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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 23, 2020 at 8:15am

Scientists discover mutations associated with early onset dementia

Scientists recently announced a significant advance in our understanding of an early onset form of dementia that may also progress our understanding of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

Adult onset Leukoencephalopathy with axonal Spheroids and Pigmented glia (ALSP) is an ultra-rare condition characterized by mutations in a gene called Colony stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF1R). The condition manifests initially with psychiatric and behavioral changes in patients followed by a rapid progression of dementia in the third or fourth decade of life. While the condition is very rare, for affected families it can represent a devastating diagnosis.

As the condition involves the degeneration of white matter in the brain, scientists previously thought that immune cells within the brain termed microglia were the primary culprits in driving pathology observed in this condition.

However, the Trinity team, working with patient samples as well as pre-clinical models, were able to show that dysfunctional circulating white blood cells were the key driver of neurodegeneration.

These findings have shed light on a novel mechanism of neurodegeneration that may ultimately teach us more about common forms of dementia. Importantly, the work has identified that a disruption in CSF1R function in patients, as well as in pre-clinical models, induces damage to the so-called blood-brain barrier (BBB). This damage can subsequently change the integrity of capillaries in the brain, causing them to leak and spark the deterioration of the brain. Intriguingly, dysfunctional white blood cells seem to be the main driver of this BBB breakdown.

EMBO Molecular Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.15252/emmm.202012889

Researchers discover how the brain 're-wires' after disease

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-scientists-mutations-early-o...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 23, 2020 at 8:02am

Regulatory RNAs promote breast cancer metastasis

Scientists have discovered a gene-regulating snippet of RNA that may contribute to the spread of many breast cancers. In animal experiments, the researchers could reduce the growth of metastatic tumours with a molecule designed to target that RNA and trigger its destruction. The same strategy, they say, could be used to develop a new breast cancer treatment for patients.

They  identified dozens of RNA molecules that were more prevalent in breast cancer cells than in noncancerous cells of the same type. All were long, non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs)—RNA molecules that do not encode proteins and are thought to play various regulatory roles inside cells. The current study investigated how one of these, Mammary Tumor-Associated RNA 25 (MaTAR 25), impacted breast cancer cells' behavior in mice.

Experiments  indicate the molecule contributes to cancer's progression in several ways—revving up cells' growth as well as their ability to migrate and invade tissue. These effects may be due to changes in the activity of the tensin1 gene, which the team found is one of MaTAR 25's targets. Tensin1 helps connect a cell's internal cytoskeleton to the external matrix that surrounds it and is therefore positioned to influence a cell's movement as well as its growth-regulating pathways.

Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20207-y

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-regulatory-rnas-breast-cance...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 23, 2020 at 7:38am

Researchers find hydrogen-supported life beneath glaciers

Using years of data collected from ice-covered habitats all over the world, a research team has discovered new insights into the processes that support microbial life underneath ice sheets and glaciers, and the role those organisms play in perpetuating life through ice ages and, perhaps, in seemingly inhospitable environments on other planets.

The work examines the ways water and microbes interact with the bedrock beneath glaciers, using samples of sediment taken from glacial sites in Canada and Iceland. 

The researchers found organisms in these systems that were supported by hydrogen gas. 

A team of researchers later discovered that through a series of physical and chemical processes, hydrogen gas is produced as the silica-rich bedrock underneath glaciers is ground into tiny mineral particles by the weight of the ice on top of it. When those mineral particles combine with glacial meltwater, they let off hydrogen.

What became even more fascinating was that microbial communities under the glaciers could combine that hydrogen gas with carbon dioxide to generate more organic matter, called biomass, through a process called chemosynthesis. Chemosynthesis is similar to how plants generate biomass from carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, although chemosynthesis does not require sunlight.

As they use hydrogen  gas to generate energy the microbes also pull CO2out of the air to create biomass, replicate and grow. That ability to "fix" carbon is a critical climate regulation process, another similarity to photosynthesis in plants.

The newfound knowledge that self-sustaining microbial communities can flourish in icy environments through the generation of hydrogen gas is a critical step toward identifying potentially habitable environments on other planets.

Lithogenic hydrogen supports microbial primary production in subglacial and proglacial environments PNAS; doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007051117

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It was also found that not only was it possible to track the communities' growth in the lab environment but also that the type of bedrock underlying a glacier influenced how much hydrogen gas was produced, which in turn led to the presence of microbial communities that were better adapted to metabolizing hydrogen.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hydrogen-supported-life-beneath-glaci...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 10:38am

Octopuses punch fishes during collaborative interspecific hunting events

Octopuses Observed Punching Fish, Perhaps Out of Spite, Scientists Say

In new proof that 2020 has been a crappy year basically everywhere, scientists have captured video evidence of octopuses randomly punching at fish, possibly for no reason other than being spiteful.

While this remarkable, rather nasty-sounding behaviour might seem like it comes from a place of direct conflict between different animal species, that's not the whole story, researchers say.

In fact, this antisocial fish-punching phenomenon – which scientists term "active displacement" of fish – occurs in the midst of collaborative hunting efforts, in which octopuses and fish team up to chase and trap prey together.

https://twitter.com/OctoEduardo/status/1340076579108646913

https://twitter.com/ESAEcology/status/1341125791359373313?s=20

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3266

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 9:44am

Researchers to resuscitate eyes, speed up clinical research for vision impairment

Researchers to resuscitate eyes, speed up clinical research for vision impairment

Researchers are developing a new method to bring eyes back to life from deceased body donors for clinical research purposes.

They are creating a device that resuscitates eyes from the dead.Vision impairment affects over 250 million people worldwide, with thirty-six million people being blind. Retinal degeneration is often incurable, and ageing populations worldwide are major social and economic challenges.

The device, codenamed ECaBox, will be a transparent, cubic box that mimics conditions in the living human eye, maintaining the eye’s temperature and pH levels while avoiding blood clots and removing metabolic waste and toxins. Inside the ECaBox will be donor human eyeballs. The immediate goal is to test novel stem cell therapies without fear of risking patient harm on this platform.

Artificial blood will also be developed to provide cells with oxygen and nutrients, kick-starting the activity of nerve cells and restoring total eye function. Artificial vitreous humour will maintain the eye’s ocular pressure.

The health of the eyeball will be continuously monitored to confirm retinal function and regeneration. Beyond this scope, this technology can be extended to keep donor eyes intact for transplantation purposes, extending the current 48-hour window limit.

For many patients whose hope to restore their vision rests on emerging therapeutics, this research will mean a quicker and safer development cycle that will lead to the treatments becoming available sooner

Current technological limitations mean that eyes can only be kept at 4ºC for a period of 48 hours before irreversible degradation. This greatly limits their use for experiments, particularly to test the effectiveness of new drugs and treatments.

While advances in human organoids, growing tissues in a petri dish, are successfully mimicking the function of the eye, they fail to encapsulate the eye’s physiological complexity, such as its immune, vasculature, and metabolism systems.

There are a huge number of potential new treatments and therapies for eye damage and vision loss, but the eyewatering cost of running a clinical trial can mean they never reach the market.”

This new method can greatly improve the preclinical validation steps for these treatments, supporting the screening of a larger number of candidates and helping promising drugs escape the ‘valley of death’ imposed by cost-benefit analyses in the pharmaceutical industry.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/researchers-to-resuscitate-eyes-speed-up...

https://researchnews.cc/news/4226/Researchers-to-resuscitate-eyes--...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 8:56am

Gravity Assist: The Bright Spot of the Asteroid Belt

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 8:52am

Cancer risk from obesity differs for men and women

 large study, published in BMC Medicine, included over 100,000* people. They found that a higher BMI (body mass index; a measure of total fat) is more dangerous for men, whereas a higher waist-to-hip ratio (your waist circumference divided by your hip circumference; a measure of abdominal fat) is more dangerous for women. To discover this, they used an approach, called Mendelian randomisation, that uses genetic information as a proxy measure for weight to investigate the effect of different body fat measures on colorectal cancer risk in men and women. An increase in BMI of about five kg/m2 raised the risk of colorectal cancer by 23 per cent for men, but only nine per cent for women. Whereas an equivalent increase in waist-to-hip ratio raised the risk for women by 25 per cent, this was only five per cent for men. 

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2020/december/obesity-cancer.html

https://researchnews.cc/news/4229/Cancer-risk-from-obesity-differs-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 8:37am

Current food production systems could mean far-reaching habitat loss

The global food system could drive rapid and widespread biodiversity loss if not changed, new research has found.

The findings show that the global food system will need to be transformed to prevent habitat loss across the world. It shows that what we eat and how it is produced will need to change rapidly and dramatically to prevent widespread and severe biodiversity losses.

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The study estimated how food systems would affect biodiversity at a finer spatial scale than previous research (2.25 km²), making the results more relevant to conservation action by highlighting exactly which species and landscapes are likely to be threatened.

It did so by linking projections of how much agricultural land each country will need with a new model that estimates where agricultural expansion and abandonment are most likely to occur.

Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion, Nature Sustainability (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-00656-5 , www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00656-5

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-current-food-production-far-reaching-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 8:05am

When T-cells of our immune system become active, tiny traction forc...

When T-cells of our immune system become active, tiny traction forces at the molecular level play an important role. They have now been studied at TU Wien.

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Brazilian forests found to be transitioning from carbon sinks to ca...

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Brazil has found that some non-Amazonian forests in Brazil have already begun to transition from carbon sinks to carbon sources. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their 33-year study of deciduous, semi-deciduous and evergreen forests in Brazil's state of Minas Gerais.

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 22, 2020 at 8:02am

Evolution of a killer: How African Salmonella made the leap from gut to bloodstream

Scientists have exploited the combined power of genomics and epidemiology to understand how a type of Salmonella bacteria evolved to kill hundreds of thousands of immunocompromised people.

Bloodstream infections caused by a drug-resistant type of Salmonella Typhimurium called ST313 are a major public health concern in Africa, where the disease is endemic and causes ~50,000 deaths each year. What was missing was an understanding of the timing of the major evolutionary events that equipped African Salmonella to cause bloodstream infections in humans.

A team of researchers  sampled two comprehensive collections of Salmonella isolates from African patients with bloodstream infections, spanning 1966 to 2018, to piece together the evolutionary journey of the Salmonella over 50 years of human infections in Africa, including the discovery of a new lineage of antibiotic-susceptible ST313.

In the study, scientists sequenced the genomes of 680 Salmonella isolates, from archives kept by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) clinical research programme and the Institute Pasteur, and used them to uncover the timeline of crucial genetic events responsible for the infection of immunocompromised humans by S. Typhimurium ST313. Mutations that influenced gene function during the evolution of ST313 were identified for the first time.

The team also discovered a new antibiotic-susceptible lineage of ST313 that emerged in Malawi in 2016 and is closely related to Salmonella variants that cause stomach infections in the United Kingdom and Brazil. The researchers speculate that changes in antibiotic usage in Malawi between 2002 and 2015 could have created a window of opportunity for the emergence of this new antibiotic-susceptible ST313 lineage.

Stepwise evolution of Salmonella Typhimurium ST313 causing bloodstream infection in Africa, Nature Microbiology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-020-00836-1 , www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00836-1

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-evolution-killer-african-salmonella-g...

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