Researchers recreate the adrenal gland in a petri dish

 Sitting atop the kidneys, the adrenal gland plays a pivotal role in maintaining a healthy body. Responding to signals from the brain, the gland secretes hormones that support critical functions like blood pressure, metabolism, and fertility.

People with adrenal gland disorders—such as primary adrenal insufficiency, in which the gland does not release sufficient hormones—can suffer fatigue, dangerously low blood pressure, coma, and even death if untreated. No cure for primary adrenal insufficiency exists, and the lifelong hormone-replacement therapy used to treat it carries significant side effects.

A preferable alternative would be a regenerative medicine approach, regrowing a functional adrenal gland capable of synthesizing hormones and appropriately releasing them in tune with the brain's feedback. In a new study in the journal Developmental Cell, researchers have coaxed stem cells in a petri dish to divide, mature, and take on some of the functions of a human fetal adrenal gland, bringing that goal one step closer.

To begin, the researchers used what's known as an "organoid culture" system, in which cells grow first as a floating aggregate for three weeks, then on a membrane exposed to air on one side, promoting better survival and allowing them to proliferate in three dimensions. Utilizing a carefully selected growth medium, they prompted the iPSCs to elicit an intermediate tissue type in the adrenal development process, the posterior intermediate mesoderm (PIM).

After verifying they had cultured PIM-like cells, the researchers embarked on directing those cells to transition to the next stage, adrenocortical progenitor-like cells, during which cells turn on markers indicating they have "committed" to becoming adrenal gland cells.

Molecular assays to check for adrenal markers, as well as transmission electron microscope analyses, all told the researchers they were on the right track to recreating a tissue that resembled the early adrenal gland.

The process we developed was highly efficient, with around 50% of cells in organoids acquiring adrenocortical cell fate. They also showed that the cells they grew could respond to what's known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, a feedback loop that governs communication from the brain to the adrenal gland and back again.

Yuka Sakata, Keren Cheng, Michinori Mayama, Yasunari Seita, Andrea J. Detlefsen, Clementina A. Mesaros, Trevor M. Penning, Kyosuke Shishikura, Wenli Yang, Richard J. Auchus, Jerome F. Strauss, Kotaro Sasaki. Reconstitution of human adrenocortical specification and steroidogenesis using induced pluripotent stem cells. Developmental Cell, 2022; 57 (22): 2566 DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2022.10.010

Study shows prestigious institutions produce more published manuscripts because they have a bigger labour pool

A quartet of researchers  has found that the reason more prestigious universities are able to publish more scientific papers than lesser institutions is that they have a larger pool of undergrads, fellows and postdocs to assist with such efforts.

In their paper, published in the journal Science Advances, Sam Zhang, Hunter Wapman, Daniel Larremore and Aaron Clauset describe analyzing massive amounts of data in the Web of Science database to learn more about publishing by institutions in the U.S.

Most of the prestigious science paper publishing institutions in the U.S. are college- or university-based. Some of the most well known are MIT, Harvard, Stanford and the University of California. Researchers at these institutions conduct a lot of science research and publish a corresponding number of science-research based papers in peer-reviewed journals.

In this new effort, the research group sought to better understand the factors underlying the tendency of prestigious institutions to produce more published manuscripts than other, less-prestigious institutions.

The work involved sifting data from the Web of Science database, which is actually a portal to several other databases, all of which contain massive amounts of data related to science research efforts. In their effort, the researchers included data from 1.6 million published articles, written by 78,802 authors, all of whom were either tenured or on a tenure track.

The data involved research efforts at 26 U.S. universities that grant Ph.Ds. The researchers focused on data describing productivity of both the authors involved in research efforts and publishing groups as a whole.

The researchers found a pattern—more prestigious schools tend to produce more papers because they have more people available to work on research teams. They noted that neither the senior- nor junior-level people working on the papers were more productive than others working at less-prestigious institutions; it was just more people working and getting more done.

The researchers suggest the possibility that less-prestigious institutions could increase their publication rates if they chose to increase the number of qualified people available to work on research and publishing efforts.

 Sam Zhang et al, Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq7056

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New kind of tropical cyclone identified in the Indian Ocean

Oceanography experts have described a new kind of cyclone in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra after observing satellite surface winds in the region.

The experts' search for the trigger mechanisms of the Indian Ocean Dipole has led to the discovery of the new type of atmospheric tropical cyclone forming in the South-East Tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) that they call SETIO Cyclone.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is a coupled atmosphere-ocean interaction in the tropical Indian Ocean that strongly affects the climate and rainfall variability of surrounding countries including Australia.

Researchers  found that SETIO cyclones are short-lived weather-like events that develop frequently during austral winter/spring and operate to maintain a warm surface ocean in the region.

Dramatic changes happen in some years when SETIO cyclones fail to develop, and ambient winds trigger the appearance of cold seawater in a vast area strongly disturbing both winds and rainfall patterns over the Indian Ocean.

In the natural sciences, it is of uttermost importance to identify so-called trigger processes, such as SETIO cyclones, that link the cause to an effect.

This is a rare new discovery that sheds new light into the functioning of the IOD.

Ankit Kavi et al, Synoptic-scale atmospheric cyclones in the South-East Tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) and their relation to IOD variability, Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science (2022). DOI: 10.1071/ES22020

The largest source of abiotic methane gas on Earth

Methane (CH₄), the chief constituent of natural gas, is one of the most widely used "clean" fuels. Although methane is usually considered to originate from organic matter, recently, more and more evidence shows that methane can be produced by abiotic processes.

Researchers demonstrated that large amounts of methane gas can form during prograde metamorphism in a cold subduction zone, evidenced by the massive CH₄-rich fluid inclusions in eclogites from Western Tianshan, China.

Based on their calculation, the potential CH₄ flux from worldwide modern subduction zones is estimated to be as much as ~10.8 Mt/y. Consequently, the subducted cold oceanic crust may produce the largest amount of abiotic methane, along with other abiotic methane sources such as that from mid-ocean ridges or that from by high-pressure serpentinization.

Massive CH₄-rich fluid inclusions have been found in garnet and omphcite, which are the main constituent minerals of eclogite in the West Tianshan subduction zone (eclogite is the most important high grade metamorphic rock during cold subduction). Isotopic analyses and petrological studies both demonstrated that this methane was of abiotic origin and formed by water-rocks reactions during the prograde high-pressure to ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism.

 Lijuan Zhang et al, Massive abiotic methane production in eclogite during cold subduction, National Science Review (2022). DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwac207

Blood Thinner Ineffective for COVID-19 Patients: Study

A clinical trial finds that the anticoagulant apixaban, which has been prescribed to help COVID-19 patients recover, is ineffective and in rare instances dangerous.

N

ew data from a clinical trial suggest that apixaban, an anticoagulant that’s widely been prescribed to promote recovery in patients with severe cases of COVID-19, doesn’t offer any discernable benefit for people with the disease.

The UK-wide trial, which is run by Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge, involved more than 1,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and compared the outcomes of those who had been randomly assigned to receive apixaban to those who had not, according to Financial Times. It found that 29.1 percent of those who received the blood thinner either ended up back in the hospital or died within a year, compared to 30.8 percent of people who weren’t given the drug. That finding doesn’t support apixaban as an effective treatment for COVID-19, and the researchers conclude that doctors ought to stop prescribing it to their coronavirus patients. Meanwhile, BBC News reports that a “small number” of the 402 patients who took apixaban had to discontinue treatment due to severe bleeding.

The trial will continue with other drugs thought to help against COVID-19, according to BBC News, including a statin called atorvastatin that may help lessen the inflammatory response launched by COVID-19 patients’ immune systems and so prevent tissue damage.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04801940

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/blood-thinner-ineffectiv...

A secret of developing life: In some instances the fetus helps repair a ruptured amniotic sac

Premature rupture of the amniotic sac can have devastating consequences, but scientists are studying instances when the damaged sac repairs itself—a phenomenon that requires cooperation of the developing fetus.

A new investigation of the amnion, the innermost layer of epithelial cells in the amniotic sac reveals a cascade of cellular events that result in sac repair. The new research helps lay the groundwork for a keener understanding of both healthy pregnancies and when things go awry.

Aware that premature rupture of the amniotic membranes can lead to premature birth, researchers are asking what causes the sac to reseal. Producing a definitive answer to that question may ultimately lead to interventions that prevent premature birth for those whose membranes don't reseal. The biggest potential benefit down the road is guarding against the sometimes lethal outcomes when babies are born too small, too soon.

The premature rupture of the amniotic sac, a condition referred to as a preterm prelabour rupture of membranes (pPROM) is a leading cause of preterm birth. In some cases, these ruptured membranes heal spontaneously. Researchers investigated repair mechanisms of the amnion, a layer of epithelial cells in the amniotic sac closest to the fetus.

Amniotic membranes normally remain intact until the onset of active labor or within 24 hours before labor starts. pPROM may not be easy to detect. For some women, fluid leaks slowly and may be mistaken for urine. Obstetricians say it's important to note that amniotic fluid usually has no color and doesn't smell like urine. They also underscore that premature membrane rupture can occur for a variety of reasons.

In some women the amnion can rupture early for reasons ranging from infections of the uterus, cervix, or vagina to too much stretching of the amniotic sac. The latter may occur as a direct result of too much fluid in the sac, or more than one baby putting pressure on the membranes. Other causes of membrane rupture include conditions such as malnutrition, or intrauterine bleeding. Smoking is another factor that can cause rupture.

In this new study the research  team found that fetal macrophages are recruited to rupture sites in both the human and mouse amnion and assist in the repair of torn membranes.

Macrophages migrated to and resided at rupture sites in both human and mouse amnion. A process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition,  in which epithelial cells acquire a mesenchymal phenotype and which is implicated in tissue repair, was observed at rupture sites.

In short, epithelial cells took on the role of mesenchymal cells and helped begin the process of resealing. None of the cascade of biological events would have occurred without macrophages first migrating to and taking up residence at the rupture site. This shows that ruptures are reversible with repairs

The membrane repair is highly reliant on signaling molecules: in this case, transformation growth factor-β/Smad—TGF-β/Smad—signaling. TGF-β/Smad was prominent in both mouse and human samples. 

This  study's findings could potentially inform research into treatments for preterm membrane ruptures to prevent preterm birth.

Yosuke Kawamura et al, Fetal macrophages assist in the repair of ruptured amnion through the induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, Science Signaling (2022). DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.abi5453

The effects of climate change on body size evolution

The Northern Treeshrew, a small, bushy-tailed mammal native to South and Southeast Asia, defies two of the most widely tested ecological "rules" of body size variation within species, according to a new study.

The unexpected finding, researchers say, may be attributable to climate change—the body size rules reversed in Northern Treeshrews as average temperatures climbed—and likely exists in other species.

The first-of-its-kind study, published Nov. 29 in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the Northern Treeshrew (Tupaia belangeri) breaks both Bergmann's rule and the island rule. The former describes a common pattern wherein individuals of a warm-blooded species inhabiting colder climates—generally located at higher latitudes—have larger average body sizes than those in warmer climates, which are usually at lower latitudes. The latter predicts that small mammal species evolve larger body sizes on islands than their mainland counterparts, whereas island-bound large mammals evolve smaller body sizes.

Although both rules have been repeatedly tested from a strictly geographic standpoint, how they interact—and possibly even change over shorter timescales amidst rapid climate change—has never been rigorously examined.

In the first published study to do so, researchers analyzed 839 museum specimens of adult Northern Treeshrews collected over 130 years from across their entire geographic range, including mainland and island populations, along with historical climate data.

They found that, contrary to Bergmann's rule, body size of the Northern Treeshrew increased in warmer climates closer to the equator. More importantly—and quite unexpectedly—they discovered that both rules have reversed over a remarkably brief period between the late 19th and 20th centuries, with the reversal accelerating as average temperatures rose.

This study highlights that body size is linked to complex, dynamic and potentially interdependent ecological factors. This is the first time a rule reversal like this has been found in any species. The study also found that the two rules are intertwined. 

Maya M. Juman et al, Recent and rapid ecogeographical rule reversals in Northern Treeshrews, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-23774-w

Time slows down on crowded train!

Testing time perception in an unusually lifelike setting—a virtual reality ride on a New York City subway train—an interdisciplinary Cornell research team found that crowding makes time seem to pass more slowly.

As a result, rush-hour commutes on public transit may feel significantly longer than other rides that objectively take the same amount of time.

The research adds to evidence that social context and subjective feelings distort our sense of the passage of time, and may have practical implications for people's willingness to use public transit, particularly after the pandemic.

It's a new way of thinking about social crowding, showing that it changes how we perceive time. Crowding creates stressful feelings, and that makes a trip feel longer.

: Saeedeh Sadeghi et al, Affective experience in a virtual crowd regulates perceived travel time, Virtual Reality (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s10055-022-00713-8 Saeedeh

Saeedeh Sadeghi et al, Crowding and Perceived Travel Time in Public Transit: Virtual Reality Compared With Stated Choice Surveys, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (2022). DOI: 10.1177/03611981221130346

A targeted approach to reducing the health impacts of crop residue burning in India

To clear the way for planting wheat in November, a farmer in Punjab, India, sets aflame the leftover straw, or stubble, of a harvested rice paddy crop in October. The burning residue fills the air with carbon monoxide, ozone, and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) that will make it harder to breathe for days afterward and for miles around. It's a scene that's replicated on about 2 million farms in the Punjab and Haryana states of northwest India every autumn (and every spring after the wheat harvest), raising health risks—particularly of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases—and premature death rates downwind in India and throughout South Asia.

To date, government regulations, largely imposed at the state and national level, have been ineffective in curtailing crop residue burning in India. The practice continues apace, driven by the limited economic value of rice and wheat residues, and the ongoing need for cheap, ultrafast disposal of residues between harvesting and planting of the rotating crops. Such attempted bans are also deeply unpopular. A national ban on burning was repealed last year due to pressure from farmers, who see such legislation as further increasing the already-significant economic hardships faced by small-scale landowners.

In search of more effective solutions, a team of researchers at MIT and Harvard University estimated which burning events, in what locations and at what times, produced the greatest increases in population exposure, premature deaths, and economic losses in India during the years 2003–09. Then they quantified how small-scale and targeted actions could reduce air pollution and health risks for the entire population. Their findings appear in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on computer models of the seven-year study period, the researchers attributed between 44,000 and 98,000 PM_2.5-exposure-related premature deaths annually to crop residue burning, with 67–90% occurring as a result of burning that took place in the Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh states. They also found that six districts within Punjab—each with relatively high cultivation of residue-intensive crops and downwind population density—contributed 40% of India's annual air-quality impacts from the practice.

The research team next identified several opportunities to reduce crop residue burning and its attendant health effects. First, if farmers in Punjab were to burn crop residues two hours earlier in the day, they could avert up to 14% of air-quality impacts and about 10,000 deaths each year. They could achieve further reductions by adopting rice varieties such as basmati that require less residue burning. Finally, such targeted actions could achieve most of their benefits if adopted in just a few regions, given the large contribution from the aforementioned six districts in Punjab.

Ruoyu Lan et al, Air quality impacts of crop residue burning in India and mitigation alternatives, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34093-z

Mom's dietary fat rewires male and female brains differently

More than half of all women in the United States are overweight or obese when they become pregnant. While being or becoming overweight during pregnancy can have potential health risks for moms, there are also hints that it may tip the scales for their kids to develop psychiatric disorders like autism or depression, which often affects one gender more than the other.

What hasn’t been understood however is how the accumulation of fat tissue in mom might signal through the placenta in a sex-specific way and rearrange the developing offspring’s brain.

To fill this gap researchers studied pregnant mice on a high-fat diet. In findings appearing November 28 in the journal Nature Metabolism, they found that mom’s high-fat diet triggers immune cells in the developing brains of male but not female mouse pups to overconsume the mood-influencing brain chemical serotonin, leading to depressed-like behaviour.

The researchers said a similar thing may be happening in humans, too.

They are now starting to work out how and why female offspring are impacted differently when mom amasses high levels of fat during pregnancy. Fat doesn’t lead to depression in female mice, but it does make them less social, perhaps due to an overconsumption of the pro-social hormone oxytocin, instead of serotonin.

For now, this research highlights that not all placentas are created equally. This work may one day help guide clinicians and parents in better understanding and possible treatment or prevention of the origins of some mood disorders by considering early environmental factors, like fat accumulation during gestation.

“Maternal Diet Disrupts the Placenta-Brain Axis in a Sex-Specific Manner,” Alexis M. Ceasrine, Benjamin A. Devlin, Jessica L. Bolton, Lauren A. Green, Young Chan Jo, Carolyn Huynh, Bailey Patrick, Kamryn Washington, Cristina L. Sanchez, Faith Joo, A. Brayan Campos-Salazar, Elana R. Lockshin, Cynthia Kuhn, Susan K. Murphy, Leigh Ann Simmons, Staci D. Bilbo. Nature Metabolism, Nov. 28, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s42255-022-00693-8

To track disease-carrying mosquitoes, researchers tag them with DNA barcodes

West Nile, Zika, dengue and malaria are all diseases spread by bites from infected mosquitoes. To track the threat of such diseases over large populations, scientists need to know where the mosquitoes are, where they've been, and where they might go.

But  tracking mosquitoes is no easy task. The capture, tagging and release of single mosquitoes—as is commonly done with bats and other disease carriers—would be ridiculous, if not impossible. A common mosquito-tracking technique involves dousing the insects in fluorescent powder and letting them fly away, but the practice is error-prone and unreliable.

So scientists are now introducing a better way to perform mosquito-tracking for disease applications. Their new method, which involves getting larval mosquitoes to eat harmless particles made entirely of DNA and proteins, has the potential to revolutionize how people study mosquito-borne diseases.

The edible mosquito marker particles are porous protein crystals that self-assemble from a protein originally found in Camplyobacter jejuni bacteria. Since inventing these very small, non-toxic protein crystals that feature highly precise arrays of pores, researchers have been exploring diverse applications for them, like capturing virus particles to facilitate wastewater testing. They discovered they could insert fluorescent dyes or synthetic DNA into their crystals very easily, and the DNA wouldn't budge even after multiple washes and exposure to solvents.

They also performed a series of experiments that demonstrate the utility of these barcodes as tags capable of labeling millions of individual mosquitoes. So far, results are promising.

Here's how they do it: mosquito larvae ingest tasty biomass that's pre-loaded with the DNA crystals in solution. As the mosquitoes grow into adults, the DNA crystals remain intact in their guts, creating a code that can be later read through laboratory techniques like quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

The method the researchers are demonstrating is unique in one important way: Unlike conventional mosquito-tagging in which adult mosquitoes are extracted from traps and analyzed for disease, the DNA barcodes are ingested by the mosquitoes in their larval states, persisting with them as they become adults. In this way, researchers can not only track where the mosquitoes ended up, but where they started, and how they moved. Such insights could prove critical for disease-surveillance applications in the future.

Julius D Stuart, Daniel A Hartman, Lyndsey I Gray, Alec A Jones, Natalie R Wickenkamp, Christine Hirt, Aya Safira, April R Regas, Therese M Kondash, Margaret L Yates, Sergei Driga, Christopher D Snow, Rebekah C Kading. Mosquito tagging using DNA-barcoded nanoporous protein microcrystals. PNAS Nexus, 2022; 1 (4) DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac190

Gut microbes influence binge-eating of sweet treats in mice

You just meant to have a single Oreo as a snack, but then you find yourself going back for another, and another, and before you know it, you have finished off the entire package even though you were not all that hungry to begin with.

But before you start feeling too guilty for your gluttony, consider this: It might not be entirely your fault. Now, new research in mice shows that specific gut bacteria may suppress binge eating behavior.

Oreos and other desserts are examples of so-called "palatable foods"—food consumed for hedonistic pleasure, not simply out of hunger or nutritional need. Humans are not alone in enjoying this kind of hedonism: Mice like to eat dessert, too. Even when they have just eaten, they will still consume sugary snacks if available.

The new  study shows that the absence of certain gut bacteria causes mice to binge eat palatable foods: Mice with microbiotas disrupted by oral antibiotics consumed 50 percent more sugar pellets over two hours than mice with gut bacteria. When their microbiotas were restored through fecal transplants, the mice returned to normal feeding behavior. Further, not all bacteria in the gut are able to suppress hedonic feeding, but rather specific species appear to alter the behavior. Bingeing only applies to palatable foods; mice with or without gut microbiota both still eat the same amount of their regular diet. The findings show that the gut microbiota has important influences on behavior and that these effects can be modulated when the microbiota is manipulated.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01750-X

Scientists Prepare to Set Sail for NASA’s S-MODE Mission

In early October, the research vessel Bold Horizon set sail from Newport, Oregon, and joined a small fleet of planes, drones, and other high-tech craft chasing the ocean’s shapeshifting physics. NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) looks at whirlpools, currents, and other dynamics at the air-sea boundary. The goal is to understand how these dynamics drive the give-and-take of nutrients and energy between the ocean and atmosphere and, ultimately, help shape Earth’s climate.

Two new minerals discovered in meteorite

Researchers have identified two, possibly even three, new minerals in a huge iron-ba.... The minerals have been named elaliite, after the meteorite’s location near the town of El Ali, and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, lead investigator of a NASA mission to a metal-rich asteroid. The 2-metre-wide meteorite has been well known to generations of people who live in the area, where it was named Nightfall.

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Pupating ants make milk for baby ants

During their pupal stage, between larva and adult, ants are immobile and were previously thought to be pretty much useless to the rest of the colony. Now researchers have discovered that they have a pivotal role, secreting a nutritious fluid that is drunk by adult ants and fed to.... Analogous to mammalian milk, the secretion seems to be essential for young larvae to grow strong and healthy. The pupae also receive parental care: if the secretion is not removed, it can hurt them. “It is really surprising that nobody else noticed this before,” says ethologist Patrizia d’Ettorre.

 Let’s stand up for life:Scientists in rebellion

The members of the movement Scientist Rebellion, call on life scien...

Our current economic and political structures have an increasingly devastating impact on the Earth’s climate and ecosystems: we are facing a biospheric emergency, with catastrophic consequences for both humans and the natural world on which we depend. Life scientists – including biologists, medical scientists, psychologists and public health experts – have had a crucial role in documenting the impacts of this emergency, but they have failed to drive governments to take action in order to prevent the situation from getting worse. Here we, as members of the movement Scientist Rebellion, call on life scientists to re-embrace advocacy and activism – which were once hallmarks of academia – in order to highlight the urgency and necessity of systemic change across our societies. We particularly emphasise the need for scientists to engage in nonviolent civil resistance, a form of public engagement which has proven to be highly effective in social struggles throughout history.

The consequences of the failure of scientific engagement

An architecture that gives users full control of their smartphones

In recent years, many smartphone users have become concerned about the privacy of their data and the extent to which companies might have access to this data. As things stand today, the applications that users can run on their phone and what they can do with these applications is determined by a few big tech companies.

Researchers have recently set out on a quest to change this current trend, through the development of a new smartphone architecture called TEEtime. This architecture, introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, allows users to flexibly choose what resources on their smartphone they will dedicate to legacy operating systems, such as Android or iOS, and which they wish to keep for their own proprietary software and data.

Essentially, TEEtime isolates different domains, allowing users to decide the extent to which each of these domains has access to resources on their phone. This means that users could, for instance, run a navigation application in their own isolated domain, giving GPS access only to this domain and thus preventing Android/iOS from accessing their GPS data. The same could also be done with other peripherals, such as Bluetooth or the phone's in-built microphone and camera.

The introduction of domains has two main advantages in terms of giving users control over their devices. Firstly, it gives users full control of the privacy of their data, for instance allowing them to store their photos in a separate domain, where the user can make sure that no client-side scanning is performed. Note that in current phone ecosystems these features can be silently introduced without the user even noticing or having the possibility to opt-out.

The second advantage of the TEEtime architecture is that it can prevent censorship or increase resistance to it. In other words, if their operating service providers blocks an application or prevents them from installing it, they can still run it in a separate domain.

So far, the researchers tested a prototype of their architecture on an ARM emulator, a software tool often used to test operating systems and other smartphone software. These initial evaluations were promising, as they suggested that TEEtime works well and does not impact a system's security.

Friederike Groschupp et al, It's TEEtime: Bringing User Sovereignty to Smartphones, arXiv (2022). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2211.05206

Short term memory problems can be improved with laser therapy, according to new study

Laser light therapy has been shown to be effective in improving short term memory in a study published in Science Advances.

Scientists 

demonstrated that the therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short term, or working memory in people by up to 25%.

The treatment, called transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM), is applied to an area of the brain known as the right prefrontal cortex. This area is widely recognized as important for working memory. In their experiment, the team showed how working memory improved among research participants after several minutes of treatment. They were also able to track the changes in brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during treatment and testing.

Previous studies have shown that laser light treatment will improve working memory in mice, and human studies have shown tPBM treatment can improve accuracy, speed up reaction time and improve high-order functions such as attention and emotion.

This is the first study, however, to confirm a link between tPBM and working memory in humans.

Chenguang Zhao et al, Transcranial photobiomodulation enhances visual working memory capacity in humans, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq3211. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq3211

Astronomers See Stellar Self-Control in Action

Stars can regulate their growth when they are part of a bigger group called a cluster. Once stars get very big and bright, they can blow most of the gas out of the cluster. This prevents too many new stars from forming, controlling the stellar family’s size. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes examined a large gas cloud for this finding.

Wormhole inside a quantum computer

Physicists have sent quantum information through a simulated wormhole in a ‘toy’ universe that exists only inside a quantum computer. The tunnel is analogous to passages through space-time that might connect the centres of black holes in the real Universe. “The surprise is not that the message made it across in some form, but that it made it across unscrambled,” write the authors of an analysis published alongside the study in Nature. Some scientists think that such experiments could help to unite the theories of quantum mechanics and gravity in the simplified realm of toy universes, leading ultimately to the answer to one of the biggest problems in physics: a real-world quantum theory of gravity.

Researchers discover new form of antimicrobial resistance

Researchers have uncovered a new form of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), undetectable using traditional laboratory testing methods, in a discovery set to challenge existing efforts to monitor and tackle one of the world's greatest health threats.

In research published today in Nature Communications, the researchers revealed a new mechanism that enables bacteria to take up nutrients from their human host and bypass antibiotic treatment. The researchers made the discovery while investigating antibiotic susceptibility of group A. streptococcus—a potentially deadly bacteria often found in the throat and on the skin.

Bacteria need to make their own folates to grow, and in turn, cause disease. Some antibiotics work by blocking this folate production to stop bacteria growing and treat the infection. When looking at an antibiotic commonly prescribed to treat group A. strep skin infections, researchers found a mechanism of resistance, where for the first time ever, the bacteria demonstrated the ability to take folates directly from its human host when blocked from producing their own. This makes the antibiotic ineffective and the infection would likely worsen when the patient should be getting better.

This new form of resistance is undetectable under conditions routinely used in pathology laboratories, making it very hard for clinicians to prescribe antibiotics that will effectively treat the infection, potentially leading to very poor outcomes and even premature death.

Researchers  suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg—they have identified this mechanism in group A. strep but it's likely it will be a broader issue across other bacterial pathogens.

Host-dependent resistance of Group A Streptococcus to sulfamethoxazolemediated by a horizontally-acquired reduced folate transporter, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34243-3

Brain cells use a telephone trick to report what they see

"How many fingers am I holding up?”

For vision-sensing brain cells in a monkey’s visual cortex, that answer depends on whether the digits are next to each other or partially overlapping.

A new study from Duke University finds that single neurons conveying visual information about two separate objects in sight do so by alternating signals about one or the other. When two objects overlap, however, the brain cells detect them as a single entity.

The new report is out Nov. 28 in the journal eLife.

The findings help expand what is known about how the brain makes sense of its complicated and busy world. Most research on sensory processing, be it sounds or sights, sets the bar too low by testing how brain cells react to a single tone or image.

This study is the first one  to show that single auditory brain cells efficiently transmit information about two different sounds by using something called multiplexing.

Multiplexing is an idea that comes from engineering. When you have one wire and a lot of signals, you can swap the signals out, kind of like a telephone party line.

The telecommunications technology works by rapidly switching back-and-forth between relaying information from one phone call and the other using just one wire. In the brain, the switching is probably happening much more slowly but the general idea is similar.

“Coordinated Multiplexing of Information About Separate Objects in Visual Cortex,” Na Young Jun, Douglas A. Ruff, Lily E. Kramer, Brittany Bowes, Surya T. Tokdar, Marlene R. Cohen, Jennifer M. Groh. eLife, Nov. 29, 2022. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.76452.sa0

Janavis: new species of toothed bird from the Age of Dinosaurs

Mapping the hidden connections between diseases

A new study by  researchers has identified patterns in how common health conditions occur together in the same individuals, using data from 4 million patients.

With advancing age, millions of people live with multiple conditions—sometimes referred to as multimorbidity—and the proportion of people affected in this way is expected to rise over the next decades. However, medical education and training, health care delivery, clinical guidelines and research have evolved to focus on one disease at a time.

The Academy of Medical Sciences and the UK Chief Medical Officer (CMO) have recognized this problem and set out a challenge of investigating which diseases co-occur in the same individuals and why.

In the new study, published in The Lancet Digital Health, the team used routine health records data to systematically identify patterns of clustering of 308 common mental and physical health conditions of men and women of different ages and with different ethnicities.

Some patterns found include: heart failure often co-occurred with hypertension, atrial fibrillation, osteoarthritis, stable angina, myocardial infarction, chronic kidney disease, type 2 diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Hypertension was most strongly associated with kidney disorders in those aged 20–29 years, but with dyslipidaemia, obesity, and type 2 diabetes in individuals aged 40 years and older.

Breast cancer was associated with different comorbidities in individuals from different ethnicities, asthma with different comorbidities between the sexes, and bipolar disorder with different comorbidities in younger ages compared with older ages.

Millions of people live with multiple diseases, yet our understanding of how and when these transpire is limited. This research project is the first step towards understanding how these diseases co-occur and identifying how to best treat them.

The study includes accessible tools to help users visualize patterns of disease co-occurrence, including for diseases that cluster more commonly than expected by chance, providing an entry point to investigate common risk factors and treatments.

The findings should help patients better understand their illness, doctors better plan management of patients with multimorbidity, health care providers optimize service delivery, policy makers plan resource allocation, and researchers to develop new or use existing medicines to treat several diseases together.

Valerie Kuan et al, Identifying and visualising multimorbidity and comorbidity patterns in patients in the English National Health Service: a population-based study, The Lancet Digital Health (2022). DOI: 10.1016/S2589-7500(22)00187-X

The findings, the researchers say, provide the data and resources to help improve health and care planning for patients in England living with more than one condition.

Study hints at the potentially crucial role of shear stress in the activation of pain sensing neurons

Feelings of pain and discomfort are crucial to the survival and evolution of animals, as they help to detect injuries or existential threats and pinpoint their location in the body. Pain signals are produced by nociceptors, sensory neurons that respond to damage to the body and send "threat" signals to the spinal cord.

Nociceptors (i.e., neurons sensing pain) are essentially bare nerve endings that can be found in all parts of the body, including the skin, muscles, bones and viscera. While many neuroscience studies have investigated their structure and function, the mechanisms underpinning their activation remain poorly understood.

Researchers have recently set out to better understand these mechanisms by conducting experiments on fruit fly larvae. Their findings, published in Neuron, suggest that these neurons specifically respond to shear stress (i.e., stress caused by two forces of similar strength acting on opposite sides of a body and moving in opposite directions), but do not respond to stretch.

The key goal of the recent work was to identify the specific forces that lead to the activation of these pain sensing neurons and elucidate the underlying transduction mechanisms. To do this, the researchers first conducted behavioral experiments, where they poked a fruit fly larva using a calibrated fishing line. "In the absence of stimulation, larvae tend to move forward with frequent changing of direction. However, when they poked a larva, it stopped moving and displayed a 360-degree body rotation. This rolling was interpreted as nocifensive behaviour (i.e., animal behavior aimed at withdrawing from danger). The strength of response was measured as a percentage of animals that rolled in response to poking. Using computer modeling, the team found that poking a fruit fly larva could elicit two different kinds of forces, stretch and shear stress to stimulate nociceptors. In the following calcium imaging experiments to explore which forces are responsible for nociceptor activation, the researchers stretched the larvae's nociceptors or apply a shear force to them. They found that the larvae's nociceptors were activated by shear stress, but not by stretch. They were also able to identify the specific type of ion channel that is found in nociceptors and is activated by shear stress, called transient receptor potential A1 (TrpA1). Interestingly, shear stress appeared to be able to activate TrpA1 in a small patch of cell membrane devoid of cellular environment, providing evidence of TrpA1 as a molecular sensor of shear stress. They further show the effect of shear stress was through modulation of membrane's fluidity.

This study has two notable findings:First, the researchers showed that shear stress could be a physiologically relevant force that is critical for activation of nociceptors. Second, it provided evidence that TrpA1 is a shear stress sensor and this property is conserved for TrpA1 derived from Drosophila, mice and humans.

Jiaxin Gong et al, Shear stress activates nociceptors to drive Drosophila mechanical nociception, Neuron (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.08.015

Researchers harness bacteria-eating viruses to create powerful food decontamination spray

Researchers  have created a powerful new weapon against bacterial contamination and infection.

They have developed a way to coax bacteriophages—harmless viruses that eat bacteria—into linking together and forming microscopic beads. Those beads can safely be applied to food and other materials to rid them of harmful pathogens such as E. coli 0157. Each bead is about 20 microns, (one 50th of a millimeter) in diameter and is loaded with millions of phages.

The researchers' sprayable new super-disinfectant is food-safe and highly effective, as they describe in an article  published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

Self-assembling nanofibrous bacteriophage microgels as sprayable antimicrobials targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34803-7

Using a green algae capsule to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs to a ...

A team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a green algae capsule for delivering chemotherapy drugs to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. In their study, published in the journal Science Robotics, the group delivered drugs via the capsule, which passed through the stomach without being digested.

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Signs of brain ageing after severe COVID

Severe COVID-19 has been linked to changes in the brain similar to those seen in old age. Scientists studied brain samples from 21 people who had severe SARS-CoV-2 infections when they died. Inflammation and stress genes in the frontal cortex — a brain region essential for cognition — were more active in infected people than in uninfected people, and genes linked to forming connections between brain cells were less active. Proteomics researcher Daniel Martins-de-Souza says the work is preliminary but could ultimately help people who have lingering cognitive difficulties after COVID-19.

Insulin sensitivity is preserved in mice made obese by feeding a high starch diet

Abstract: Obesity is generally associated with insulin resistance in liver and muscle and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, however there is a population of obese people that remain insulin sensitive. Similarly, recent work suggests that mice fed high carbohydrate diets can become obese without apparent glucose intolerance. To investigate this phenomenon further, we fed mice either a high fat (Hi-F) or high starch (Hi-ST) diet and measured adiposity, glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, and tissue lipids compared to control mice fed a standard laboratory chow. Both Hi-ST and Hi-F mice accumulated a similar amount of fat and tissue triglyceride compared to chow-fed mice. However, while Hi-F diet mice developed glucose intolerance as well as liver and muscle insulin resistance (assessed via euglycaemic/hyperinsulinaemic clamp), obese Hi-ST mice maintained glucose tolerance and insulin action similar to lean, chow-fed controls. This preservation of insulin action despite obesity in Hi-ST mice was associated with differences in de novo lipogenesis and levels of C22:0 ceramide in liver and C18:0 ceramide in muscle. This indicates that dietary manipulation can influence insulin action independently of the level of adiposity and that the presence of specific ceramide species correlates with these differences.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/79250?utm_source=content_alert&a...

This is what we wanted: EU agrees ban on imports driving deforestation

The European Union reached an agreement yesterday to ban the import of products including coffee, cocoa and soy in cases where they are deemed to contribute to deforestation.

The draft law, which aims to ensure "deforestation-free supply chains" for the 27-nation EU, was hailed by environmental groups as "groundbreaking".

It requires companies importing into the EU to guarantee products are not produced on land that suffered deforestation after December 31, 2020, and that they comply with all laws of the source country.

The scope encompasses palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products such as beef, furniture and chocolate.

Illegal production has spurred massive deforestation in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mexico and Guatemala.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that an aggregate area of land bigger than the European Union, or some 420 million hectares (more than one billion acres), has been deforested around the world over the past three decades.

The law opened the way for technology such as satellite monitoring and DNA analysis to verify the provenance of targeted imports. The legislation would be reviewed one year after coming into force, to see whether it should be extended to other wooded land. Another review at the two-year mark would have the commission considering whether to expand it to cover other ecosystems and commodities, as well as financial institutions.

WWF, called the agreement "groundbreaking" and "historic".

source: AFP

Discovery of world's oldest DNA breaks record by one million years

Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified for the first time—opening a 'game-changing' new chapter in the history of evolution.

Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, researchers discovered the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone.

The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change. Researchers hope the results could help to predict the long-term environmental toll of today's global warming.

Extensive work by 40 researchers from several countries  unlocked the secrets of the fragments of DNA. The process was painstaking—first they needed to establish whether there was DNA hidden in the clay and quartz, and if there was, could they successfully detach the DNA from the sediment to examine it? The answer, eventually, was yes. The researchers compared every single DNA fragment with extensive libraries of DNA collected from present-day animals, plants and microorganisms. A picture began to emerge of the DNA from trees, bushes, birds, animals and microorganisms.

Some of the DNA fragments were easy to classify as predecessors to present-day species, others could only be linked at genus level, and some originated from species impossible to place in the DNA libraries of animals, plants and microorganisms still living in the 21st century.

The two-million-year-old samples also help academics build a picture of a previously unknown stage in the evolution of the DNA of a range of species still in existence today.

Eske Willerslev, A 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland uncovered by environmental DNA, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05453-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05453-y

New branch on tree of life includes 'lions of the microbial world'

There's a new branch on the tree of life and it's made up of predators that nibble their prey to death.

These microbial predators fall into two groups, one of which researchers have dubbed "nibblerids" because they, well, nibble chunks off their prey using tooth-like structures. The other group, nebulids, eat their prey whole. And both constitute a new ancient branch on the tree of life called Provora, according to a paper published today in Nature.

Like lions, cheetahs, and more familiar predators, these microbes are numerically rare but important to the ecosystem. Using water samples from marine habitats around the world, including the coral reefs of Curaçao, sediment from the Black and Red seas, and water from the northeast Pacific and Arctic oceans, the researchers discovered new microbes.

Culturing these microbial predators was no mean feat, since they require a mini-ecosystem with their food and their food's food just to survive in the lab.

Denis Tikhonenkov, Microbial predators form a new supergroup of eukaryotes, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05511-5. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05511-5

Governments and people around the world, please listen: It is risky bet on forests and soils to reach net zero emissions

New research  highlights the risks of countries relying on nature-based solutions to achieve net zero.

National climate strategies set out how countries plan to reduce emissions, for example by phasing out fossil fuel use, to get to net zero in 2050. The study found that once the bulk of emissions have been reduced, countries plan to "cancel out" the leftover difficult-to-decarbonize emissions, such as those from agriculture, by using forests and soils to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

However, this may prove risky because forests and soils are also threatened by a range of impacts, such as fire, disease, changes in farming practices, and deforestation. These threats mean that forests and soils could lose their stored carbon back to the atmosphere.

There is also a risk of being overly optimistic about the amount of carbon that forests and soils can remove to reach net zero, especially if combined with delays to reducing emissions from coal, oil, and gas.

The findings, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, show that most of the strategies submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) do not quantify the amount of carbon "removals" needed in 2050.

With progress on reducing emissions stalling at COP27, the researchers call for the reporting requirements on long-term national climate plans to be urgently strengthened.

The deployment of carbon dioxide removal is essential to reach global and national net zero emissions targets, but little attention has been paid to its practical deployment by countries. 

Nature-based removals, such as using forests and soils, remain vital to address challenges in biodiversity and climate adaptation, but may be risky if used as the only way to remove carbon. Countries should also explore engineered carbon removal methods. To meet the challenge of net zero, we need both.

'Long-term National Climate Strategies Bet on Forests and Soils to Reach Net-Zero', Communications Earth & Environment (2022).

Scientists confirm smallpox vaccine also teaches T cells to fight mpox

There's even more reason to think a vaccine developed against smallpox can help the body fight against mpox (monkeypox virus disease) as well, according to researchers. A new study, published in Cell Host & Microbe, is the first to provide evidence that the vaccinia vaccine MVA-BN (brand name JYNNEOS) should also train virus-fighting T cells to recognize mpox sequences.

This study gives us confidence that T cell response induced by the JYNNEOS vaccine should be able to also recognize mpox virus.

Although the JYNNEOS vaccine, based on a non-live attenuated orthopox virus called modified vaccine ankara (MVA), is approved to prevent mpox infection and severe disease, researchers don't yet have clinical efficacy data from human trials. Still, researchers know that mpox virus is similar enough to other orthopoxviruses that immunization against an orthopoxvirus called vaccinia (VACV) can also train the immune system to fight mpox.

Mpox (termed "monkeypox" until recently) is a member of the orthopox family of viruses. The deadliest, of course, was variola virus,causing the disease known as smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1980 thanks to a massive and successful vaccination campaign to administer the Dryvax vaccine, based on VACV.

VACV and variola virus have a lot of immune system targets (called antigens), in common. This means training the body to recognize VACV also taught immune cells to recognize variola virus. But there was a downside—Dryvax (and a newer version called Acambis 2000) had harmful side effects, especially in immunocompromised people.

JYNNEOS was designed to have a better safety profile. While the vaccine performed well in pre-clinical tests, the eradication of smallpox meant scientists couldn't see how JYNNEOS performed in human patients in real-world infection scenarios, such as a smallpox outbreak or possible case of smallpox-based biological warfare.

Part 1

For the new study, researchers set out to study if the viral proteins known to be targeted by T cells induced by VACV vaccination, would also be conserved in JYNNEOS and in mpox.

While antibodies are key for vaccine efficacy and preventing reinfections, T cells are essential for both preventing severe infections and "remembering" past infections.

By recognizing infected cells, T cells are able to limit how much viruses can spread inside the body modulate disease severity, and ultimately terminate the infection. T cell responses also tend to be long lasting, and resilient to viral mutations to escape immune recognition. What we have seen in the context of SARS-CoV-2 is that even if the virus mutates somewhat, T cells reactivity is still largely preserved.

The researchers demonstrated that the known targets of T cell responses seen in the VACV proven -efficacy vaccine, are also found in JYNNEOS and mpox, suggesting that the JYNNEOS vaccine can indeed trigger an effective T cell response against mpox infection. The initial test of their hypothesis was based on developing viral peptide "megapools," or reagents designed to detect T cell reactivity to mpox antigens. The experiments further showed that these megapools can be used to accurately detect specific T cells.

Vaccines such as JYNNEOS should be able to induce T cells that also recognize mpox and can provide protection from severe disease. 

 Alba Grifoni et al, Defining antigen targets to dissect vaccinia virus and monkeypox virus-specific T cell responses in humans, Cell Host & Microbe (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2022.11.003

Part 2

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Paper-thin solar cell can turn any surface into a power source

Now just a light beam can detect malaria

A fast, needle-free malaria detection tool developed by research team could help save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.

Malaria is usually detected by a blood test, but scientists have devised a method using a device that shines a beam of harmless infrared light on a person's ear or finger for five-to-10 seconds, it collects an infrared signature that is processed by a computer algorithm.

The technique is chemical-free, needle-free and detects malaria through the skin using infrared-light—it's literally just a flash on a person's skin and it's done.

"The device is smart-phone operated, so results are acquired in real time."

The researchers think the technology is the first step to eliminating malaria.

The technology could also help tackle other diseases. Because the researchers have successfully used this technology on mosquitoes to non-invasively detect infections such as malaria, Zika and dengue.

Gabriela A Garcia et al, Malaria absorption peaks acquired through the skin of patients with infrared light can detect patients with varying parasitemia, PNAS Nexus (2022). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac272

Scientists identify gene that controls scarring in damaged hearts

Scientists  have identified a gene that controls the behaviour of a specific type of cardiac macrophage responsible for excessive scarring during the early phases of common heart diseases or cardiomyopathies. When the gene, called WWP2, is blocked, heart function is improved and scar tissue formation is slowed, delaying the progression to heart failure.

Scarring or fibrosis of the heart, as in non-ischemic cardiomyopathies, is a progressive condition and global health concern. In its earliest stages, it is characterized by an inflammatory phase, so intervening at that point could significantly delay disease progression.

Researchers had been studying the function of WWP2 in fibrotic diseases for several years, first discovering that it is a significant driver of scaring when it is expressed in fibroblasts—the cells that make scar tissue. In their latest findings, published in Nature Communications, his team turned their attention to the early stage of the disease.

Using single cell RNA sequencing, the team found when fibrosis is triggered, a wide range of different macrophages—immune cells that clear foreign material in the body—are activated in a preclinical model of heart disease. While macrophages are mostly known for their role in removing cancer cells, microbes and cellular debris, they also help with the regeneration of healthy muscle cells.

However, a subset of these cardiac macrophages are controlled by WWP2. These WWP2-expressing macrophages actively promote scarring by triggering local cardiac cells (fibroblasts) to produce collagen in an uncontrolled manner, fuelling scar tissue formation.

In this latest study, researchers focused on the 'cross-talk' that happens between macrophages and fibroblasts in the early stages of fibrogenesis. They  found that when WWP2 is expressed in macrophages, these cells 'irritate' fibroblasts which leads to uncontrolled scarring. 

When macrophages did not express WWP2, on the other hand, the team observed reduced infiltration of pro-fibrotic macrophages into the heart, and the action of repair macrophages was better sustained with clear beneficial effects on cardiac tissue and function during the later stages of the disease.

Blocking WWP2's function in this subset of cardiac macrophages is enough to slow—or even stop—the scarring. The team is developing a small molecule inhibitor against WWP2 that can achieve just that.

Huimei Chen et al, The E3 ubiquitin ligase WWP2 regulates pro-fibrogenic monocyte infiltration and activity in heart fibrosis, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34971-6

Aging is driven by unbalanced genes, finds AI analysis of multiple species

Researchers have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that drives aging.

In a new study, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze data from a wide variety of tissues, collected from humans, mice, rats and killifish. They discovered that the length of genes can explain most molecular-level changes that occur during aging.

All cells must balance the activity of long and short genes. The researchers found that longer genes are linked to longer lifespans, and shorter genes are linked to shorter lifespans. They also found that aging genes change their activity according to length. More specifically, aging is accompanied by a shift in activity toward short genes. This causes the gene activity in cells to become unbalanced.

Surprisingly, this finding was near universal. The researchers uncovered this pattern across several animals, including humans, and across many tissues (blood, muscle, bone and organs, including liver, heart, intestines, brain and lungs) analyzed in the study.

The new finding potentially could lead to interventions designed to slow the pace of—or even reverse—aging.

Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance, Nature Aging (2022).

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-aging-driven-unbalanced-genes-ai.html...

Scientists shed new light on genetic changes that turn 'on' cancer genes

Cancer, caused by abnormal overgrowth of cells, is the second-leading cause of death in the world. Researchers  have zeroed in on specific mechanisms that activate oncogenes, which are altered genes that can cause normal cells to become cancer cells.

Cancer can be caused by genetic mutations, yet the impact of specific types such as structural variants that break and rejoin DNA, can vary widely. The findings, published in Nature on December 7, 2022, show that the activity of those mutations depends on the distance between a particular gene and the sequences that regulate the gene, as well as on the level of activity of the regulatory sequences involved.

This work advances the ability to predict and interpret which genetic mutations found in cancer genomes are causing the disease.

Most genetic mutations have no impact on a cancer and the molecular incidents that lead to oncogene activation are relatively rare.

Using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, the researchers introduced genetic mutations by cutting DNA in certain locations of the genome. They found that some of the variants they created had major impacts on the expression of nearby genes, and could ultimately cause cancer, but that most had essentially no impact. Some genes appeared to go haywire when they were brought into environments with novel regulatory sequences, and others were not affected at all. The type of sequence that was introduced appeared to have a huge impact on whether or not the cell became cancerous.

Their next move is to test whether there are other factors in the genome that contribute to the activation of oncogene.

Zhichao Xu, Dong-Sung Lee, Sahaana Chandran, Victoria T. Le, Rosalind Bump, Jean Yasis, Sofia Dallarda, Samantha Marcotte, Benjamin Clock, Nicholas Haghani, Chae Yun Cho, Kadir C. Akdemir, Selene Tyndale, P. Andrew Futreal, Graham McVicker, Geoffrey M. Wahl, Jesse R. Dixon. Structural variants drive context-dependent oncogene activation in cancer. Nature, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05504-4

A surprising discovery: The female locust has superhero-like abilities

A new Tel Aviv University study has discovered that the female locust has superpowers. The findings of the study reveal that the female locust's central nervous system has elastic properties, allowing her to stretch up to two or three times her original length when laying her eggs in the ground, without causing any irreparable damage.

We are not aware of a similar ability in almost any living creature. Nerves in the human nervous system, for example, can stretch only up to 30% without tearing or being permanently damaged. In the future, these findings may contribute to new developments in the field of regenerative medicine, as a basis for nerve restoration and the development of synthetic tissues.

When the female locust is ready to lay her eggs, she digs a hole in the ground that will offer them protection and optimal conditions for hatching. For this purpose, she is equipped with a unique digging apparatus, consisting of two pairs of digging valves which are located at the tip of the abdomen, on either side of the ovipositor (a tube-like organ used for laying eggs).

"As she digs, the female extends her body, until sensors located along its length signal that she has reached a suitable point for depositing her eggs. Thus, an adult female, whose body length is about four to five centimeters, may, for the purpose of laying her eggs, stretch her body to a length of 10–15 centimeters, then quickly return to her normal length, and then extend again for the next egg-laying.

The superpower of the locust is almost something out of science fiction. There are only two other known examples in nature of a similar phenomenon: the tongue of the sperm whale, and a certain type of sea snail whose nervous systems are able to extend significantly due to an accordion-like mechanism they have. Scientists sought to identify the biomechanical mechanism that gives the female locust its wonderful ability.

In the study, the researchers removed the central nervous systems from female locusts and placed them in a liquid simulating their natural environment, under physiological conditions similar to those inside the body. Using highly sensitive measuring instruments, they measured the forces needed to extend the nervous system.

Contrary to previous hypotheses and examples we are familiar with, they did not find any accordion-like mechanism. They discovered that the nervous system of the female locust has elastic properties, which enable it to elongate and then return by itself to its original state, ready for reuse, without any damage caused to the tissue. This finding is almost incomprehensible from a biomechanical and morphological point of view.

The researchers hope that in the future their findings will help to develop synthetic tissues with a high level of flexibility, and to restore nerves in regenerative medicine therapies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422201567X

Do You Flush With The Lid Up? You Won't After Watching This

New research shows the impact of flushing the toilet in a whole new light. Using bright green lasers and camera equipment, a team of  engineers ran an experiment to reveal how tiny water droplets, invisible to the naked eye, are rapidly ejected into the air when a lid-less, public restroom toilet is flushed. These aerosolized particles are known to transport pathogens and could pose an exposure risk to public bathroom patrons. This visualization method, however, provides experts in plumbing and public health with a consistent way to test improved plumbing design and disinfection and ventilation strategies, in order to reduce exposure risk to pathogens in public restrooms.

Researchers discover embryonic origins of adult pluripotent stem cells

Stem cells are a biological wonder. They can repair, restore, replace, and regenerate cells. In most animals and humans these cells are limited to regenerating only the cell type they are assigned to. So, hair stem cells will only make hair. Intestine stem cells will only make intestines. But, many distantly-related invertebrates have stem cell populations that are pluripotent in adult animals, which means they can regenerate virtually any missing cell type, a process called whole-body regeneration.

Even though these adult pluripotent stem cells (aPSCs) are found in many different types of animals (such as sponges, hydras, planarian flatworms, acoel worms, and some sea squirts) the mechanism of how they are made is not known in any species.

In a new study in Cell researchers  have identified the cellular mechanism and molecular trajectory for the formation of aPSCs in the acoel worm, Hofstenia miamia.

H. miamia, also known as the three-banded panther worm, is a species that can fully regenerate using aPSCs called "neoblasts." Chop H. miamia into pieces and each piece will grow a new body including everything from a mouth to the brain.

 Researchers developed a protocol for transgenesis in H. miamia. Transgenesis is a process that introduces something into the genome of an organism that is not normally part of that genome. This method allowed the researchers to pursue this question of how these stem cells are made.

One common characteristic among animals that can regenerate is the presence of pluripotent stem cells in the adult body. These cells are responsible for re-making missing body parts when the animal is injured. By understanding how animals like H. miamia make these stem cells, they felt they could better understand what gives certain animals regenerative abilities.

There are some unifying features of these stem cell populations in adult animals such as the expression of a gene called Piwi.

Part 1

The researchers knew that worm hatchlings contain aPSCs, so reasoned they must be made during embryogenesis. Ricci used transgenesis to create a line that caused embryo cells to glow in fluorescent green due to the introduction of the protein Kaede into the cell. Kaede is photo-convertible, which means shining a laser beam with a very specific wavelength on the green will convert it to a red color. You can then zap the cells with a laser to turn individual green cells of the embryo into a red color.

Using transgenic animals with photo-conversion is a very new twist the researchers devised in the lab to figure out the fates of embryonic cells.

 They followed the embryo's development as it split from single cell to multiple cells. Early division of these cells is marked by stereotyped cleavage, which means embryo to embryo cells divide in the exact same pattern such that cells can be named and studied consistently. This raised the possibility that perhaps every single cell has a unique purpose. For instance, at the eight-cell stage it's possible the top, left corner cell makes a certain tissue, while the bottom, right cell makes another tissue.

To determine the function of each cell, they systematically performed photo-conversion for each of the cells of the early embryo, creating a full fate map at the eight-cell stage. They then tracked the cells as the worm grew into an adult that still carried the red labeling. The repetitious process of following each individual cell again and again across many embryos made it possible for them to trace where each cell was working.

At the sixteen-cell stage embryo they found a very specific pair of cells that gave rise to cells that looked to be the neoblasts.

To be certain, the researchers put this particular set of cells, called 3a/3b in H. miamia, on trial. In order to be the neoblasts the cells must satisfy all of the known properties of stem cells. Are the progeny of those cells making new tissue during regeneration? The researchers found that yes, the progeny of only those cells made new tissue during regeneration.

Part 2

Another defining property is the level of gene expression in stem cells, which must have hundreds of genes expressed. To determine if 3a/3b fit this property, they took the progeny with 3a/3b glowing in red and all other cells glowing in green and used a sorting machine that separated the red and green cells. they then applied single-cell sequencing technology to ask, which genes are being expressed in the red cells and in the green cells. That data confirmed that at the molecular level only the progeny of the 3a/3b cells matched stem cells and not the progeny of any other cell.

That was definitive confirmation of the fact that we found the cellular source of the stem cell population in our system. But, importantly, knowing the cellular source of stem cells now gives them a way to capture the cells as they mature and define what genes are involved in making them.

They generated a huge dataset of embryonic development at the single-cell level detailing which genes were being expressed in all of the cells in embryos from the beginning to the end of development. They allowed the converted 3a/3b cells to develop a little bit further, but not all the way to hatchling stage. They then captured these cells using the sorting technology. By doing this they could clearly define which genes were specifically being expressed in the lineage of cells that make the stem cells.

This study reveals a set of genes that could be very important controllers for the formation of stem cells. Homologues of these genes have important roles in human stem cells and this is relevant across species.

The researchers plan to continue digging deeper into the mechanism of how these genes are working in the stem cells of Hofstenia miamia, which will help to tell how nature evolved a way to make and maintain pluripotent stem cells. Knowing the molecular regulators of aPSCs will allow researchers to compare these mechanisms across species, revealing how pluripotent stem cells have evolved across animals.

Mansi Srivastava, Embryonic origins of adult pluripotent stem cells, Cell (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.008. www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01420-9

Part 3

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The toughest material on Earth

Scientists have measured the highest toughness ever recorded, of any material, while investigating a metallic alloy made of chromium, cobalt, and nickel (CrCoNi). Not only is the metal extremely ductile—which, in materials science, means highly malleable—and impressively strong (meaning it resists permanent deformation), its strength and ductility improve as it gets colder. This runs counter to most other materials in existence.

Dong Liu et al, Exceptional fracture toughness of CrCoNi-based medium- and high-entropy alloys at 20 kelvin, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abp8070

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Did physicists make a wormhole in the lab? Not quite, but a new exp...

Scientists made headlines last week for supposedly generating a wormhole. The research, reported in Nature, involves the use of a quantum computer to simulate a wormhole in a simplified model of physics.

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Forget net-zero: Aim for net-negative to halt global warming, argue...

In the fight against climate change, the lever every policymaker has been focusing on has been the reduction in (net) emissions. Curbing the rate at which greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere clearly remains a priority. Yet every serious scientific analysis—in particular the latest IPCC report—agrees that a substantial amount of CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere via negative-emission technologies if we want to have a reasonable chance of limiting the temperature increase by the end of the century to 1.5 to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Researchers reveal how trauma changes the brain

Exposure to trauma can be life-changing—and researchers are learning more about how traumatic events may physically change our brains. But these changes are not happening because of physical injury; rather, the brain appears to rewire itself after these experiences.

Understanding the mechanisms involved in these changes and how the brain learns about an environment and predicts threats and safety is a focus of neuro-scientists. 

Scientists  are learning more about how people exposed to trauma learn to distinguish between what is safe and what is not. Their brain is giving them insight into what might be going awry in specific mechanisms that are impacted by trauma exposure, especially when emotion is involved.

Their research, recently published in Communications Biology, identified changes in the salience network—a mechanism in the brain used for learning and survival—in people exposed to trauma (with and without psychopathologies, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety).

Using fMRI, the researchers recorded activity in the brains of participants as they looked at different-sized circles—only one size was associated with a small shock (or threat). Along with the changes in the salience network, researchers found another difference—this one within the trauma-exposed resilient group. They found the brains of people exposed to trauma without psychopathologies were compensating for changes in their brain processes by engaging the executive control network—one of the dominant networks of the brain.

The possibility of threat can change how someone exposed to trauma reacts. Researchers found this to be the case in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Patients with PTSD can complete the same task as someone without exposure to trauma when no emotion is involved. However, when emotion invoked by a threat was added to a similar task, those with PTSD had more difficulty distinguishing between the differences.

 researchers observed that people with PTSD had less signaling between the hippocampus (an area of the brain responsible for emotion and memory) and the salience network (a mechanism used for learning and survival).

They also detected less signaling between the amygdala (another area linked to emotion) and the default mode network (an area of the brain that activates when someone is not focused on the outside world). These findings reflect the inability of a person with PTSD to effectively distinguish differences between the circles.

Xi Zhu et al, Sequential fear generalization and network connectivity in trauma exposed humans with and without psychopathology, Communications Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-04228-5

Antibodies to common antibiotic possible new risk factor for type 1 diabetes

Antibodies produced against the commonly used antibiotic, gentamicin, appear to increase the risk of type 1 diabetes in children already genetically at risk, scientists say.

When  scientists compared the blood of nearly 300 individuals with type 1 diabetes to healthy controls, they found that a higher level of antibodies against gentamicin was associated with increased risk of progression to type 1 diabetes. G418 and sisomicin, analogs of gentamicin, also showed a similar association.

Their study analyzed samples from the Diabetes Autoimmunity Study in the Young (DAISY) and Phenome and Genome of Diabetic Autoantibody (PAGODA). The databases studied did not state whether study participants had been given gentamicin. However, anywhere between 5-10% of newborns receive the broad-spectrum antibiotic to treat potentially lethal sepsis.

They report in the journal Nature Communications that a similar percentage, 5.3% of the participants, had high levels of these antibodies and a high percentage of this group later developed type 1 diabetes.

To compound the scenario, it's known that premature babies are considered at higher risk for both sepsis and type 1 diabetes. The current standard of care for newborns with sepsis is giving gentamicin, per World Health Organization guidelines.

These infections are common, and the babies need the antibiotic because their own immune systems are not well developed at that juncture, and the drug may be a lifesaving therapy.

It's not uncommon for antibiotics to prompt production of antibodies because the body views them as foreign. In this study, scientists looked at antibodies to glycans, which are found on the surface our cells as well as the cells of microorganisms like bacteria and are known to be a ready target for this immune response.

Gentamicin and other similar antibiotics are a class of compounds called aminoglycosides, which are commonly used to treat serious infections, and are also broadly classified as glycans because of their sugar content.

When the  scientists did "profiling" of all the antibodies, they clustered the glycans two ways. The first was by glycans with similar function and secondly, by antibody levels in patients. They also found an association between the multitasking FUT2 gene and the antibodies against both gentamicin and the islet cells of the pancreas. The  data reveals that they are compounding the risks.

Paul M. H. Tran, Fran Dong, Eileen Kim, Katherine P. Richardson, Lynn K. H. Tran, Kathleen Waugh, Diane Hopkins, Richard D. Cummings, Peng George Wang, Marian J. Rewers, Jin-Xiong She, Sharad Purohit. Use of a glycomics array to establish the anti-carbohydrate antibody repertoire in type 1 diabetes. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34341-2

Experimental cancer therapy shows success in more than 70% of patients in global clinical trials

A new therapy that makes the immune system kill bone marrow cancer cells was successful in as many as 73% of patients in two clinical trials, according to researchers . 

The therapy, known as a bispecific antibody, binds to both T cells and multiple myeloma cells and directs the T cells—white blood cells that can be enlisted to fight off diseases—to kill multiple myeloma cells. The researchers described this strategy as "bringing your army right to the enemy." The success of the off-the-shelf immunotherapy, called talquetamab, was even seen in patients whose cancer was resistant to all approved multiple myeloma therapies. It uses a different target than other approved therapies: a receptor expressed on the surface of cancer cells known as GPRC5D. Talquetamab was tested in phase 1 and phase 2 trials. The phase 1 trial, which was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, established two recommended doses that were tested in the Phase 2 trial. The results of the Phase 2 trial were reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting on Saturday, December 10. The study participants had all been previously treated with at least three different therapies without achieving lasting remission, suggesting talquetamab could offer new hope for patients with hard-to-treat multiple myeloma. This means that almost three-quarters of these patients are looking at a new lease on life.

The efficacy and safety findings in the phase 1 study were validated in the phase 2 trial presented at ASH. The overall response rate in these two groups was about 73%.

Ajai Chari et al, New England Journal of Medicine (2022).

Conference: www.hematology.org/meetings/annual-meeting

Subcutaneous fat emerges as a protector of females' brains

Females' propensity to deposit more fat in places like their hips, buttocks and the backs of their arms, so-called subcutaneous fat, is protective against brain inflammation, which can result in problems like dementia and stroke, at least until menopause, scientists report.

Males of essentially any age have a greater propensity to deposit fat around the major organs in their abdominal cavity, called visceral adiposity, which is known to be far more inflammatory. And, before females reach menopause, males are considered at much higher risk for inflammation-related problems from heart-attack to stroke.

When people think about protection in women, their first thought is estrogen. But sceintists need to get beyond the kind of simplistic idea that every sex difference involves hormone differences and hormone exposure. We need to really think more deeply about the underlying mechanisms for sex differences so that we can treat them and acknowledge the role that sex plays in different clinical outcomes. Diet and genetics are other likely factors that explain the differences broadly assigned to estrogen.

To learn more about how the brain becomes inflamed, they looked at increases in the amount and location of fat tissue as well as levels of sex hormones and brain inflammation in male and female mice at different time intervals as they grew fatter on a high-fat diet. Since, much like with people, obese female mice tend to have more subcutaneous fat and less visceral fat than male mice, they reasoned that the distinctive fat patterns might be a key reason for the protection from inflammation the females enjoy before menopause.

They found again the distinctive patterns of fat distribution in males and females in response to a high-fat diet. They found no indicators of brain inflammation or insulin resistance, which also increase inflammation and can lead to diabetes, until after the female mice reached menopause. At about 48 weeks, menstruation stops and fat positioning on the females starts to shift somewhat, to become more like males.

They then compared the impact of the high-fat diet, which is known to increase inflammation body wide, in mice of both sexes following surgery, similar to liposuction, to remove subcutaneous fat. They did nothing to directly interfere with normal estrogen levels, like removing the ovaries.

The subcutaneous fat loss increased brain inflammation in females without moving the dial on levels of their estrogen and other sex hormones.

Bottom line: The females' brain inflammation looked much more like the males', including increased levels of classic inflammation promoters like the signaling proteins IL-1β and TNF alpha in the brain, researchers report.

We can't just say obesity. We have to start talking about where the fat is. That is the critical element here.

Alexis M. Stranahan et al, Sex Differences in Adipose Tissue Distribution Determine Susceptibility to Neuroinflammation in Mice With Dietary Obesity, Diabetes (2022). DOI: 10.2337/db22-0192

Fusion energy breakthrough

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, according to one government official and one scientist familiar with the research.

Proponents of fusion hope that it could one day produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy, displacing fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. Producing energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away. But researchers said it was a significant step nonetheless.

Net energy gain has been an elusive goal because fusion happens at such high temperatures and pressures that it is incredibly difficult to control.

Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn't create radioactive waste.

The net energy gain achievement applied to the fusion reaction itself, not the total amount of power it took to operate the lasers and run the project. For fusion to be viable, it will need to produce significantly more power and for longer.

It is incredibly difficult to control the physics of stars. It has been challenging to reach this point because the fuel has to be hotter than the center of the sun. The fuel does not want to stay hot—it wants to leak out and get cold. Containing it is an incredible challenge.

It takes enormous resources and effort to advance fusion research. One approach turns hydrogen into plasma, an electrically charged gas, which is then controlled by humongous magnets. This method is being explored in France in a collaboration among 35 countries called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor as well as by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a private company.

Last year the teams working on those projects in two continents announced significant advancements in the vital magnets needed for their work.

Source: The Associated Press

'Breakthrough' as fusion energy generates excess energy for first time

Scientists have hailed a "true breakthrough" as a fusion reaction has successfully generated more energy than was used to create it.

Producing 'green' energy from living plant 'bio-solar cells'

Though plants can serve as a source of food, oxygen and décor, they're not often considered to be a good source of electricity. But by collecting electrons naturally transported within plant cells, scientists can generate electricity as part of a "green," biological solar cell.

Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have, for the first time, used a succulent plant to create a living "bio-solar cell" that runs on photosynthesis.

In all living cells, from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals, electrons are shuttled around as part of natural, biochemical processes. But if electrodes are present, the cells can actually generate electricity that can be used externally. Previous researchers have created fuel cells in this way with bacteria, but the microbes had to be constantly fed. Instead, scientists have turned to photosynthesis to generate current.

During this process, light drives a flow of electrons from water that ultimately results in the generation of oxygen and sugar. This means that living photosynthetic cells are constantly producing a flow of electrons that can be pulled away as a "photocurrent" and used to power an external circuit, just like a solar cell.

The researchers created a living solar cell using the succulent Corpuscularia lehmannii, also called the "ice plant." They inserted an iron anode and platinum cathode into one of the plant's leaves and found that its voltage was 0.28V. When connected into a circuit, it produced up to 20 µA/cm2 of photocurrent density, when exposed to light and could continue producing current for over a day. Though these numbers are less than that of a traditional alkaline battery, they are representative of just a single leaf. Previous studies on similar organic devices suggest that connecting multiple leaves in series could increase the voltage.

The team specifically designed the living solar cell so that protons within the internal leaf solution could be combined to form hydrogen gas at the cathode, and this hydrogen could be collected and used in other applications. The researchers say that their method could enable the development of future sustainable, multifunctional green energy technologies.

Yaniv Shlosberg et al, Self-Enclosed Bio-Photoelectrochemical Cell in Succulent Plants, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c15123