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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2020 at 8:26am

Salamanders provide a model for spinal-cord regeneration  
“Salamanders are unique because they are one of the only tetrapods able to regrow spinal cords with full functionality.  After an injury, these amphibians are able to “magically” regrow their spinal cords and regain locomotion.A team of scientists is looking into exactly how the process works.  The scientists plan to combine methods from genomics, neuroscience, computer modeling and biorobotics to decipher the neural mechanisms underpinning spinal-cord regeneration.https://actu.epfl.ch/news/salamanders-provide-a-model-for-spinal-co...

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Salamanders provide a model for spinal-cord regeneration  

“Salamanders are unique because they are one of the only tetrapods able to regrow spinal cords with full functionality.  After an injury, these amphibians are able to “magically” regrow their spinal cords and regain locomotion.

A team of scientists is looking into exactly how the process works.   The scientists plan to combine methods from genomics, neuroscience, computer modeling and biorobotics to decipher the neural mechanisms underpinning spinal-cord regeneration.

https://actu.epfl.ch/news/salamanders-provide-a-model-for-spinal-co...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2020 at 8:26am

Salamanders provide a model for spinal-cord regeneration  
“Salamanders are unique because they are one of the only tetrapods able to regrow spinal cords with full functionality.  After an injury, these amphibians are able to “magically” regrow their spinal cords and regain locomotion.A team of scientists is looking into exactly how the process works.  The scientists plan to combine methods from genomics, neuroscience, computer modeling and biorobotics to decipher the neural mechanisms underpinning spinal-cord regeneration.https://actu.epfl.ch/news/salamanders-provide-a-model-for-spinal-co...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 8, 2020 at 7:49am

A Modem With a Tiny Mirror Cabinet Could Help Connect The Quantum Internet

Quantum physics promises huge advances not just in quantum computing but also in a quantum internet – a next-generation framework for transferring data from one place to another. Scientists have now invented technology suitable for a quantum modem that could act as a network gateway.

https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041025

https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-invent-a-modem-that-could-h...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 8, 2020 at 7:09am

Heavy Metal Pollution Is Weakening Scallop Shells And Threatening T...

Shellfish such as scallops, mussels and oysters – bivalve molluscs – readily take up tiny specs of metals into their tissues and shells. In sufficient concentrations this can harm their growth and survival chances, and even threaten the health of any human who eats their contaminated meat. Such shellfish provide one-quarter of the world’s seafood, so the impact of pollution from the “heavy metals” such as lead, zinc and copper, is hugely important.

https://theconversation.com/metal-pollution-is-leaving-scallops-hel...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 9:09am

First Case Study of Its Kind Documents Girl With Mirror Movement And Rare Disorder

If you sit down at a piano, hitting different notes with each hand would be the first step to mastering the instrument. But what if both hands are intent on doing the same thing? That's the experience of people with a rare condition known as mirror movement, and doctors have now documented a unique case.

Several years ago, researchers in India identified a case of this extremely rare condition in a 13-year-old girl who also has a diagnosis of the chromosomal disorder Turner syndrome.  

Finding the two conditions together is a first for the medical community, raising questions of how – or even whether – the two might potentially be connected.

Most tiny humans take a while to become dextrous, but by age 10 the communication between the two halves of our brain allows us to pinch, poke, wave and wiggle the fingers on each hand independently of one another.

For about one in every million children, this development is incomplete, meaning one hand's actions are echoed simultaneously by the other. Make a victory sign with your left hand, and your right will be forced to approximate a similar shape.

The fundamental cause of such copy-cat movement is still largely a matter of speculation, though there's reason to suspect key nerves in the brain are 'cross-talking' as a result of the formation of false synapses between neurons.

In about a third of all cases mutations in a couple of genes appear to be responsible, impairing development of the nervous system in such a way that instructions from either side of the brain are accidentally transmitted to both sides of the body.

individuals who also have cerebral palsy will display degrees of mirror movements. Parkinson's disease is another condition that can come with this form of so-called synkinesia, especially if it affects more one side of the brain than the other.

Having breaks or an absence of connection between the hemispheres – a bridge of neurons called the corpus callosum – can also coincide with the behaviour. It's in many of these cases that a genetic link has been uncovered.

Kallmann syndrome is a condition caused by lack of certain hormones, giving rise to characteristics such as a lack of smell and delayed puberty. And, sometimes, mirror movements.

Turner syndrome is also a condition that impacts on a body's ability to coordinate hormonal responses.

Before this case, nobody had recorded a person who had the chromosomal abnormality and would experience mirror movements as well.

https://casereports.bmj.com/content/13/11/e238482

https://www.sciencealert.com/adolescent-girl-diagnosed-with-mirror-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 8:59am

Scientists Just Successfully Regenerated Mouse Optic Nerve Cells in The Lab

Scientists have found a new way to regenerate damaged optic nerve cells taken from mice and grown in a dish. This exciting development could lead to potential eye disease treatments in the future.

Damage to full-grown nerve cells causes irreversible and life-altering consequences, because once nerve fibres mature, they lose their ability to regenerate after injury or disease. The new experiments show how activating part of a nerve cell's regenerative machinery, a protein known as protrudin, could stimulate nerves in the eye to regrow after injury. 

With more research, the achievement is a step towards future treatments for glaucoma, a group of eye diseases which cause vision loss by damaging the optic nerve (that links the eye to the brain).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19436-y

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-succeed-in-regenerating-opt...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 8:34am

The COVID-19 Clinical Neuroscience Study (COVID-CNS)

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 8:29am

A month delay to cancer care might raise death risk: study

Delaying cancer treatment by just a month can put patients at a sharply greater risk of dying, according to research published Wednesday, the latest to sound the alarm over the coronavirus pandemic's impact on other health conditions. Treatment delays happen in normal times, but the spread of Covid-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to healthcare services. In a new study published in the BMJ medical journal, researchers in the UK and Canada found that delays in treatment -- whether for surgery, radiotherapy, or other treatments such as chemotherapy -- for seven types of cancers had a significant impact on patient mortality. There has never been a systematic attempt to look at all the evidence on what delays in different types of treatment mean for cancer patient outcomes.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4087

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 8:24am

DNA might replace barcodes to tag art, voter ballots: study

Easy-to-remove barcodes and QR codes used to tag everything from T-shirts to car engines may soon be replaced by a tagging system based on DNA and invisible to the naked eye, according to scientists.

The DNA-based system could help anti-forgery efforts, according to researchers who said thieves struggle to find or tamper with a transparent splash of DNA on valuable or vulnerable items, such as election ballots, works of art, or secret documents.

In an article published in Nature Communications, researchers said that the molecular tagging system, called Porcupine, is -- unlike most alternatives -- cost-effective.

Using DNA for tagging objects has been out of reach in the past because it is expensive and time consuming to write and read, and requires expensive lab equipment.

Porcupine gets around this by prefabricating fragments of DNA that users can mix together arbitrarily to create new tags, the researchers said.

Instead of radio waves or printed lines, the Porcupine tagging scheme relies on a set of distinct DNA strands called molecular bits, or 'molbits' for short.

To encode an ID, scientists pair each digital bit with a molbit.

If the digital bit is 1, they add its molbit to the tag, and if it's 0 they leave it out. Then they can dry it until it's ready to be decoded later. Once the item has been tagged, it can then be shipped or stored.

When someone wants to read the tag, water is added to rehydrate the molecular tag, which is read by a nanopore sequencer -- a DNA-reading device smaller than an Iphone.

The name Porcupine comes from a play on words (PORE-cupine, as in nanopore) and the idea that porcupines can 'tag' objects, and critters that dare to get too close.

Unlike existing systems to tag objects, DNA tags are undetectable by sight or touch. Practically speaking, this means they are difficult to tamper with.

1. Kathryn Doroschak, Karen Zhang, Melissa Queen, Aishwarya Mandyam, Karin Strauss, Luis Ceze, Jeff Nivala. Rapid and robust assembly and decoding of molecular tags with DNA-based nanopore signatures. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19151-8

https://researchnews.cc/news/3442/DNA-might-replace-barcodes-to-tag...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 7, 2020 at 7:42am

A potential new treatment for premature aging diseases keeps stem cells fresh longer

The drug helps keep stem cells telomeres long, preventing them from aging too quickly.

The ends of our DNA, called telomeres, get shorter as we age. Our cells lose a bit of telomere every time they divide. This shortening is a normal and needed process that serves a protective function against cancer. This is because the older our cells get, the more likely they are to have accumulated damage or mutations that make them function incorrectly. Telomere shortening helps to take old cells that are reaching their “best before date” off the shelf before they can cause trouble.

But this can backfire: cells can shorten their telomeres too quickly, age rapidly, and die. This is what causes a subset of genetic premature aging diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, forms of aplastic anemia, and a rare disease called dyskeratosis congenita. Unfortunately, there are currently no available drug-based therapies for treating telomere-driven premature aging diseases.

Now, a candidate drug has found a new potential purpose in treating premature aging disease. 

This drug, called RG7834, was originally identified as an inhibitor of hepatitis B virus (HBV). While it has been found to be well-tolerated in short-term administration to living organisms (like rodents and primates), this drug does not cure HBV, and is not yet publicly available. Interestingly, the host cell proteins affected by RG7834 are two enzymes that modify many different RNAs. These enzymes can cause degradation of host cell RNA — so RG7834 keeps RNA around that the cell otherwise might get rid of.

https://massivesci.com/articles/telomere-telomerase-rna-drug-premat...

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