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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 12:28pm

A Drug For Regrowing Teeth Could Be Available Within The Next Decade

Teeth don't grow back once we become adults: any wear and tear is permanent – as those of us with fillings will know – which is why it's important to keep them as clean and healthy as we can. However, this is something scientists are now looking to change. It's been announced that clinical trials for a potential tooth regrowth treatment are set to begin in July 2024, building on decades of research in the field. If those trials are successful, therapeutic drugs could be available by 2030. A team from the Medical Research Institute at Kitano Hospital in Japan is in charge of the trial, which is targeting people with anodontia, a rare genetic condition that prevents baby teeth and adult teeth from growing in the normal way. The treatment would initially target young children with the condition, but further down the line, the researchers think it could also be used more broadly – with people who have more common dental problems, such as gum disease, for example. Here's how it works: having found a link between a specific gene called USAG-1 and limits on tooth growth in mice, the researchers then moved on to tests that tried to block the expression of USAG-1.An antibody was discovered that could safely block some of the activity of USAG-1 in mice and ferrets without leading to any serious side effects, leading to induced tooth growth. The next step is to see if the same chemical reactions can be controlled in humans. We're talking about potential rather than reality at the moment, but it might be possible to use the new drug to prompt the growth of a third generation of teeth in the mouth, after baby teeth and full-sized adult teeth. As the researchers point out in a recent scientific review, the benefit of the approach is that teeth growth is being triggered in a natural way, through a process known as bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling. Our bodies are naturally doing the work, without any complicated engineering of stem cells required. The team also suggests that advancements in scanning technology (such as mass spectrometry, for example) will make it easier to spot biomarkers indicating the people who will benefit most from the treatment. Anti-USAG-1 antibody treatment in mice is effective for tooth regeneration and can be a breakthrough in treating tooth anomalies in humans," write the researchers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93256-y

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 12:24pm

A Realistic Way to Make Space Habitats From Asteroids

We can build space habitats from asteroids by spinning them fast enough. That's what Professor Adam Frank suggests in a recent paper he co-wrote. In this interview, we discussed the idea, how realistic it is and what technology will be needed to achieve it, what applications it can have and when we can expect something like that.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 12:18pm

Cancers Protect Themselves Against Their Own Mutations

Tumors overexpress certain genes to survive a growing pile of harmful mutations, a trait that scientists could exploit to target with drugs.

Most cancerous tumors accumulate thousands of potentially protein-damaging mutations over time, yet they mysteriously continue to thrive. Now, a new computational study helps explain how that is possible: Tumors with a large number of mutations upregulate genes that minimize misfolded proteins to protect them from their own mutations.

To reveal that coping mechanism, researchers explored the gene expression of nearly 10,300 human tumors across 33 cancer types catalogued in the Cancer Genome Atlas database.3 They found consistent upregulation of chaperone proteins and the proteasome, which respectively prevent and degrade misfolded proteins. Next, the researchers validated their findings using cell line data from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia. The cell lines showed similar expression patterns, and when the scientists calculated the effect of knocking down the upregulated genes, higher mutational loads correlated with reduced cell viability. These results suggest that the gene upregulation protects tumors.

This discovery signals a general vulnerability in many tumors that could be exploited, for example by using chaperone and proteasome inhibitors. Scientists developed such drugs decades ago, but this new information might help target them to the tumors that will be most vulnerable.

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/87301

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 11:29am

Nanoscale 'tattoos' for individual cells could provide early warnings for health problems

Engineers have developed nanoscale tattoos dots and wires that adhere to live cells in a breakthrough that puts researchers one step closer to tracking the health of individual cells. The new technology allows for the first time the placement of optical elements or electronics on live cells with tattoo-like arrays that stick on cells while flexing and conforming to the cells' wet and fluid outer structure. 

They 're talking about putting something like an electronic tattoo on a living object tens of times smaller than the head of a pin. It's the first step towards attaching sensors and electronics on live cells. The structures were able to stick to soft cells for 16 hours even as the cells moved.

The researchers built the tattoos in the form of arrays with gold, a material known for its ability to prevent signal loss or distortion in electronic wiring. They attached the arrays to cells that make and sustain tissue in the human body, called fibroblasts. The arrays were then treated with molecular glues and transferred onto the cells using an alginate hydrogel film, a gel-like laminate that can be dissolved after the gold adheres to the cell. The molecular glue on the array bonds to a film secreted by the cells called the extracellular matrix.

This work has shown we can attach complex nanopatterns to living cells, while ensuring that the cell doesn't die. It's a very important result that the cells can live and move with the tattoos because there's often a significant incompatibility between living cells and the methods engineers use to fabricate electronics.

The researcher's ability to attach the dots and wires in an array form is also crucial. To use this technology to track bioinformation, researchers must be able to arrange sensors and wiring into specific patterns not unlike how they are arranged in electronic chips.

This is an array with specific spacing, not a haphazard bunch of dots. 

Kam Sang Kwok et al, Toward Single Cell Tattoos: Biotransfer Printing of Lithographic Gold Nanopatterns on Live Cells, Nano Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01960

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 10:46am

Skeletal elements preserve differing evolutionary forces

Human skeletal morphology is highly diverse and varies among individuals and populations around the globe. This diversity is the result of a complex interplay of various evolutionary forces over a long period of time. Evolutionary biologists divide these forces into two distinct processes. A neutral process refers to mutations producing new diversity which, however, offers no direct advantages or disadvantages to the affected individuals. This new diversity then increases or decreases randomly via what is known as genetic drift within a population.

This is contrasted with non-neutral processes, for example, when mutations do affect the fitness of an individual. As a result, the affected individuals have a greater or lesser ability to adapt to environmental factors.

To draw detailed conclusions about underlying genetic kinship only skeletal elements that evolved through neutral processes should be used.

Therefore , researchers should focus on the teeth and skull, whose structures are considered to have evolved primarily through neutral processes. Contrary to earlier assumptions, not all features in the teeth and skull reliably reflect the underlying genetic code; some are much more suitable than others.  Small morphological features on the teeth, such as groove patterns in the crowns, the number and size of cusps, the shape of the roots, and the presence or absence of wisdom teeth, proved to be particularly suitable. 

Researchers obtain the best results, almost identical to a conventional genetic relationship analysis, when they include all features of the skull and teeth. This is also expected, as more skeletal features provide a richer knowledge of underlying genetic information.

Genetic analyses are often constrained by poor DNA preservation. This is commonly the case with very old bones or those that have been exposed to a warm climate. Damaging bones for DNA analyses is also often out of the question in the case of fragile material or rare finds, or due to ethical reasons. In such cases, the non-destructive examination of skulls and teeth is a valuable alternative for tracing past population history and hominin phylogeny in archaeological contexts, for example, or for inferring ancestry profiles in forensic cases. This , therefore, has implications for the scientific community and society at large.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 8:01am

Carbon dioxide - not water - triggers explosive volcanoes

Geoscientists have long thought that water  along with shallow magma stored in Earth's crust drives volcanoes to erupt. Now, thanks to newly developed research tools , scientists have learned that gaseous carbon dioxide can trigger explosive eruptions. A new model suggests that basaltic volcanoes, typically located on the interior of tectonic plates, are fed by a deep magma within the mantle, stored about 20 to 30 kilometers below Earth's surface. The research, which offers a clearer picture of our planet's deep internal dynamics and composition, with implications for improving volcanic-hazards planning, was published Aug. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:59am

The Heliophysics Big Year

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:41am

Stealth swimmers: the fish that hide behind others to hunt

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2023 at 7:37am

Researchers discover antifungal molecule

Fungal infections are killing thousands of people each year, some with a morbidity rate of nearly 80%. The rise in fungal infections is due, in part, to the successful treatment of other diseases. As people live longer and successfully undergo treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplants, they often live with weakened immune systems. When drugs that treat arthritis and other ailments that also weaken immune systems are added to the mix, a perfect storm is created for potentially deadly fungal infections.

To make matters worse, only a handful of antifungal treatments are available, and even those are becoming less effective as fungi become more resistant. However,  researchers have recently published findings in the Journal of Natural Products indicating that a novel breakthrough treatment may have been discovered.
The molecule they're excited about is called persephacin. This antifungal discovery appears to work on a broad spectrum of infectious fungi, and it is reasonably non-toxic to human cells, which is a huge deal because many current treatments are toxic to the human body.

Fungi are found throughout the botanical world, and plants and fungi often work together. Some of these fungi kill competitors or deter insects from eating the plan. So researchers  hypothesized that if these plant-dwelling fungi, known as endophytes, could help the plants fight off infections by killing the invading fungi, then these molecules might also be able to protect humans and animals from fungal pathogens. As it turns out, they were right.

The researchers  developed a novel way to procure leaf samples using a laser device called the Fast Laser-Enabled Endophyte Trapper, or FLEET. This method helps generate samples in a sterile environment and drastically increases the number of samples that can be acquired.

Using traditional methods, they could process roughly four to six samples per minute. But the FLEET system is capable of aseptically generating between 500-600 tissue specimens in 10 minutes. This allowed them to rapidly screen more samples and enhanced the opportunity for potential drug discoveries. This is one of them. Antifungal resistance keeps evolving, and this could provide a new alternative. That's why this molecule is so exciting.

Lin Du et al, Persephacin Is a Broad-Spectrum Antifungal Aureobasidin Metabolite That Overcomes Intrinsic Resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus, Journal of Natural Products (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.3c00382

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2023 at 1:19pm

Muon magnetism dashes physics dreams
The most precise measurement of an elementary particle’s magnetism suggests that the ‘standard model’ of physics could be right after all. A discrepancy between predicted and measured values of the magnetic moment of the muon — a heavier cousin of the electron — was seen as a possible signal of undiscovered subatomic particles. Physicists at the Muon g – 2 experiment at Fermilab have now doubled the precision of the previous best measurement, to an estimated error of just 201 parts per billion. And an alternative theoretical prediction is in agreement with this result, suggesting there might not be any discrepancy to explain.

https://muon-g-2.fnal.gov/result2023.pdf?utm_source=Nature+Briefing...

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Soil is home to more than half of all life About 59% of all species on Earth live in soil, estimate researchers who reviewed global biodiversity data. This would make the ground the planet’s single most biodiverse habitat. The figure doubles an earlier estimate and could be even higher because so little is known about soil, the researchers suggest. It is home to 99% of Enchytraeidae worms, 90% of fungi, 86% of plants and more than 50% of bacteria — but only 3% of mammals live in it.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2304663120

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