It's thought that IOH is caused by an opening of the blood vessels, triggered by the process of standing up. What these exercises might be doing, then, is counteracting that response, and the researchers say the two exercises could also be used in tandem.

Right now, those who experience IOH – thought to be up to 40 percent of the general population in the US – don't have any specific treatments available. Up until now, the best advice has been to try to stand up as slowly and as gradually as possible.

Although the sample size in this study was a small one and only involved women, these exercises could potentially change that situation. A little light-headedness might not seem like a huge problem, but it impacts daily life and can, in some cases, lead to fainting and a loss of consciousness.

https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(21)02524-8/fulltext

https://www.sciencealert.com/simple-muscle-exercises-can-help-reduc...

Scientists discover how galaxies can exist without dark matter

In a new Nature Astronomy study, an international team led by astrophysicists from the University of California, Irvine and Pomona College report how, when tiny galaxies collide with bigger ones, the bigger galaxies can strip the smaller galaxies of their dark matter—matter that we can't see directly, but which astrophysicists think must exist because, without its gravitational effects, they couldn't explain things like the motions of a galaxy's stars.

It's a mechanism that has the potential to explain how galaxies might be able to exist without dark matter—something once thought impossible.

The team found seven galaxies devoid of dark matter. After several collisions with neighboring galaxies 1,000-times more massive, they were stripped of most of their material, leaving behind nothing but stars and some residual dark matter.

Jorge Moreno, Galaxies lacking dark matter produced by close encounters in a cosmological simulation, Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01598-4. www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01598-4

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-galaxies-dark.html?utm_sou...

Global study finds the extent of pharmaceutical pollution in the world's rivers

A new study looking at the presence of pharmaceuticals in the world's rivers found concentrations at potentially toxic levels in more than a quarter of the locations studied.

The new study looked at 258 rivers across the globe to measure the presence of 61 pharmaceuticals, such as carbamazepine, metformin and caffeine. The researchers studied rivers in over half of the world's countries—with rivers in 36 of these countries having never previously been monitored for pharmaceuticals.

With their latest study, the researchers found that:

• pharmaceutical pollution is contaminating water on every continent
• strong correlations between the socioeconomic status of a country and higher pollution of pharmaceuticals in its rivers (with lower-middle income nations the most polluted)
• high levels of pharmaceutical pollution was most positively associated with regions of high median age as well as high local unemployment and poverty rates
• the most polluted countries and regions of the world are the ones that have been researched the least (namely sub-saharan Africa, South America and parts of southern Asia).
• the activities most associated with the highest levels of pharmaceutical pollution included rubbish dumping along river banks, inadequate wastewater infrastructure and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and the dumping of the contents of residual septic tanks into rivers.

The study revealed that a quarter of the sites contained contaminants (such as sulfamethoxazole, propranolol, ciprofloxacin and loratadine) at potentially harmful concentrations.

The researchers hope that by increasing the monitoring of pharmaceuticals in the environment, they can develop strategies to limit the effects potentially caused by the presence of pollutants.

 Pharmaceutical pollution of the world's rivers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113947119.

The data for specific rivers will be available in the supplemental information associated with the publication (via PNAS). It will also be published on the Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project website.

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-global-extent-pharmaceutical-pollutio...

Research team finds clue to possible extraterrestrial origin of peptides

Researchers have discovered a new clue in the search for the origin of life, by showing that peptides can form on dust under conditions such as those prevailing in outer space. These molecules, which are one of the basic building blocks of all life, may therefore not have originated on our planet at all, but possibly in cosmic molecular clouds.

All life as we know it consists of the same chemical building blocks. These include peptides, which perform various completely different functions in the body—transporting substances, accelerating reactions or forming stabilizing scaffolds in cells. Peptides consist of individual amino acids arranged in a specific order. The exact order determines a peptide's eventual properties.

How these versatile biomolecules came into being is one of the questions about the origin of life. Amino acids, nucleobases and various sugars found in meteoroids, for example, show that this origin could be extraterrestrial in nature. However, for a peptide to be formed from individual amino acid molecules requires very special conditions that were previously assumed to be more likely to exist on Earth.

Water plays an important role in the conventional way in which peptides are created. Quantum chemical calculations have now shown that the amino acid glycine can be formed through a chemical precursor—called an amino ketene—combining with a water molecule. Put simply: In this case, water must be added for the first reaction step, and water must be removed for the second.

With this knowledge, the researchers  has now been able to demonstrate a reaction pathway that can take place under cosmic conditions and does not require water.

In an ultra-high vacuum chamber, substrates that serve as a model for the surface of dust particles were brought together with carbon, ammonia and carbon monoxide at about one quadrillionth of normal air pressure and minus 263 degrees Celsius. Investigations showed that under these conditions, the peptide polyglycine was formed from the simple chemicals. In this experiment, the German team was also able to detect the suspected amino ketene.

Now that it is clear that not only amino acids, but also peptide chains, can be created under cosmic conditions, we may have to look not only to Earth but also more into space when researching the origin of life.

S. A. Krasnokutski, K.-J. Chuang, C. Jäger, N. Ueberschaar, Th. Henning, "A pathway to peptides in space through the condensation of atomic carbon", Nature Astronomy (2022), DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01577-9

https://researchnews.cc/news/11610/Research-team-finds-clue-to-poss...

Astronomers discovered a new type of star covered in helium burning ashes

 A team astronomers have discovered a strange new type of star covered in the by-product of helium burning. It is possible that the stars might have been formed by a rare stellar merger event. 

While normal stars have surfaces composed of hydrogen and helium, the stars discovered now have their surfaces covered with carbon and oxygen, the ashes of helium burning—an exotic composition for a star. The situation becomes more puzzling as the new stars have temperatures and radii that indicate they are still burning helium in their cores—a property typically seen in more evolved stars.

 Astronomers think the stars discovered now might have formed in a very rare kind of stellar merger event between two white dwarf stars. White dwarfs are the remnants of larger stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel, and are typically very small and dense.

Stellar mergers are known to happen between white dwarfs in close binary systems due to the shrinking of the orbit caused by the emission of gravitational waves.

Usually, white dwarf mergers do not lead to the formation of stars enriched in carbon and oxygen. But researchers think that, for binary systems formed with very specific masses, a carbon- and oxygen-rich white dwarf might be disrupted and end up on top of a helium-rich one, leading to the formation of these stars.

Yet no current stellar evolutionary models can fully explain the newly discovered stars. The team need refined models in order to assess whether these mergers can actually happen. These models could not only help the team to better understand these stars, but could also provide a deeper insight into the late evolution of binary systems and how their stars exchange mass as they evolve. Until astronomers develop more refined models for the evolution of binary stars, the origin of the helium covered stars will be up for debate.

Klaus Werner, Nicole Reindl, Stephan Geier, Max Pritzkuleit. Discovery of hot subdwarfs covered with helium-burning ash. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 2022; 511 (1): L66 DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slac005

https://researchnews.cc/news/11627/Astronomers-discover-a-new-type-...

Studying clouds can provide deeper insight into climate change

Chewing sugar-free gum reduced preterm births in a large study

The idea was inspired by the connection between poor oral health and preterm birth

Chewing a sugar-free gum daily reduced preterm births in a large study in Malawi. The oral intervention was inspired by past research linking poor oral health and preterm birth. The gum contains xylitol — a chemical that can boost oral health — in place of regular sugar.

Among women who chewed the xylitol gum, 549 out of 4,349 pregnancies, or 12.6 percent, were preterm, researchers reported February 3 at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s Annual Pregnancy Meeting. That’s a 24 percent reduction compared with the group who didn’t receive the gum. Among those women, 878 out of 5,321 pregnancies, or 16.5 percent, of the babies were born before 37 weeks.

The oral health of gum users also improved. About 4,000 of the women had an initial dental exam and a later checkup. The women who chewed the gum had less periodontal disease, a condition in which the tissue surrounding the teeth becomes infected and inflamed, compared with those who didn’t get the chewing gum.

Chewing xylitol gum appears to be a check on that shift in the oral microbial community. Previous studies have shown that chewing xylitol gum leads to fewer cavities and suggest it can reduce inflammation.

K.M. Aagaard et al. PPaX: Cluster randomized trial of xylitol chewing gum on prevention.... Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Annual Pregnancy Meeting. February 3, 2022.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/preterm-birth-chewing-gum-sugar...

Plastic, chemical pollution beyond planet's safe limit: study

The torrent of man-made chemical and plastic waste worldwide has massively exceeded limits safe for humanity or the planet, and production caps are urgently needed, scientists have concluded for the first time.

There are an estimated 350,000 different manufactured chemicals on the market and large volumes of them end up in the environment.

The impacts that we're starting to see today are large enough to be impacting crucial functions of planet Earth and its systems.

Chemicals and plastics are affecting biodiversity, piling additional stress on already stressed ecosystems.

Pesticides kill living organisms indiscriminately and plastics are ingested by living things.

Some chemicals are interfering with hormone systems, disrupting growth, metabolism and reproduction in wildlife.

While greater efforts are needed to prevent these substances being released into the environment, scientists are now pushing for more drastic solutions, such as production caps.

Recycling has so far yielded only mediocre results.

Less than 10 percent of the world's plastic is currently recycled, even as production has doubled to 367 million tonnes since 2000.

Today, the total weight of plastic on Earth is now four times the biomass of all living animals, according to recent studies.

"What we're trying to say is that maybe we have to say, 'Enough is enough'. Maybe we can't tolerate more," the  researchers said. Maybe we have to put a cap on production. Maybe we need to say, 'We can't produce more than this'.

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-plastic-chemical-pollution-planet-saf...

Cord blood clears woman of HIV

A woman in the United States has become the third person to be curedof HIV. She was treated with a new method: a transplant with umbilical-cord blood. The woman stopped antiretroviral therapy 37 months after the transplant and, more than 14 months later, still shows no signs of HIV in blood tests. Two other people have been cleared of HIV after a cancer-treating bone-marrow transplant. Transplanting cord blood, instead of bone marrow, allowed researchers to use a partially matched donor for the woman, who is mixed race, while giving her immune system a boost with blood from a close relative. This fresh approach could offer the promise of treatment to more HIV-positive people, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

Microbes in gut might affect personality

There are thousands of types of bacteria living in the gut, comprising what is known as the gut microbiome. The number of each type of bacteria is determined by many factors, such as health status, dietary habits and even physical activity levels. Gut metabolomes are small molecules, such as amino acids, enzymes and co-factors, that are produced by gut microbiota.

The gut microbiome is known to stay stable through most of one's adult life, unless there is a gastrointestinal issue or a person is taking antibiotics, and personality traits can take years to change.

Researchers are working to determine if there are unique gut microbiome and metabolomic pathways that are associated with the four personality traits.

The preliminary findings, published in the journal Nutrients, found that there are distinct bacteria and metabolomes that are associated with each personality trait. One bacterium was associated with three of the four personality traits, but none between all four traits.

Earlier work showed that mental energy, mental fatigue, physical energy and physical fatigue are four distinct biological moods, but there may be some overlap—for example, you can be both physically fatigued and physically energetic at the same time.

The study also shows that bacteria and metabolome associated with metabolism were associated with either mental or physical energy, while bacteria associated with inflammation were associated with mental or physical fatigue.

The study shows feelings of energy are associated with metabolic processes, while feelings of fatigue are associated with inflammatory processes. Additionally, these findings may help explain some of the interpersonal differences that we see in response to the anti-fatiguing effects of nutritional interventions.

Although the researchers don't know whether this response is due to gut microbiota or epigenetic markers, the findings of the current study provide them with some insight into the role that the gut plays in the personality traits.

Ali Boolani et al, Trait Energy and Fatigue May Be Connected to Gut Bacteria among Young Physically Active Adults: An Exploratory Study, Nutrients (2022). DOI: 10.3390/nu14030466

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-microbes-gut-affect-personal...

**

Plants under anesthesia reveal surprising parallels with humans

When the carnivorous Venus flytrap was  anesthetized with ether, some surprising parallels to anesthesia in humans emerge.

Anesthetics  allow patients to better endure painful treatments or even sleep through them. 

Remarkably, anaesthetisation is also possible in plants. Claude Bernard proved in 1878 that the touch-sensitive plant Mimosa pudica did not react to touch under the influence of ether by closing its leaves. He concluded that plants and animals must have a common biological essence that is disturbed by anesthetics.

Ether anesthetics were used during surgery, childbirth and in palliative treatment to take away patients' pain. However, the exact mechanism of action has never been elucidated. Even with modern anesthetics, it is often unclear how and where they function. One reason for this is certainly that humans are a very delicate research subject.

Unlike most other plants, the Venus flytrap is particularly sensitive to touch. In response to such stimuli, electrical impulses are triggered and transmitted extremely quickly to catch animal prey.

The electrical impulses (action potentials, APs) of the flytrap are comparable to those of our nervous system. It is true that plants do not have a distinct nervous system. But they do transmit electrical information in their conductive tissue, for example to close the trap at lightning speed.

Researchers have found that the Venus flytrap can be anesthetized, similar to a human being, and that it does not react to touch during this time. Investigations of the trap memory even showed that the trap cannot "remember" touches during anesthesia. Thus, its reaction is not different from that of a patient, as they  reports in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers also found out that the anesthetized  traps can perceive touch locally, but cannot transmit it. 

In the plant, the researchers were able to make the calcium signal visible by expressing genetically encoded calcium sensors. They found that the calcium signal is still produced in the sensory hairs of anesthetized plants after a touch, but that it no longer leaves this touch sensor. Ether therefore interrupts the transmission of stimuli.

Now we finally knew in which tissue the ether acts.

Sönke Scherzer et al, Ether anesthetics prevents touch-induced trigger hair calcium-electrical signals excite the Venus flytrap, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06915-z

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-anesthesia-reveal-parallels-humans.ht...

Scientists characterize the imbalanced gut bacteria of patients with myocardial infarction, angina and heart failure

The human gut contains trillions of bacteria, collectively called the gut microbiome, which may have positive and negative effects on human health. When in balance they function as an inner chemistry factory producing numerous compounds that promote good health. However, an unhealthy lifestyle—poor diet, smoking, lack of physical activity or disease—can disrupt the balance, leading the microbiome to instead produce compounds that may trigger multiple non-communicable chronic disorders in people at high genetic risk, including myocardial infarction, angina or heart failure.

Scientists have already discovered that the gut microbiome is altered in people with chronic heart disease. They subsequently identified compounds that are produced by the diseased microbiome, for instance a bacterial compound called trimethylamine (TMA) that after modification in the liver of the human host  causes arteriosclerosis.

However, these findings of altered gut microbiome are challenged because they were achieved in studies of medicated patients. Patients with heart disease are given several different drugs, each of which are known to modify the gut microbiome. As a result, it was unclear whether  drugs or heart disease itself caused the disrupted gut microbiome of people with cardiovascular disorders.

A further complication lies in the fact that heart disease often develops alongside the early stages of overweight and type 2 diabetes, which are also characterized by having disrupted gut microbiomes. As a result, it remained to be shown whether an imbalanced gut microbiome is a feature of heart disease itself.

To answer these critical questions a European consortium of researchers established the EU-funded MetaCardis research project in 2012 to investigate the role of gut microbes in cardiometabolic disease. Now they published the consortium's findings in in the journal Nature Medicine.

Part 1

The researchers recruited 1,241 middle-aged people from Denmark, France and Germany including healthy individuals, individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes but lacking a diagnosis of heart disease, and patients with either myocardial infarction, angina pectoris or heart failure. The investigators quantified about 700 different bacterial species and estimated their functions in the gut microbiome and compared these findings to more than 1,000 compounds circulating in blood with many of these compounds originating from the inner gut chemistry factory.

The researchers  found that about half of these gut bacteria and blood compounds were modified by drug treatment and not directly related to heart disease or the early disease stages like diabetes or obesity occurring prior to diagnosis of heart disease.

Among the remaining half, about 75 percent of the disturbances of the gut microbiome occurred in the early disease stages of overweight and type 2 diabetes, many years before patients noticed any symptoms of heart disease".

However, the early microbiome changes persisted in patients with heart disease who in addition showed specific heart disease related alterations in the composition and function of the gut microbiome. Both at the early dysmetabolic stage and at the later stages of diagnosed heart disease, the diseased microbiome was characterized by a loss of bacterial cells and bacterial competences. In addition, the patients showed a shift towards fewer types of bacteria known to produce health promoting compounds like short chain fatty acids and more bacteria types producing unhealthy compounds from the metabolism of certain dietary amino acids, choline and L-carnitine. Analyses of the blood compounds mirrored the imbalance of the gut microbiome.

Part 2

The findings of gut microbiome and blood compound changes in patients with one of the three heart disorders, acute myocardial infarction, was validated and extended in a study from Israel that is reported in the same issue of Nature Medicine.

It is now clear that major disturbances occur in the gut microbiome of patients suffering from heart disease and that these alterations may start many years before onset of heart disease symptoms and diagnosis. These microbiome changes are not explained by drug treatments.

The primary limitation of the studies is that the investigators report associations, rather than causal explanations for their observations. However,  in the past decade a number of cellular and animal experiments into specific microbiome-derived compounds—like the ones identified in the present studies—have demonstrated how the imbalanced gut microbiome may play a role in the development of heart disease.

Intervention in both humans and rodents have shown that an imbalanced gut microbiome at various stages of heart disease development can be modified and partly restored by eating a more plant-based and energy-controlled diet, avoidance of smoking and compliance with daily exercise. It is time for translating the accumulated evidence of the role of the gut microbiome to more focused public health initiatives in attempts to prevent or delay morbidity and mortality related to heart  disease.

Sebastien Fromentin et al, Microbiome and metabolome features of the cardiometabolic disease spectrum, Nature Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-01688-4

Yeela Talmor-Barkan et al, Metabolomic and microbiome profiling reveals personalized risk factors for coronary artery disease, Nature Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-01686-6

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-scientists-characterize-imba...

Part 3

**

Research discovery could enable broad coronavirus vaccine

Mosquitos learn to avoid pesticides after single non-lethal exposure

Female mosquitoes learn to avoid pesticides after a single exposure, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that this could make pesticides less effective against mosquitoes.

Pesticides are used to limit the spread of mosquito-transmitted diseases. Pesticide resistance has increased among mosquitoes in recent decades, however the extent to which this is due to mosquito behavior has been unclear.

Researchers exposed female Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciastus mosquitoes—which transmit dengue, Zika and West Nile fever—to non-lethal doses of the common anti-mosquito pesticides malathion, propoxur, deltamethrin, permethrin and lambda-cyhalothrin. They then tested whether subsequent exposure to the same pesticide deterred mosquitoes from feeding and resting, and assessed whether this affected mosquito survival.

The researchers found that mosquitoes that had been pre-exposed to a pesticide avoided passing through a pesticide-treated net in order to reach a food source at a higher rate than those who had not been pre-exposed. Only 15.4% of A. aegypti and 12.1% of C. quinquefasciastus that had been pre-exposed passed through the net in order to feed, compared to 57.7% of A. aegypti and 54.4% of C. quinquefasciastus that had not been pre-exposed. Subsequently, the survival rate of pre-exposed mosquitoes was more than double that of mosquitoes that had not been pre-exposed. 38.3% of A. aegypti and 32.1% of C. quinquefasciastus that had been pre-exposed and 11.5% of A. aegypti and 12.9% C. quinquefasciastus that had not been pre-exposed survived exposure to the pesticide-treated net.

The researchers also found that pre-exposed mosquitoes were more likely than mosquitoes that had not been pre-exposed to a pesticide to rest in a container that smelt of a control substance, rather than in a container that smelt of a pesticide. 75.7% of A. aegypti and 83.1% of C. quinquefasciastus that had been pre-exposed to a pesticide rested in the pesticide-free container, compared to 50.2% of A. aegypti and 50.4% of C. quinquefasciastus that had not been pre-exposed.

The findings suggest that mosquitoes that have been exposed to non-lethal doses of pesticides learn to avoid these pesticides and, as a result, may seek out safer food sources and resting sites, allowing them to survive to reproduce.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05754-2

https://researchnews.cc/news/11682/Mosquitos-learn-to-avoid-pestici...

Scientists Convert Donor Lungs to Universal Blood Type in a Medical First

Patients can wait a long time for potentially life-saving lung transplants, since the need to find close matches complicates the process. One of the characteristics that need to be matched is patient and donor blood type.

Now new research shows that the blood type of some donated lungs could be altered before transplant, which means there is a bigger pool of universal donor lungs and less time on the waiting list for those in need.

The process works via a pair of enzymes – specifically, FpGalNAc deacetylase and FpGalactosaminidase – that in combination remove the antigens that distinguish red blood cells, converting blood type A lungs into universal type O.

Under lab conditions, scientists treated eight blood type A lungs with the enzyme combination, reporting that 97 percent of blood type A antigens were removed within four hours. What's more, the conversion was achieved without any observable toxicity.

Three of the newly 'neutral' lungs were then placed in plasma to simulate an actual transplant. Observed antibody damage was minimal, meaning the converted lungs were accepted rather than rejected, at least in the crucial, early stages.

The team estimates that the procedure could eventually increase the number of blood group O donor lungs from the current 55 percent to more than 80 percent in the future.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abm7190?adobe_mc=M...

https://www.sciencealert.com/lungs-converted-to-a-universal-blood-t...

Nano-sized plastics may enter and permeate cell membranes

The occurrence of microplastics in nature has been studied extensively. However, little is known about the health effects of microplastics, and understanding of their transport into the human body is also lacking. Any adverse health effects possibly associated with plastics may be caused by the plastic compound itself, or by the environmental toxins it carries. Many known fat-soluble environmental toxins and heavy metals are known to be able to attach to the surface of small plastic particles. This is why it is important to investigate the transport mechanisms of microplastics into the human body.

With the help of molecular modeling, researchers at the University of Eastern Finland's School of Pharmacy analyzed the behavior and transport of nano-sized microplastics in bilayer membranes which mimic cell membranes. The researchers performed simple molecular dynamics simulations using well-known and widely used polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) particles.

The cell membrane permeability of pulverized PE and PET plastics was also examined using the Parallel Artificial Membrane Permeability Assay method, PAMPA. The method is usually used to investigate passive absorption of medicines, but it hasn't been used to study microplastics before. The PAMPA method was used to investigate the amount of matter permeating the membrane. The amount of plastic permeating the artificial membrane was measured by NMR spectroscopy at certain intervals.

In both experiments, the movement of molecules was controlled only by concentration differences on different sides of the membrane, and by occasional movement induced by heat. In other words, the methods provided information on the passive permeation of molecules through the membranes.

Part 1

In the computer simulations, PE particles were found to prefer the center of the lipid membrane as their location. In the PAMPA experiments, PE plastic partially permeated the membrane, but membrane permeability slowed down significantly over time, probably due to the accumulation of plastic in the membrane. In the simulations, the preferred location of PET particles was, to a certain degree, the surface part of the membrane, and in the experiments, they permeated the membrane fairly well. According to this study, the properties of the membrane structures were not significantly affected by individual plastics.

Joni Järvenpää et al, PE and PET oligomers' interplay with membrane bilayers, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06217-4

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-nano-sized-plastics-permeate-cell-mem...

Part 2

Researchers identify protein complex critical in helping control cell death

 Cell death plays an important role in normal human development and health but requires tightly orchestrated balance to avert disease. Too much can trigger a massive inflammatory immune response that damages tissues and organs. Not enough can interfere with the body's ability to fight infection or lead to cancer.

Researchers are studying the complex molecular processes underlying necroptosis, which combines characteristics of apoptosis (regulated or programmed cell death) and necrosis (unregulated cell death).

During necroptosis dying cells rupture and release their contents. This sends out alarm signals to the immune system, triggering immune cells to fight infection or limit injury. Excessive necroptosis can be a problem in some diseases like stroke or heart attack, when cells die from inadequate blood supply, or in severe COVID-19, when an extreme response to infection causes organ damage or even death.

A new preclinical study  identifies a protein complex critical for regulating apoptosis and necroptosis—known as protein phosphatase 1 regulatory subunit 3G/protein phosphatase 1 gamma (PPP1R3G/PP1γ, or PPP1R3G complex). The researchers' findings suggest that an inhibitor targeting this protein complex may help reduce or prevent excessive necroptosis.

Cell death is very complicated process, which requires layers upon layers of brakes to prevent too many cells from dying. If you want to protect cells from excessive death, then the protein complex  identified in this study is one of many steps you must control.

Part 1

Researchers conducted experiments using human cells and a mouse model mimicking the cytokine storm seen in some patients with severe COVID-19 infection. They applied CRISPR genome-wide screening to analyze how cell function, in particular cell death, changes when one gene is knocked out (inactivated).

Receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIPK1) plays a critical role in regulating inflammation and cell death. Many sites on this protein are modified when a phosphate is added (a process known as phosphorylation) to suppress RIPK1's cell death-promoting enzyme activity. How the phosphate is removed from RIPK1 sites (dephosphorylation) to restore cell death is poorly understood. This new work discovered that PPP1R3G recruits phosphatase 1 gamma (PP1γ) to directly remove the inhibitory RIPK1 phosphorylations blocking RIPK1's enzyme activity and cell death, thereby promoting apoptosis and necroptosis.

An  analogy of a car brake help explain what's happening with the balance of cell survival and death in this study: RIPK1 is the engine that drives the cell death machine (the car). Phosphorylation applies the brake (stops the car) to prevent cells from dying. The car (cell death machinery) can only move forward if RIPK1 dephosphorylation is turned on by the PPP1R3G protein complex, which releases the brake.

In this case, phosphorylation inhibits the cell death function of protein RIPK1, so more cells survive. Dephosphorylation takes away the inhibition, allowing RIPK1 to activate its cell death function.

The researchers showed that a specific protein-protein interaction—that is, PPP1R3G binding to PP1γ—activates RIPK1 and cell death. Furthermore, using a mouse model for "cytokine storm" in humans, they discovered knockout mice deficient in Ppp1r3g were protected against tumor necrosis factor-induced systemic inflammatory response syndrome. These knockout mice had significantly less tissue damage and a much better survival rate than wildtype mice with the same TNF-induced inflammatory syndrome and all their genes intact.

Overall, the study suggests that inhibitors blocking the PPP1R3G/PP1γ pathway can help prevent or reduce deaths and severe damage from inflammation-associated diseases, including heart disease, autoimmune disorders and COVID-19. They are working to screen and identify peptide compounds that most efficiently inhibit the PPP1R3G protein complex. They hope to pinpoint promising drug candidates that may stop the massive destruction of cardiac muscle cells caused by heart attacks.

Jingchun Du, Yougui Xiang, Hua Liu, Shuzhen Liu, Ashwani Kumar, Chao Xing, Zhigao Wang. RIPK1 dephosphorylation and kinase activation by PPP1R3G/PP1γ promote apoptosis and necroptosis. Nature Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27367-5

https://researchnews.cc/news/11713/Researchers-identify-protein-com...

Part 2

Tough and stretchable ionogels

Bacteria upcycle carbon waste into valuable chemicals

Bacteria are known for breaking down lactose to make yogurt and sugar to make beer. Now researchers have harnessed bacteria to break down waste carbon dioxide (CO₂) to make valuable industrial chemicals.

In a new pilot study, the researchers selected, engineered and optimized a bacteria strain and then successfully demonstrated its ability to convert CO₂ into acetone and isopropanol (IPA).

Not only does this new gas fermentation process remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, it also avoids using fossil fuels, which are typically needed to generate acetone and IPA. After performing life-cycle analysis, the team found the carbon-negative platform could reduce greenhouse gas emissions  by 160% as compared to conventional processes, if widely adopted.

 Michael Jewett, Carbon-negative production of acetone and isopropanol by gas fermentation at industrial pilot scale, Nature Biotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-021-01195-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-01195-w

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-bacteria-upcycle-carbon-valuable-chem...

Altruism in birds? Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

But these poor birds didn't know that scientists are only trying to help them!

When scientists attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, they didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds.

Scientists' goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable devices. Instead, the birds outsmarted them!

the magpies began showing evidence of cooperative “rescue” behaviour to help each other remove the tracker.

While we’re familiar with magpies being intelligent and social creatures, this was the first instance we knew of that showed this type of seemingly altruistic behaviour: helping another member of the group without getting an immediate, tangible reward.

During a pilot study, scientists found out how quickly magpies team up to solve a group problem. Within ten minutes of fitting the final tracker, they witnessed an adult female without a tracker working with her bill to try and remove the harness off of a younger bird.

Within hours, most of the other trackers had been removed. By day 3, even the dominant male of the group had its tracker successfully dismantled. We don’t know if it was the same individual helping each other or if they shared duties, but we had never read about any other bird cooperating in this way to remove tracking devices.

The only other similar example of this type of behaviour we could find in the literature was that of Seychelles warblers helping release others in their social group from sticky Pisonia seed clusters. This is a very rare behaviour termed “rescuing”.

Tracking magpies is crucial for conservation efforts, as these birds are vulnerable to the increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves under climate change.

Now scientists are scratching their heads to figure out how to save these birds without using trackers! 

https://www.birdlife.org.au/afo/index.php/afo/article/view/2247

https://www.birdlife.org.au/afo/index.php/afo

https://theconversation.com/altruism-in-birds-magpies-have-outwitte...

Tick saliva may offer a path to new therapies for inflammatory diseases

A recent study  has found that proteins found naturally in tick saliva, called evasins, can be modified to block the activity of important proteins in human inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, asthma and multiple sclerosis.

The study showed it was possible to modify evasins so that they bind to the exact group of disease-promoting human proteins (chemokines), helping to suppress inflammation.

This new discovery opens the door to the development of much needed new therapies for inflammatory diseases. 

Inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis, arthritis, psoriasis, asthma and multiple sclerosis, all involve the same underlying phenomenon in which the body's white blood cells attack certain tissues. The white blood cells are attracted to these tissues by a class of proteins (chemokines) that are produced in the affected tissues (e.g. blood vessel wall in atherosclerosis, joints in arthritis). By targeting chemokines, evasins block the movement of white blood cells  and the resulting tissue damage.

Typically, each tick species secretes a cocktail of evasins, thereby accomplishing broad-spectrum suppression of the host inflammatory response, presumably enabling the tick to feed for extended periods while not alerting the host to the tick's presence.

However, some chemokines are involved in inflammatory diseases while others are needed for the body's normal immune function. Therefore, for therapeutic applications, it is essential to modify the evasins so they only target the disease-causing chemokines.

 Structure-guided engineering of tick evasins for targeting chemokines in inflammatory diseases, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122105119.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-saliva-path-therapies-inflam...

 Artificial nerve cells!

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated an artificial organic neuron, a nerve cell, that can be integrated with a living plant and an artificial organic synapse. Both the neuron and the synapse are made from printed organic electrochemical transistors.

On connecting to the carnivorous Venus flytrap, the electrical pulses from the artificial nerve cell can cause the plant's leaves to close, although no fly has entered the trap. Organic semiconductors can conduct both electrons and ions, thus helping mimic the ion-based mechanism of pulse (action potential) generation in plants. In this case, the small electric pulse of less than 0.6 V can induce action potentials in the plant, which in turn causes the leaves to close.

Simone Fabiano, Organic electrochemical neurons and synapses with ion mediated spiking, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28483-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28483-6

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-artificial-nerve-cells.html?utm_sourc...

Galaxy Collision Creates “Space Triangle”

Scientists Can Now Turn Stem Cells Into Bone!

 Stem cells have the superpower of turning into any other kind of cell – a superpower that some animals use to regrow limbs; for medicine, they yield the potential to help us repair parts of the human body that have been damaged by injury or disease. Carrying out those repairs requires the ability to manipulate stem cells on demand, and a new study outlines an innovative way of doing just that: by using high-frequency sound waves to turn stem cells into bone cells in as little as five days, with 10 minutes of stimulating treatment per day. Further down the line, the researchers hope this technique – which has several advantages over the processes that are in use today – could be used to regrow bone that has been lost to cancer or other types of degenerative disease.

The sound waves cut the treatment time usually required to get stem cells to begin to turn into bone cells by several days. This method also doesn't require any special 'bone-inducing' drugs and it's very easy to apply to the stem cells.

The approach builds on years of work into modifying materials with sound waves above frequencies of 10 MHz, which are much higher frequencies than researchers have previously used in these kinds of experiments. Here, a microchip was used to transform stem cells put in silicon oil and placed on a culture plate. The researchers have shown that it works with multiple types of stem cells, including fat-derived stem cells that aren't as painful to pull out of the body.

Researchers can  now use the sound waves to apply just the right amount of pressure in the right places to the stem cells, to trigger the change process.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202106823

https://www.sciencealert.com/sonic-breakthrough-uses-sound-waves-to...

Researchers create largest ever human family tree

Researchers from the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute have taken a major step towards mapping the entirety of genetic relationships among humans: a single genealogy that traces the ancestry of all of us. The study has been published recently in Science.

The past two decades have seen extraordinary advancements in human genetic research, generating genomic data for hundreds of thousands of individuals, including from thousands of prehistoric people. This raises the exciting possibility of tracing the origins of human genetic diversity to produce a complete map of how individuals across the world are related to each other.

Until now, the main challenges to this vision were working out a way to combine genome sequences from many different databases and developing algorithms to handle data of this size. However, a new method published today by researchers from the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute can easily combine data from multiple sources and scale to accommodate millions of genome sequences.

This genealogy allows us to see how every person's genetic sequence relates to every other, along all the points of the genome. Since individual genomic regions are only inherited from one parent, either the mother or the father, the ancestry of each point on the genome can be thought of as a tree. The set of trees, known as a "tree sequence" or "ancestral recombination graph," links genetic regions back through time to ancestors where the genetic variation first appeared.

Part 1

The study integrated data on modern and ancient human genomes from eight different databases and included a total of 3,609 individual genome sequences from 215 populations. The ancient genomes included samples found across the world with ages ranging from 1,000s to over 100,000 years. The algorithms predicted where common ancestors must be present in the evolutionary trees to explain the patterns of genetic variation. The resulting network contained almost 27 million ancestors.

After adding location data on these sample genomes, the authors used the network to estimate where the predicted common ancestors had lived. The results successfully recaptured key events in human evolutionary history, including the migration out of Africa.

Although the genealogical map is already an extremely rich resource, the research team plans to make it even more comprehensive by continuing to incorporate genetic data as it becomes available. Because tree sequences store data in a highly efficient way, the dataset could easily accommodate millions of additional genomes.

Anthony Wilder Wohns et al, A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abi8264. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi8264

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-largest-human-family-tree.html?utm_so...

Part 2

Unravelling the mysteries around type 2 diabetes

For more than 30 years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of how a key biological molecule self assembles into a rogue protein-like substance known as amyloid, which is thought to play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.

A team of scientists at the University of Leeds has, for the first time, been able to identify the step-by-step changes that take place in the molecule known as human islet amyloid polypeptide, or hIAPP, as it changes into amyloid.

They have also discovered new compounds that are able to speed up or slow down the process.

In healthy people, hIAPP is secreted by islets in the pancreas alongside the hormone insulin and it helps to regulate blood glucose levels and the amount of food in the stomach. When hIAPP malfunctions, it forms clumps of a protein-like substance called amyloid fibrils that kill the insulin-producing islets in the pancreas.

The build-up of amyloid fibrils is seen in people with type 2 diabetes although the exact mechanism of how it triggers disease is not known.

The research findings—Tuning the rate of aggregation of hIAPP into amyloid using small-molecule modulators of assembly—are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

The paper not only describes the complex molecular changes seen in hIAPP molecules as they transform into amyloid fibrils, but the scientists also announce that they have discovered two compounds, described as molecule modulators, which can control the process: one of the compounds delays it, the other accelerates it.

These molecule modulators can be used as "chemical tools" to help scientists investigate the way amyloid fibrils grow and how and why they become toxic.

Significantly they offer "starting points" for the development of drugs that could halt or control amyloid fibril formation and help in the urgent search to find ways to treat type 2 diabetes.

Understanding amyloid fibril formation is a key area of health research. The formation of fibrils is believed to be a factor in a range of life-limiting illnesses including Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease, as well as type 2 diabetes.

Tuning the rate of aggregation of hIAPP into amyloid using small-molecule modulators of assembly, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28660-7

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-unravelling-mysteries-diabet...

Drug Development and Testing - Clinical Trials 

Diseased male livers undergo sex-change

The livers of men diagnosed with hepatic diseases change sex as part of a potential self-protective mechanism, according to new research.

The surprise discovery was made during an investigation into why disruption of the body’s circadian clock is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes and liver diseases.

When a high-fat diet was fed to mice that had their circadian clock gene turned off, researchers  expected them to develop diabetes or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) like the control mice, but they didn’t! Instead they found that the liver of the obese male mice had been feminised probably due in part to the protective nature of the female sex hormone, oestrogen.

Like reproductive organs, the liver is sexually dimorphic, which means there are significant differences between the metabolic function of male and female livers.

The research team then went on to study human samples and got the same results. The more advanced the disease, the more feminisation they saw in the liver tissue.

It appears that the disruption of circadian rhythms might be protecting the liver by influencing the levels of hormones such as growth hormone, oestrogen and testosterone.

The internal body clock controls many biological functions including sleep, hormone secretion, body temperature and metabolism. This study suggests that the disruption of the circadian clock gives the body flexibility in metabolic pathways that can help to slow down disease progression.

Disruption of the circadian clock component BMAL1 elicits an endocrine adaption impacting on insulin sensitivity and liver disease, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2200083119.

Largest bacterium ever discovered

A newly discovered bacterium, Thiomargarita magnifica, challenges the definition of a microbe: its filament-like single cell is up to 2 centimetres long. T. magnifica achieves its unprecedented size by having unique cellular features: two membrane sacs. One is filled with its genetic material; the other, which is much larger, helps to keep its cellular contents pressed up against its outer cell wall so that the molecules it needs can diffuse in and out. Researchers have dubbed these sacs ‘pepins’ — inspired by the pips in fruit — and note that they blur the line between single-celled prokaryotes and eukaryotes (the group that includes humans), which pack their DNA into a nucleus.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.16.480423v1.full.pd...

Entering danger zones to avoid them! Planes Fly into Snowstorms to Study Snowfall

Nanocarrier spray: Better crops without genetic modification

Researchers  have developed a way to improve crop quality without needing to create special genetically modified plants. Rather that changing plant genomes, the new technique relies on a spray that introduces bioactive molecules into plant cells through their leaves. The new technology could be used to help crops resist pests or become more resistant to drought—in less time and at less cost than making lines of genetically modified crops. The study was reported in the scientific journal ACS Nano.

Making transgenic plants  takes time, money, and still has not gained widespread public support. So an alternative to GM food that can overcome these problems have to be looked into. For example, rather than changing a plant's genome so that it doesn't express a particular gene, the same gene can be suppressed on the go by inserting a specific bioactive compound into the plant. In this scenario, the bioactive compound is taken into the plant's cells by a carrier that can penetrate the cell walls of plant cells.

While the concept might be simple, making it happen was a challenge. "In addition to designing a way to introduce bioactive molecules into the plants. Researchers have to consider a delivery method that would be practical for cultivated crops under real agricultural conditions. The best method would be through a spray that could be deployed over large fields relatively easily.

Many types of nanoparticles can penetrate plant cells. The researchers focused on cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) because they can also target specific structures inside plants cells, such as chloroplasts. The first challenge was to determine which CPPs are best when using a spray. They tagged natural and synthetic CPPs with fluorescent yellow, sprayed them on plant leaves, and measured the amount of fluorescence in the leaves with a confocal laser-scanning microscope at different time points. After performing this procedure in typical laboratory Arabidopsis thaliana, as well as in several types of soybeans and tomatoes, they found several natural CPPs that were able to penetrate into the outer layer of the leaves, and in some cases even deeper.

Further experiments showed that this technique worked well when plasmid DNA was attached to the CPPs, and analysis showed that genes were effectively expressed in the leaves of both A. thaliana and soybeans after being carried into the cells through an aqueous spray. The researchers also found that by including other biomolecules and nanostructures in the spray solution, they could temporarily increase the number of pores in the leaves, which increased how much spray was taken up by the plant.

Often, crop yield can be improved by inserting or knocking out genes. After creating a transgenic plant that overexpresses yellow fluorescence in the leaves, the team attached RNA that interferes with fluorescent protein expression to a CPP. As hoped, spraying the leaves with this complex silenced yellow florescence expression.

Chonprakun Thagun et al, Non-transgenic Gene Modulation via Spray Delivery of Nucleic Acid/Peptide Complexes into Plant Nuclei and Chloroplasts, ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c07723

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-nanocarrier-crops-genetic-modificatio...

I

This result was critical, because it is important that any alternative to genetic modification be able to achieve the same functional outcome.

Lastly, the researchers were able to similarly silence genes specific to chloroplasts when they included a chloroplast-targeting peptide to a specific CPP-RNA complex.

Mitochondria and chloroplasts regulate much of a plant's metabolic activity. Targeting these structures with bioactive molecules delivered via spray could effectively improve economically desirable quality traits in crops. 

II

AeroSHARK thin film reduces drag on airplanes

A collaboration between engineers at Lufthansa Technik and chemicals and coatings manufacturer BASF has resulted in the creation of AeroSHARK—a thin film coating that can be applied to an aircraft's outer skin to reduce drag and thus fuel consumption and carbon emissions. 

The thin film was developed as part of an effort kicked off by engineers at Lufthansa looking for ways to reduce the cost of fuel for their planes. To that end, they looked to nature, and more specifically, sharks—creatures who have been streamlined over millions of years of evolution. The researchers found that shark skin is covered with millions of "riblets," which are protrusions that run the length of their bodies. The engineers then teamed up with a group at BASF to create a similar type of skin for aircraft. The result was the creation of AeroSHARK, a clear, thin skin with millions of riblets, each just 50 micrometers high. Testing showed that the material reduces drag.

The researchers found that by applying the skin to the entire fuselage and engines of a Boeing 777, they could reduce fuel consumption by 1.1%. Swiss estimates that the skin will result in reductions in fuel consumption across its fleet by 4,800 metric tons a year, which, in turn, will result in reducing carbon emissions by 15,200 metric tons.

Part 1

Cutting emissions with sharkskin technology

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-02-aeroshark-thin-airplanes.html?u...

blog.swiss.com/en/2022/02/aero … -reduzieren-english/

www.lufthansa-technik.com/aeroshark

Touch sensitive brain cells controlled by micromagnets

Scientists have developed a new technique that uses microscopic magnetic particles to remotely activate brain cells; researchers say the discovery in rats could potentially lead to the development of a new class of non-invasive therapies for neurological disorders.

Published in Advanced Science, the pioneering technique called "magnetomechanical stimulation" or , allows touch sensitive brain glial cells called astrocytes to be stimulated with a magnetic device outside the body.

Microscopic magnetic particles, or micromagnets, are attached to astrocytes, and used as miniature mechanical switches that can turn "on" the cells when a strong magnet is placed near the head.

Astrocytes are star-shaped cells found throughout the brain. They are strategically positioned between the brain blood vessels and nerve cells. These cells provide neurons with essential metabolic and structural support, modulate neuronal circuit activity and may also function as versatile surveyors of brain milieu, tuned to sense conditions of potential metabolic insufficiency.

The ability to control brain astrocytes using a magnetic field gives the researchers a new tool to study the function of these cells in health and disease that may be important for future development of novel and effective treatments for some common neurological disorders, such as epilepsy and stroke.

Because astrocytes are sensitive to touch, decorating them with magnetic particles means you can give the cells a tiny prod from outside the body using a magnet, and as such, control their function. This ability to remotely control astrocytes provides a new tool for understanding their function and may have the potential to treat brain disorders.

The  new technology uses magnetic particles and magnets to remotely and precisely control brain cell activity and, importantly, does this without introducing any device or foreign gene into the brain.

In the laboratory-based study, researchers coated microscopic magnetic particles with an antibody that enables them to bind specifically to astrocytes. The particles were then delivered to the target brain region in the rat via injection.

Another advantage of using micromagnets is that they light up on an MRI scan so we can track their location and target very particular parts of the brain to get precise control of brain function. 

Yichao Yu, Christopher Payne, Nephtali Marina, Alla Korsak, Paul Southern, Ana García‐Prieto, Isabel N. Christie, Rebecca R. Baker, Elizabeth M. C. Fisher, Jack A. Wells, Tammy L. Kalber, Quentin A. Pankhurst, Alexander V. Gourine, Mark F. Lythgoe. Remote and Selective Control of Astrocytes by Magnetomechanical Stimulation. Advanced Science, 2021; 2104194 DOI: 10.1002/advs.202104194

https://researchnews.cc/news/11846/Touch-sensitive-brain-cells-cont...

Indian Ocean warming could weaken summer monsoon rainfall in South Asia

The South Asian monsoon, also known as Indian summer monsoon (ISM), is crucial for the food security and socioeconomic well-being of 40% of the world's population. From a historical perspective, fluctuations in monsoon rainfall have been linked to the rise and fall of civilizations in the Indian subcontinent. Now researchers are increasingly concerned that global warming may threaten the stability of the monsoon system, but accurate predictions have been hampered by the lack of long-term climate data in the Indian subcontinent.

A new study in the journal PNAS by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kiel University and the Alfred Wegener Institute of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, seeks to strengthen climate predictions by reconstructing Indian summer monsoon rainfall changes during the past 130,000 years.

The study reports for the first time that the Indian summer monsoon during the Last Interglacial was weakened by sustained high sea surface temperatures in the equatorial and tropical Indian Ocean, indicating that modern rises in sea temperature could increase droughts in South Asia.

 Higher sea surface temperature in the Indian Ocean during the Last Interglacial weakened the South Asian monsoon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2107720119

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-indian-ocean-weaken-summer-monsoon.ht...

Scientists discover new DNA modification system in animals, captured from bacteria more than 60 million years ago

Your DNA holds the blueprint to build your body, but it's a living document: Adjustments to the design can be made by epigenetic marks.

Epigenetic marks are modifications to DNA bases that don't change the underlying genetic code, but "write" extra information on top of it that can be inherited along with your genome. Epigenetic marks usually regulate gene expression—turn genes on or off—particularly during early development or when your body is under stress. They can also suppress "jumping genes"—transposable elements that threaten the integrity of your genome.

In humans and other eukaryotes, two principal epigenetic marks are known. A team from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has discovered a third, novel epigenetic mark—one formerly known only in bacteria—in bdelloid rotifers, small freshwater animals. This fundamental and surprising discovery is reported this week in Nature Communications.

Part 1

Researchers discovered  in 2008 that bdelloid rotifers are very good at capturing foreign genes. What was found now is that rotifers, about 60 million years ago, accidentally captured a bacterial gene that allowed them to introduce a new epigenetic mark that was not there before." This is the first time that a horizontally transferred gene has been shown to reshape the gene regulatory system in a eukaryote.

Horizontally transferred genes are thought to preferentially be operational genes, not regulatory genes. It is hard to imagine how a single, horizontally transferred gene would form a new regulatory system, because the existing regulatory systems are already very complicated.

Somewhere back in time, a piece of bacterial DNA happened to be fused to a piece of eukaryotic DNA. Both of them became joined in the rotifer's genome and they formed a functional enzyme. That's not so easy to do, even in the lab, and it happened naturally. And then this composite enzyme created this amazing regulatory system, and bdelloid rotifers were able to start using it to control all these jumping transposons.

 Bacterial N4-methylcytosine as an epigenetic mark in eukaryotic DNA, Nature Communications (2022).

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-dna-modification-animals-c...

Part 2

UN climate report: 'Atlas of human suffering' worse, bigger

Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an "unavoidable" increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday that if human-caused global warming isn't limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways, with some being "potentially irreversible."

"The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health," says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming's impacts, it warns, "will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.

part1

Climate change is outpacing adaptation

Rising greenhouse-gas emissions could soon outstrip the ability of many communities to adapt. A report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), authored by more than 270 researchers from 67 countries, finds that the negative impacts of climate change are mounting far faster than.... Many effects are unavoidable and will hit the world’s most vulnerable populations hardest, it warns. “Any further delay in global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” says climate scientist and co-author Maarten van Aalst.

What If We Have A Nuclear War?

New epigenetic biomarkers found that potentially predict preterm birth

A signature found in the cheek cells of mothers and fathers of preterm infants may help develop a test to determine whether a pregnancy may end too early. Such a test could help prevent premature births and the many resulting health impacts on infants by alerting medical providers to the need for early intervention measures.

In a study published in Scientific Reports on March 1, researchers documented more than 100 epigenetic biomarkers in mothers of preterm babies that were distinct from mothers of babies carried to term. Fathers had fewer biomarkers but enough to indicate a likely paternal role in preterm birth.

The signature they found was present in all the parents they analyzed. This is likely to lead eventually to a very useful test. They used buccal cells, which are collected by a cheek swab. It's very non-invasive and easy to do.

Epigenetics are molecular factors and processes around DNA that determine how genes behave. While independent of DNA sequence, epigenetic modifications, which can be caused by things such as toxicant exposure, poor nutrition and alcohol use, can also be inherited.

In this study, researchers found that the preterm female babies carried more than 100 of these biomarkers, indicating the propensity to have a preterm baby may be passed down. That transgenerational capacity is also supported by the fact the signature is found in cheek cells. If an epigenetic modification is present in both sperm and ovum, the resulting baby will have that modification present in every cell of their body—including their cheek cells.

 Preterm birth buccal cell epigenetic biomarkers to facilitate preventative medicine, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-07262-9

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-epigenetic-biomarkers-potent...

Solar panels developed to pull in water vapour to grow crops in the desert

Using a unique hydrogel, scientists created a solar-driven system that successfully grows spinach by using water drawn from the air while producing electricity. The proof-of-concept design, described March 1 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, offers a sustainable, low-cost strategy to improve food and water security for people living in dry-climate regions.

The system, called WEC²P, is composed of a solar photovoltaic panel placed atop a layer of hydrogel, which is mounted on top of a large metal box to condense and collect water. The researchers  developed the hydrogel in their prior research, and the material can effectively absorb water vapour from ambient air and release the water content when heated.

The researchers used the waste heat from solar panels when generating electricity to drive absorbed water out of the hydrogel. The metal box below collects the vapor and condenses the gas into water. Alternatively, the hydrogel increases the efficiency of solar photovoltaic panels by as much as 9% by absorbing the heat and lowering the panels' temperature.

Peng Wang, An Integrated Solar Driven System Produces Electricity with Freshwater and Crops in Arid Regions, Cell Reports Physical Science (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.100781. www.cell.com/cell-reports-phys … 2666-3864(22)00048-0

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-solar-panels-vapor-crops.html?u...