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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

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2023 at 1:00pm

Chemicals from maize roots influence wheat yield

Maize roots secrete certain chemicals that affect the quality of soil. In some fields, this effect increases yields of wheat planted subsequent to maize in the same soil by more than 4%. This was proven by researchers . While the findings from several field experiments show that these effects are highly variable, in the long term they may yet help to make the cultivation of grains more sustainable, without the need for additional fertilizers or pesticides.

Plants produce an abundance of special chemicals. Some of these are released into the soil and influence its quality. This, in turn, affects the next plant to grow in the soil. So far, little research has taken place on the extent to which the excreted chemicals can be used in agriculture to increase productivity.

Recently, however, researchers from the Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) at the University of Bern have conducted field experiments in this area. With their findings published in the scientific journal eLife, the researchers demonstrate that specialized metabolitesfrom the roots of the maize plant can bring about an increase in the yields of subsequently planted wheat under agriculturally realistic conditions.

On the basis of earlier studies conducted by researchers at the Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) at the University of Bern, it was known that so-called benzoxazinoids—natural chemicals which maize plants release through their roots—change the composition of microorganisms in the soil on the roots and therefore influence the growth of the subsequent plants that grow in the soil. The present study investigated whether plant-soil feedbacks of this kind also occur under realistic agricultural conditions.

During a two-year field experiment, two lines of maize were initially grown, only one of which released benzoxazinoids into the soil. Three varieties of winter wheat were then grown on the differently conditioned soils.

On this basis, it was possible to demonstrate that the excretion of benzoxazinoids improves germination and increases tillering, growth and crop yield.

In addition to the increased crop, lower levels of infestation by some pests were also observed. A yield increase of 4% may not sound spectacular, but it is still significant considering how challenging it has become to enhance wheat yields without additional inputs.

Valentin Gfeller et al, Plant secondary metabolite-dependent plant-soil feedbacks can improve crop yield in the field, eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.84988

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