounting for alcohol consumption, regular exercise and BMI, the association remained robust for both gastric and colorectal cancers.
The team also compared the signatures found in the cancer patients with results from fecal occult blood tests, a standard colorectal cancer screening tool that analyzes stool samples. They found higher sensitivity with the oral samples, which were collected by a simple mouth rinse.

"It was notable that cancer-related information could be recovered from oral samples alone," say the researchers. Although only a small fraction of oral bacterial variants were also detected in the gut, models built using only these oral features could distinguish patients with cancer from healthy individuals across several independent cohorts.
In the longer term, combining microbial patterns with genetics, lifestyle and clinical outcomes may help explain why oral microbes persist more readily in some people than in others and may improve individualized risk prediction.

Mouth-to-gut microbial transmission signatures enable robust, non-invasive diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancers, Cell Host & Microbe (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2026.07.007. www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe … 1931-3128(26)00308-2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 1 hour ago

Dark energy and quantum gravity may be deeply intertwined

For close to a century, physicists have pursued a way to unite gravity with quantum mechanics. Known as quantum gravity, this goal has remained frustratingly out of reach so far. Similarly elusive is the force of dark energy, which is believed to be driving the universe's accelerating expansion.
But through new research published in Physical Review D, physicists have proposed a new explanation suggesting that these two phenomena might not be separate at all. Instead, dark energy could be a natural side effect of quantum gravity, acting on the geometry of space itself.
Gravity and quantum mechanics shape the universe on vastly different scales: While quantum mechanics concerns the realm of subatomic particles, gravity shapes structures as large as galactic clusters and cosmic filaments.

Individually, both of these theories have been tested to extraordinary precision through decades of painstaking experiments. However, the extreme conditions where both should apply at once, such as inside a black hole, have remained far beyond what any experiment can reach.
In his study, physicists took a different approach: suggesting that we can't pin down both the size and expansion rate of the universe at the same time with perfect accuracy. This limitation is built into the fundamental uncertainty that governs the quantum world: When applied to the universe as a whole, it subtly changes the equations that describe how cosmic expansion should behave over time. This built-in uncertainty could then produce exactly the kind of accelerating expansion that cosmologists currently attribute to dark energy.

Depending on the exact mathematical details, this macroscopic imprint of quantum gravity could also replace the singularity at the instant of the Big Bang, which cosmologists have long struggled to explain. Rather than relying on a point of infinite density, their proposal suggests that the Big Bang followed a gentler rebound from a previously contracting universe.
If this idea is correct, it could provide a far cleaner explanation for the origins of dark energy. In contrast to many existing theories, this would mean that the phenomenon doesn't need to be explained by some hidden particle or exotic field waiting to be discovered: Instead, it is a property of space itself, hiding in plain sight in our observations of the universe.

Savvas M. Koushiappas, Cosmological uncertainty relation and late-universe acceleration, Physical Review D (2026). DOI: 10.1103/zgnd-h2xv. On arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2604.27771

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

A smarter antibody could skip the fetus
Researchers have engineered a possible way around the risk some antibody drugs pose in pregnancy. These drugs, used against cancer, autoimmune disease and migraines, are hard to use safely in pregnancy because they are actively carried to the fetus via a receptor called FcRn. But the process has a quirk: mouse models and human tissue showed that the receptor binds to both IgG antibodies — which are used in the majority of approved antibody therapies — and albumin, but only shuttles the antibody across the placenta. By fusing therapeutic antibodies to albumin, the team made drugs that reached the fetus far less and reduced adverse events in mice.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.aee5151?utm_source=L...

https://www.genengnews.com/topics/drug-discovery/albumin-fused-anti...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Why does salmonella cause serious illness in some people but not others?
Salmonella usually remains in the gut, but some strains can survive within immune cells and spread to the bloodstream, potentially causing sepsis. Severe invasive disease depends on bacterial type and strain, infectious dose, age, immune status and underlying conditions. Hospitalization data may overrepresent severe cases and cannot alone establish unusual strain virulence.

original article.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

A new transmissible cancer in bullhead catfish
Genomic analysis showed melanoma tumours in brown bullhead catfish are clonally related to each other rather than to their hosts, indicating a transmissible cancer, brown bullhead transmissible melanoma. Historical reports suggest similar lesions may be longstanding and widespread, but their relationship to this disease is unconfirmed.

transmissible cancer.

original article.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Is the laundry still damp, or just cold? Why your skin can't tell the difference

Humans lack dedicated wetness receptors; perceived wetness arises from integrated cold, friction, pressure, and contextual sensory signals. Cold dry laundry can mimic dampness because both activate cold receptors. Rubbing, squeezing, visual inspection, or warming fabric can improve discrimination.

original article.

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