New insect-borne virus that might cause severe symptoms in human beings found
Scientists have described a previously unknown insect-borne virus, following the death of a man in the Kansas county of Bourbon in the US in mid-2014.

According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the otherwise healthy, 50-year-old man was working outside on his property in mid-2014, when he sustained multiple tick bites, which led to an array of symptoms including fever, fatigue, rash, headaches, nausea and vomiting around two days after. After he was hospitalised, his white blood cell count dipped, his lungs and kidney started failing, and by day 11, suffered a heart attack, and died.
Scientists were able to isolate a new virus from a blood sample collected from the patient nine days after he fell ill, and attributed it to the Thogotovirus genus in the virus family Orthomyxoviridae. This family contains six genera - Influenza virus A, Influenza virus B, Influenza virus C, Isavirus, Thogotovirus and Quaranjavirus.

The researchers say there’s a marked difference between the symptoms suffered by this man, and other known Thogotoviruses. Thogotoviruses usually cause diseases such as meningitis or encephalitis, where the lining of the brain becomes severely inflamed. But they've never seen these viruses destroy white blood cell counts like the Bourbon virus did to this man.

The team discusses this in the current edition of the CDC journal, Emerging infectious diseases.
Novel Thogotovirus Species Associated with Febrile Illness and Death, United States, 2014
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/5/15-0150_article

Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to detect in its early stages, and is often diagnosed only after it begins deteriorating someone’s memory and thinking abilities.

Researchers around the world have been looking at ways to improve the way Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed. While lots of research is focused on the brain, there could also be clues in your bloodstream as to how the disease manifests – possibly in the form of trace metals.
A team of researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Faculty of Science in Australia have taken the approach of scouring the blood for possible early warning signs, and are now closing in on a disease indicator for Alzheimer’s. Their suspected culprit: iron.

Specifically, the team is studying a protein called transferrin, which helps shuttle iron around the body. Iron binds to the transferrin proteins in your blood. When these proteins encounter corresponding transferrin receptors on the surfaces of cells, the iron is then transferred to those cells.

If transferrin fails to do its job, so to speak, iron that was meant to be distributed throughout the body might end up accumulating in the brain. According to the UTS:Science press release, this accumulation “contributes to the build-up of ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’. Plaques impede the transmission of signals among brain cells and tangles kill them.”
Overall, people with Alzheimer's had lower levels of iron in their blood compared to the healthy volunteers, according to teh new research done in Australia.
Decreased Plasma Iron in Alzheimer’s Disease Is Due to Transferrin Desaturation
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cn5003557

‘Science Cities’ to be set up in six zones across India
Plans are afoot to set up ‘Science Cities’ in five to six zones across the country in a hub-and-spoke method as part of efforts to have science and technology footprint in every State, according to Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y.S. Chowdary.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he said each ‘Science City’ would cater to scientific institutions/ labs located in different States in that particular zone. The ‘Science City’ would have the required infrastructure and other facilities, including a convention centre, research laboratories and hotels.

--

A new study has identified a crucial protein that keeps the heart beating on time, which could eventually help in finding potential treatment for deadly heart problems.

W. Jonathan Lederer, MD, PhD, professor of physiology at the UM SOM, as well as director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering and Technology, and David Warshaw, PhD, professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at University of Vermont (UVM) and the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont, describe how myosin-binding protein C ("C protein") allows the muscle fibers in the heart to work in perfect synchrony.

C protein sensitizes certain parts of the sarcomere to calcium. As a result, the middle of the sarcomere contracts just as much as the ends, despite having much less calcium. In other words, C protein enables the sarcomeres to contract synchronously.

It appears to play a large part in many forms of heart disease. In the most severe cases, defects in C-protein lead to extremely serious arrhythmias, which cause sudden death when the heart loses the ability to pump blood. In the U.S., arrhythmias contribute to about 300,000 deaths a year, according to the American Heart Association. (Not all arrhythmias are fatal; some can be controlled with medicines and electrical stimulation.)

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

According to a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the best length for eyelashes is one-third the width of their eye. Anything shorter or longer increases airflow around the eye and leads to more dust hitting the surface.
Eyelashes form a barrier to control airflow and the rate of evaporation on the surface of the cornea," according to the lead author Guillermo Amador, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. "When eyelashes are shorter than the one-third ratio, they have only a slight effect on the flow. Their effect is more pronounced as they lengthen up until one-third. After that, they start funneling air and dust particles into the eye."
"As short lashes grew longer, they reduced air flow, creating a layer of slow-moving air above the cornea," explained researcher David Hu. "This kept the eye moist for a longer time and kept particles away. The majority of air essentially hit the eyelashes and rolled away from the eye."

However, longer lashes extended further into the airflow and created a cylinder, leading to faster evaporation.

"This is why long, elegant, fake eyelashes aren't ideal". They are not good for the health of your eyes.
Eyelashes divert airflow to protect the eye
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/105/20141294

Reversing Lupus
Immune cells in mice with lupus symptoms have overactive metabolisms, so scientists inhibited two metabolic pathways and succeeded in reversing lupus symptoms in mice
In a patient with the autoimmune disease lupus, immune cells attack the body’s own tissues as if they were an invading pathogen. This can lead to damage to the skin, joints, kidneys, and even the brain.

Now a team of immunologists reports that some of these errant immune cells have an overactive metabolism, and that inhibiting two key metabolic pathways can reverse lupus symptoms in mice (Sci. Transl. Med. 2015,
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/274/274ra18

Human-specific gene ARHGAP11B promotes basal progenitor amplification and neocortex expansion
A single gene may have paved the way for the rise of human intelligence by dramatically increasing the number of brain cells found in a key brain region.
This gene seems to be uniquely human: It is found in modern-day humans, Neanderthals and another branch of extinct humans called Denisovans, but not in chimpanzees.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/02/25/science.aaa1975

What is the 'fire-ball' that was seen in the Kerala sky recently?

A day after it blazed across the sky creating a shock wave, the district administration attributed the fireball to a meteorite that entered the earth’s atmosphere.

“Samples have been collected from two sites–one each in Mazhuvannur and Karumaloor villages from where reports of objects falling out of the sky emerged. Preliminary assessments point to the possibility of a meteorite activity,” according to them.

Further scientific examination was required to ascertain if samples collected contained any extra terrestrial matter.  

Meanwhile, scientific experts also pointed to the likelihood of a space debris re-entry given the slow pace of the object.

“A similar group of slow moving fireballs were reported in the US during the two days from February 23. Further, the reports suggest the object was moving across the sky very slowly, which again raises the possibility of a space debris re-entry,” pointed out Prof. K. Indulekha, School of Pure and Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University and a contributor to the SKA India consortium at the TIFR-National Centre of Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune.

Chronic fatigue is a biological illness
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has now been confirmed to be a biological illness. These immune signatures represent the first robust physical evidence that CFS is not a psychological disorder and the first proof that it has distinct stages.

Doctors have for long known the symptoms of CFS - constant exhaustion, mental fogginess, sleep disorders, muscle/joint pain, impaired memory, inability to concentrate and depression. Lack of physical determinants has caused the debilitating illness to go undiagnosed in most patients across the world.

Scientists say that they have discovered distinct immune changes in patients diagnosed with CFS, known medically as myalgic ence8phalomyelitis, in which symptoms range from extreme fatigue and difficulty concentrating to headaches and muscle pain.Researchers at the Centre for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health used immunoassay testing methods to determine the levels of 51 immune biomarkers in blood plasma samples collected through two multicenter studies that represented a total of 298 CFS patients and 348 healthy controls.They found specific patterns in patients who had the disease three years or less that were not present in controls or in patients who had the disease for more than three years. Short duration patients had increased amounts of many different types of immune molecules called cytokines. The association was unusually strong with a cytokine called interferon gamma that has been linked to the fatigue that follows many viral infections. Cytokine levels were not explained by symptom severity.

"We now have evidence confirming what millions of people with this disease already know that CFS isn't psychological," states lead author Mady Hornig, director of translational research at the Centre.

"Our results should accelerate the process of establishing the diagnosis after individuals first fall ill as well as discovery of new treatment strategies focusing on these early blood markers".

There are already human monoclonal antibodies on the market that can dampen levels of a cytokine called interleukin-17A that is among those the study shows were elevated in early-stage patients.Before any drugs can be tested in a clinical trial, Dr Hornig and colleagues hope to replicate the current study that follows patients for a year to see how cytokine levels, including interleukin-17A, differ within individual patients over time, depending on how long they have had the disease.

New in preservation science:
Using bio-polymers like carbohydrates (sodium alginate, chitosan, starch, xanthan gum etc) and proteins (soy protein, gelatin etc) to increase shelf life of these fruits and vegetables by 40% is latest news.
You may not require refrigerating costly fruits and vegetables. A mango can stay fresh more than 10 days while a jamun's shelf life has got almost doubled.

In a breakthrough in post-harvest crop preservation, researchers at Vallabh Vidyanagar-based Sardar Patel University (SPU) have developed an emulsion that provides an eco-friendly 'shield' to perishable fruits and vegetables. Generally, fruits, mostly apples in supermarkets, have a eco-friendly wax coating on them that keeps them fresh. This coating technology reduces post-harvest losses.
By using bio-polymers, SPU's team has successfully increased shelf life of fruits like banana, mango, papaya, strawberry, grapes, jamun, sapota, carambola, phalsa, guava, custard apple, pear and plum, apart from vegetables like tomato, capsicum and broccoli.

Emulsifiers in Food Linked to Obesity in Mice
The common food additives altered mice microbiomes to encourage gut inflammation and overeating.
Inside our guts is a diverse ecosystem of bacteria: the microbiome. But the makeup of the community can depend on what we eat. Emulsifiers are food additives that extend the shelf life of processed foods. And now research with mice finds that consuming emulsifiers may throw off the microbiome’s delicate balance and thereby contribute to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14232...
Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome

The ‘Second Moon’ You Didn’t Know Earth Had
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/03/02/earth-second-moon...
http://www.firstpost.com/living/earths-mysterious-second-moon-nobod...

For the first time, an international research team, including a tropical forest ecologist from the University of Exeter, has provided direct evidence of the rate at which individual trees in the Amazon Basin ‘inhale’ carbon from the atmosphere during a severe drought.

The team measured the growth and photosynthesis rates of trees at 13 rainforest plots across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, comparing plots that were affected by the strong drought of 2010 with unaffected plots. They found that while growth rates of the trees in drought-affected plots were unchanged, the rate of photosynthesis – by which trees convert carbon into energy to fuel their activities – slowed down by around 10 percent over six months.

The paper, published in the journal Nature, concludes that trees may be channelling their more limited energy reserves into growth rather than maintaining their own health. Computer simulations of the biosphere have predicted such responses to drought, but these are the first direct observations of this effect across tropical forests.
"Drought impact on forest carbon dynamics and fluxes in Amazonia"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7541/full/nature14213.html

Drug-induced acute liver failure is uncommon, and over-the-counter medications and dietary and herbal supplements -- not prescription drugs -- are its most common causes, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are published in the current issue of Gastroenterology.

One of the most feared complications of drugs and medications is acute liver failure, traditionally associated with a greater than 50 percent chance of dying without a liver transplant. Drug-induced liver injury, known as hepatotoxicity, is the second most common reason drugs are withdrawn from the market, behind cardiac toxicity, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Penn authors, however, say this is based solely on abnormal liver tests, not actual liver damage. The real risk of acute liver failure that the researchers calculated was 1.61 per million people per year.
Despite hepatotoxicity being the second most common cause of drug withdrawal from the market, acute liver failure, the most severe form of liver injury, from prescription drugs was rare, the team found. They discovered that 75 percent of acute liver failure cases resulting from prescribed medication use were derived from over-the-counter products such as acetaminophen or herbal supplements. “Prescription medications are an exceedingly rare cause of acute liver failure.”
Source: University of Pennslyvania

Human chimerism occurs when two eggs are released by the mother and are fertilised by two sperm from the father. Normally, this would result in fraternal, non-identical twins, but on rare occasions, these eggs can overlap and fuse to develop into one person who contains two different sets of DNA.

This can cause a person to have two different blood types simultaneously, or to develop both male and female genitals. A DNA sample taken from a chimeric person’s kidney could be completely different from a sample taken from her cervical tissue - an issue that has caused much grief in women trying to prove that they are in fact their children’s biological mothers.

According to researchers at Stanford University in the US, in some cases, chimeric people will have skin made up of two different types of skin cells, encoded by two different sets of DNA. This DNA is responsible for skin tone, which is how patterns can occur. "Often the skin colour of the two types is indistinguishable, or subtle enough that it can only show up under black light”. "Sometimes, however, the two different sets of DNA code for skin types that are dramatically different, which leaves people with literal stripes on their skin in the pattern of Blaschko's lines."

Blood group O protects against malaria- here is how:

It has long been known that people with blood type O are protected from dying of severe malaria. In a study published in Nature Medicine, a team of Scandinavian scientists explains the mechanisms behind the protection that blood type O provides, and suggest that the selective pressure imposed by malaria may contribute to the variable global distribution of ABO blood groups in the human population.

It has long been known that people with blood type O are protected against severe malaria, while those with other types, such as A, often fall into a coma and die. Unpacking the mechanisms behind this has been one of the main goals of malaria research.

A team of scientists led from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now identified a new and important piece of the puzzle by describing the key part played by the RIFIN protein. Using data from different kinds of experiment on cell cultures and animals, they show how the Plasmodium falciparum parasite secretes RIFIN, and how the protein makes its way to the surface of the blood cell, where it acts like glue. The team also demonstrates how it bonds strongly with the surface of type A blood cells, but only weakly to type O.

Principal investigator Mats Wahlgren, a Professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology, describes the finding as “conceptually simple”. However, since RIFIN is found in many different variants, it has taken the research team a lot of time to isolate exactly which variant is responsible for this mechanism.

The mechanism behind the protection that blood group O provides against severe malaria, which can, in turn, explain why the blood type is so common in the areas where malaria is common. In Nigeria, for instance, more than half of the population belongs to blood group O, which protects against malaria.”

Evolution - on the move!

RIFINs are adhesins implicated in severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3812.html

My mother had severe cases of Malaria - not once but 5 times in 2 years some 15 years back! She had a temperature of 104 -107 degrees. We were very worried. And the malaria she got was caused by drug resistant Plasmodium falciparum.

But luckily she survived, now I know the reason. She is O+ve!

Irisin – a myth rather than an exercise-inducible myokine

The myth of Irisin - the exercise hormone:

The discovery of the "exercise hormone" irisin three years ago and more than 170 related papers about it since have been called into question by recent research showing they were based on flawed testing kits.

Previous studies suggested that the hormone irisin -- named for the Greek messenger goddess Iris -- travels from muscle to fat tissue after exercise to tell fat cells to start burning energy instead of storing it. The finding ignited hope and press coverage that irisin could hold the key to fighting diabetes and obesity, perhaps one day taking the form of a pill that could melt away the pounds without the hassle of a workout.

But new research from an international team of scientists has found that the antibodies used to measure levels of irisin in blood were poorly vetted and nonspecific. These researchers argue that the irisin levels reported by commercial kits were actually due to unknown blood proteins, misconstruing the role of the hormone in human metabolism.

The study, appearing March 9 in the journal Scientific Reports, directly tested the antibodies used in previous analyses and showed that they cross-reacted with proteins other than irisin, yielding a false positive result. Furthermore, none of the proteins detected by these test kits in any human or animal blood samples were the correct size to be irisin.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150309/srep08889/full/srep08889.html

"From the start, the study of irisin has been complicated by unvalidated reagents and contradictory data that have raised flags about the existence of irisin and its role in humans and other species," said Harold P. Erickson, Ph.D., an author of the study and professor of cell biology and biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine. "We provide compelling evidence that the signals reported by previous studies were due to non-specific blood proteins, not irisin. Hopefully, our findings will finally convince other researchers to stop chasing a myth."

Research reported today by Tufts University biologists shows for the first time that bioelectrical signals among cells control and instruct embryonic brain development and manipulating these signals can repair genetic defects and induce development of healthy brain tissue in locations where it would not ordinarily grow.

The research reveals that bioelectric signaling regulates the activity of two cell reprogramming factors (proteins that can turn adult cells into stem cells), which for the first time were analyzed in Xenopus laevis embryos, which share many evolutionary traits with humans. Results appear in the March 11, 2015, edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/10/4366.short

Stem cells lurking in tumors can resist treatment​​​​
Till now we have heard about the good side of stem cells. Now time for some not-so-good news about these angels:
Scientists are eager to make use of stem cells’ extraordinary power to transform into nearly any kind of cell, but that ability also is cause for concern in cancer treatment. Malignant tumors contain stem cells, prompting worries among medical experts that the cells’ transformative powers help cancers escape treatment.
New research proves that the threat posed by cancer stem cells is more prevalent than previously thought. Until now, stem cells had been identified only in aggressive, fast-growing tumors. But a mouse study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that slow-growing tumors also have treatment-resistant stem cells. The low-grade brain cancer stem cells identified by the scientists also were less sensitive to anticancer drugs. By comparing healthy stem cells with stem cells from these brain tumors, the researchers discovered the reasons behind treatment resistance, pointing to new therapeutic strategies.
The research results appear online March 12 in Cell Reports.
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2815%2900199-0...

According to science, practice doesn't make you perfect!

So forget what you've been told, 10,000 hours of practice isn't guaranteed to turn you into an expert. Here is why:

There's a long-standing myth that, in order to master a skill, all it takes is roughly 10,000 hours of practice. Scientists have debunked the myth once and for all, and shown that, while some people can become an expert with 10,000 hours of practice - or less - many can't, and there's a whole lot more involved than just hard work. In fact, an international team of psychologists found that deliberate practice can only explain around one-third of the difference in skill levels in chess players and musicians.

This leaves "the majority of the reliable variance unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors". Those factors, we're assuming, are natural talent and genetic ability.

-Journal "Intelligence"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000087

The researchers came to this conclusion after analysing data taken across six previous studies of chess competitions (1,082 subjects in total) and eight studies of musicians (628 subjects), and looking for any kind of correlation between practice and success. What they found was that, well, there kinda wasn't one, and there were huge variations in how much of a role practice seemed to have played in success.

One chess player, for example, had taken 26 years to reach a level that another reached in a mere two years. Clearly, there's more at work than just the sheer volume of hours practiced, the study (and a similar one by the same authors published in May [2014]) argues.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000421

"The evidence is quite clear," wrote lead author David Hambrick from Michigan State University in the US in a press release in 2013, "that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice."

How wounds are healed....
In recent years, researchers have gained a better understanding of the molecular machinery of cell migration, but not what directs it to happen in the first place. What, exactly, is orchestrating this system common to all living organisms?

The answer, it turns out, involves delicate interactions between biomechanical stress, or force, which living cells exert on one another, and biochemical signaling.
The University of Arizona researchers discovered that when mechanical force disappears -- for example at a wound site where cells have been destroyed, leaving empty, cell-free space -- a protein molecule, known as DII4, coordinates nearby cells to migrate to a wound site and collectively cover it with new tissue. What's more, they found, this process causes identical cells to specialize into leader and follower cells. Researchers had previously assumed leader cells formed randomly.
The team observed that when cells collectively migrate toward a wound, leader cells expressing a form of messenger RNA, or mRNA, genetic code specific to the DII4 protein emerge at the front of the pack, or migrating tip. The leader cells, in turn, send signals to follower cells, which do not express the genetic messenger. This elaborate autoregulatory system remains activated until new tissue has covered a wound.

The same migration processes for wound healing and tissue development also apply to cancer spreading, the researchers noted. The combination of mechanical force and genetic signaling stimulates cancer cells to collectively migrate and invade healthy tissue.
With this new knowledge, researchers can re-create, at the cellular and molecular levels, the chain of events that brings about the formation of human tissue. Bioengineers now have the information they need to direct normal cells to heal damaged tissue, or prevent cancer cells from invading healthy tissue.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150313/ncomms7556/full/ncomms7556...

A small success for scientists in antibiotic search: European biologists have discovered a bacteria-killing compound in common mushrooms that grow in horse dung. Unusually for an antibiotic, copsin is a protein; but laboratory trials showed it to have the same effect on bacteria as traditional antibiotics.

Chemists around the world are involved in a race against time to find a solution to the growing problem of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. It's a major threat to the health of the global population, which had long assumed that antibiotics would always be available to cure bacterial illness.
copsin in the common inky cap mushroom Coprinopsis cinerea that grows on manure, while researching how the fungus and various bacteria affected each other's growth. According to lead researcher, post-doc Andreas Essig, horse manure's rich substrate is key.

"Horse dung is a very rich substrate that harbours a diversity of micro-organisms, including fungi and bacteria," said Essig. "Now these micro-organisms are in a constant competition for nutrients and space and it's therefore very likely to find potent antibiotics in such an environment, which are used by the different organisms to inhibit the growth of the competitors."
"Horse dung is a very rich substrate that harbours a diversity of micro-organisms, including fungi and bacteria," said Essig. "Now these micro-organisms are in a constant competition for nutrients and space and it's therefore very likely to find potent antibiotics in such an environment, which are used by the different organisms to inhibit the growth of the competitors."
Essig and his colleagues from ETH Zurich and the University of Bonn cultivated the fungus in a laboratory, along with several different types of bacteria, and found that C. cinerea killed certain bacteria. Further research demonstrated that the copsin produced by the mushroom was responsible for this antibiotic effect.

"Now copsin kills bacteria by binding to an essential cell wall building block".
When you disrupt the cell wall synthesis bacteria usually dies rapidly. The binding pattern of copsin on this building block is very unique and therefore copsin is active against bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics."
Copsin is a protein, whereas traditional antibiotics are often non-protein organic compounds. It belongs to the group of defensins, a class of small proteins produced by numerous to counter disease-causing micro-organisms. In fact, the human body produces defensins in the skin and mucous membranes to protect itself against infections.

http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2014/10/23/jbc.M114.599878

BIOENGINEERING
A synthetic fibrin cross-linking polymer for modulating clot properties and inducing hemostasis

New gel can stop wounds from bleeding

And could find applications on the battlefield, or in the toolkits of emergency response teams.
Traumatic injuries resulting from gunshot wounds or traffic accidents, can often be fatal if the injured person doesn’t receive prompt medical care.

Now, an injectable polymer material that encourages faster, more durable blood clotting at wound sites, could stop bleeding following these life-threatening injuries.
The material, known as PolySTAT, was developed by engineers at the University of Washington in the US, and mimics a natural protein in our body that helps strengthen blood clots.

The team says that following injection, their wound healing polymer “circulates innocuously in the blood, identifies sites of vascular injury, and promotes clot formation to stop bleeding”.

So far they have only tested their polymer on rats, but report in the press release that 100 percent of the animals injected survived “a typically-lethal injury to the femoral artery”.
The results have been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/277/277ra29

Origins of life: A new study has shown you can create the most simple building blocks of life using three things that would have been present in abundance on early Earth - hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen sulphide (H2S), and ultraviolet (UV) light.
In order for life to have gotten started, there must have been a genetic molecule - something like DNA or RNA - capable of passing along blueprints for making proteins, the workhorse molecules of life. But modern cells can’t copy DNA and RNA without the help of proteins themselves.

To make matters more vexing, none of these molecules can do their jobs without fatty lipids, which provide the membranes that cells need to hold their contents inside. And in yet another chicken-and-egg complication, protein-based enzymes (encoded by genetic molecules) are needed to synthesise lipids.
A team led by chemist John Sutherland from the University of Cambridge in the UK has made a discovery that just might resolve this problem. Six years ago, they figured out that simple and very common carbon-rich molecules, acetylene and formaldehyde, can be put through a series of reactions to produce some of the precursors for RNA. So perhaps billions of reactions between acetylene and formaldehyde over billions of years could have randomly given rise to the first RNA molecules. But, says Service, this doesn’t answer the question of where the acetylene and formaldehyde came from.
Sutherland and his team investigated, and came up with even simpler ingredients for RNA, and these ones we know were abundant when Earth was only newly formed - hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulphide, and ultraviolet light. Together, these three ingredients can not only produce ribonucleotides, which are the basic building blocks for RNA, but more importantly, they can also produce amino acids and lipids at the same time, which helps solve the conundrum outlined by Service above. The lipids are there to provide the materials for the cell membranes, and the amino acids are needed to form the proteins that help replace and pass on DNA and RNA. So where did these chemicals come from? Meteorites could have converted hydrogen cyanide from some of the simplest molecules you can get - carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen - right near early Earth. "Evidence suggests that life started during, or shortly after the abatement of, the Late Heavy Bombardment, and processes associated with meteorite impact have been implicated in the generation of hydrogen cyanide and phosphate on the Hadean [early] Earth,” the team writes.

And hydrogen sulphide and ultraviolet light were already in the area, so it wouldn’t have taken much for the various molecules to eventually make contact with each other.
http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.2202.html

Humans may harbor more than 100 genes from other organisms
You’re not completely human, at least when it comes to the genetic material inside your cells. You—and everyone else—may harbor as many as 145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which provides some of the broadest evidence yet that, throughout evolutionary history, genes from other branches of life have become part of animal cells.
Scientists knew that horizontal gene transfer—the movement of genetic information between organisms other than parent-to-offspring inheritance—is commonplace in bacteria and simple eukaryotes. The process lets the organisms quickly share an antibiotic-resistance set of genes to adapt to an antibiotic, for instance. But whether genes have been horizontally transferred into higher organisms—like primates—has been disputed. Like in bacteria, it’s been proposed that animal cells could integrate foreign genetic material that’s introduced as small fragments of DNA or carried into cells by viruses. But proving that a bit of DNA in the human genome originally came from another organism is tricky.
A group of researchers now pinpointed hundreds of genes that appeared to have been transferred from bacteria, archaea, fungi, other microorganisms, and plants to animals, they report online today in Genome Biology. In the case of humans, they found 145 genes that seemed to have jumped from simpler organisms, including 17 that had been reported in the past as possible horizontal gene transfers.
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/03/humans-may-harbor-more-1...

http://genomebiology.com/2015/16/1/50

Expression of multiple horizontally acquired genes is a hallmark of both vertebrate and invertebrate genomes

Folic acid supplementation cuts risk of stroke in hypertensive adults
Use of folic acid therapy results in significant reduction of risk of stroke among adults with hypertension (high blood pressure). This is the main finding of a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study from the China Stroke Primary Prevention Trial (CSPPT), included data on 20,702 adults in China and has been published to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session.
The results of the study showed that for the primary outcome, which was first stroke, the folic acid plus enalapril supplement resulted in significant reduction in risk compared to enalapril alone (2.7% of participants in the enalapril–folic acid group vs 3.4% in the enalapril alone group). Relative risk of first ischemic stroke (2.2% with enalapril–folic acid vs 2.8% with enalapril alone) and composite cardiovascular events consisting of cardiovascular death, mycocardial infarction and stroke (3.1% with enalapril–folic acid vs 3.9% with enalapril alone) was also significantly reduced. The beneficial effect of folic acid supplementation was most pronounced in participants with lower baseline folate levels. With respect to the MTHFR genotype and baseline folate level, among individuals with CC or CT genotypes, both highest risk of stroke and greatest benefit of folic acid therapy were in participants with the lowest baseline folate levels. For those with the TT genotype, the results indicated that the biological level of folate insufficiency may necessitate higher dosage of folic acid supplementation.
Efficacy of Folic Acid Therapy in Primary Prevention of Stroke Among Adults With Hypertension in China
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2205876

Darbha (Desmotachya bipinnata) is a tropical grass considered a sacred material in Vedic scriptures and is said to purify the offerings during such rituals.

At the time of eclipse, people place that grass in food items that could ferment and once the eclipse ends the grass is removed.

A systematic research was conducted by the SASTRA University researchers, in which cow’s curd was chosen as a food item that could ferment easily.

Five other tropical grass species, including lemon grass, Bermuda grass, and bamboo were chosen for comparison based on different levels of antibiotic properties and hydro phobicity.

Electron microscopy of different grasses revealed stunning nano-patterns and hierarchical nano or micro structures in darbha grass while they were absent in other grasses.

On studying the effect of various grasses on the microbial community of the curd, darbha grass alone was found to attract enormous number of bacteria into the hierarchical surface features.

These are the bacteria responsible for fermentation of cow’s curd.

During eclipse, the wavelength and intensity of light radiations available on the earth’s surface is altered. Especially, the blue and ultraviolet radiations, which are known for their natural disinfecting property, are not available in sufficient quantities during eclipse.

This leads to uncontrolled growth of micro-organisms in food products during eclipse and the food products are not suitable for consumption. Darbha was thus used as a natural disinfectant on specific occasions, say researchers at SASTRA University.

Further, the scientists say that darbha could be used as a natural food preservative in place of harmful chemical preservatives and the artificial surfaces mimicking the hierarchical nano patterns on the surface of darbha grass could find applications in health care where sterile conditions were required.

The latest Research advance published by eLife is a study by Syenina et al. The authors have discovered that, when a person is infected by the dengue virus for a second time, antibodies specific to the dengue virus interact with mast cells lining our blood vessels and enhance vascular leakage. The study builds upon earlier research looking into why a small percentage of infected individuals go on to suffer from dengue hemorrhagic fever. They find that the vascular leakage triggered by this hemorrhagic fever is triggered by mast cells indicating a potential new treatment target.
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e05291#sthash.LI0mDyAD.dpuf?utm_...

Look, your eyes are wired backwards: here’s why
The human eye is optimised to have good colour vision at day and high sensitivity at night. But until recently it seemed as if the cells in the retina were wired the wrong way round, with light travelling through a mass of neurons before it reaches the light-detecting rod and cone cells. New research presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society has uncovered a remarkable vision-enhancing function for this puzzling structure.
Researchers in Leipzig found that glial cells, which also span the retinal depth and connect to the cones, have an interesting attribute. These cells are essential for metabolism, but they are also denser than other cells in the retina. In the transparent retina, this higher density (and corresponding refractive index) means that glial cells can guide light, just like fibre-optic cables.
These results mean that the retina of the eye has been optimised so that the sizes and densities of glial cells match the colours to which the eye is sensitive (which is in itself an optimisation process suited to our needs). This optimisation is such that colour vision during the day is enhanced, while night-time vision suffers very little. The effect also works best when the pupils are contracted at high illumination, further adding to the clarity of our colour vision.
https://theconversation.com/look-your-eyes-are-wired-backwards-here...

Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink
Amazon rainforest losing capacity to soak up CO2
The Amazon rainforest may be approaching the limit of how much excess carbon dioxide it can capture from the atmosphere.

A global research effort, led by scientists from the University of Leeds, has revealed a one-third decline in the rainforest' growth overall, according to a paper published today in Nature.

This could have significant implications for global carbon dioxide levels, as the rainforest previously absorbed up to two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, converting it into biomass.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14283.html

Language of gene switches unchanged across the evolution
The language used in the switches that turn genes on and off has remained the same across millions of years of evolution, according to a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings, which are published in the scientific journal eLife , indicate that the differences between animals reside in the content and length of the instructions that are written using this conserved language.
Each gene has a regulatory region that contains the instructions controlling when and where the gene is expressed. These instructions are written in a language often referred to as the 'gene regulatory code'. This code is read by proteins called transcription factors that bind to specific ‘DNA words’ and either increase or decrease the expression of the associated gene.

The gene regulatory regions differ between species. However, until now, it has been unclear if the instructions in these regions are written using the same gene regulatory code, or whether transcription factors found in different animals recognise different DNA words.

In the current study, the researchers used high throughput methods to identify the DNA words recognised by more than 240 transcription factors of the fruit fly, and then developed computational tools to compare them with the DNA words of humans.
Tiny fruit flies look very different from humans, but both are descended from a common ancestor that existed over 600 million years ago. Differences between animal species are often caused by the same or similar genes being switched on and off at various times and in different tissues in each species.
In the new study, it has been observed that, in spite of more than 600 million years of evolution, almost all known DNA words found in humans and mice were recognised by fruit fly transcription factors.
The researchers also noted that both fruit flies and humans have a few transcription factors that recognise unique DNA words and confer properties that are specific to each species, such as the fruit fly wing. Likewise, transcription factors that exist only in humans operate in cell types that do not exist in fruit flies. The findings suggest that changes in transcription factor specificities contribute to the formation of new types of cells.

The study of fundamental properties of gene switches is important in medicine, as faulty gene switches have been linked to many common diseases, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e04837

'survival of the fittest' no more?
According to a new study it is the wealth that is behind the decline in number of reproducing males!
Researchers have discovered a dramatic decline in genetic diversity in male lineages four to eight thousand years ago -- likely the result of the accumulation of material wealth.

This male-specific decline occurred during the mid- to late-Neolithic period while, in contrast, female genetic diversity was on the rise.

"Instead of 'survival of the fittest' in biological sense, the accumulation of wealth and power may have increased the reproductive success of a limited number of 'socially fit' males and their sons," said lead study author Melissa Wilson Sayres from Arizona State University.

It is the survival of the richest  not the fittest!

“Having a high level of genetic diversity is beneficial to humans for several reasons”. “… When the genes of individuals in a population vary greatly, the group has a greater chance of thriving and surviving – particularly against disease.  This trend may also reduce the likelihood of passing along unfavorable genetic traits, which can weaken a species over time.”

The study was published online in the journal Genome Research.

A recent bottleneck of Y chromosome diversity coincides with a global change in culture

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/03/13/gr.186684.114#fn-1

Biodegrading of plastics is not working!
When the late Arizona paleontologist William Rathje dug up garbage from deep in landfill sites, he discovered that, even after many years of being buried underground, chicken bones still had meat on them, grass was still green, and that carrots still retained their orange color. If all that organic material had survived the landfill process, what chance is there of plastics biodegrading?
This is a big problem for the management of garbage disposal facilities, landfills, and composting sites around the world. In recent years several companies have being marketing additives which they claim will accelerate the decomposition process. A new study from Michigan State University has evaluated the claims and came to a simple and very blunt conclusion; additives to biodegrade plastics just don’t work.
These additives are supposedly able to break down polyethylene, a common constituent of plastic bags, and polyethylene terephthalate, used in the manufacturing of soda bottles. But the MSU tests found that in normal disposal situations, these additives are completely ineffective.
The three-year study concentrated on five specific additives. Three different types of biodegradation were examined: biodegradation with oxygen, such as composting, biodegradation without oxygen, such as in an anaerobic digester or a landfill, and simply burying the plastics.
According to the researchers, recycling, tighter legislation, and improved production methods are more preferred alternatives.

The results have been published in the current issue of Environmental Science and Technology.

People who have suffered serious head injuries show changes in brain structure resembling those seen in older people, according to a new study. Researchers at Imperial College London analysed brain scans from over 1,500 healthy people to develop a computer program that could predict a person's age from their brain scan. Then they used the program to estimate the "brain age" of 113 more healthy people and 99 patients who had suffered traumatic brain injuries.

The brain injury patients were estimated to be around five years older on average than their real age.

Head injuries are already known to increase the risk of age-related neurological conditions such as dementia later in life. The age prediction model may be useful as a screening tool to identify patients who are likely to develop problems and to target strategies that prevent or slow their decline.
There was also a correlation between time since injury and predicted age difference, suggesting that these changes in brain structure do not occur during the injury itself, but result from ongoing biological processes, potentially similar to those seen in normal ageing, that progress more quickly after an injury.

"Traumatic brain injury is not a static event. It can set off secondary processes, possibly related to inflammation, that can cause more damage in the brain for years afterwards, and may contribute to the development of Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia" according to the researchers.
"Prediction of brain age suggests accelerated atrophy after traumatic brain injury"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24367/abstract;jsess...

Smartphone Use Appears to Change How Brains and Thumbs Interact
Tapping a handheld device for emails and texts may lead to alterations in neurological activity
Typing text messages, scrolling web pages, and checking your email on your smartphone could be changing the way your thumbs and brain interacts, new research hints.

Dr. Arko Ghosh, of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, led the research which involved using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the cortical brain activity in 37 right-handed people, 26 of whom were touchscreen Smartphone users and 11 users of old-fashioned cellphones.
Electrical activity in the brains of smartphone users was shown to be enhanced when all three fingertips were touched, the researchers report in a paper online now in Current Biology.
According to research student Magali Chytiris, activity in the cortex of the brain associated with the thumb and index fingertips was directly proportional to the intensity of phone use, as quantified by built-in battery logs. The results suggest that repetitive movements over the touchscreen surface reshape sensory processing from the hand, with daily updates in the brain's representation of the fingertips. Cortical sensory processing in the contemporary brain is continuously shaped by personal digital technology..

Editor quits journal over pay-for-expedited peer-review offer
With a tweet yesterday, an editor of Scientific Reports, one of Nature Publishing Group’s (NPG’s) open-access journals, has resigned in a very public protest of NPG’s recent decision to allow authors to pay money to expedite peer review of their submitted papers. “My objections are that it sets up a two-tiered system and instead of the best science being published in a timely fashion it will further shift the balance to well-funded labs and groups,” Mark Maslin, a biogeographer at University College London, tells ScienceInsider. “Academic Publishing is going through a revolution and we should expect some bumps along the way. This was just one that I felt I could not accept.”
consideration and a well thought out review is much more important than its speed. I have had brilliant reviews which have considerably improved my papers and I really appreciated all the time taken.”

http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/03/editor-quit...