Some Plants can regenerate by DNA duplication
Some cultivars of the plants Arabidopsis thaliana (used in the study) and Ipomopsis aggregata (pictured here) can duplicate their genomes multiple times without undergoing cell division. Photo credit goes to: L. Brian Stauffer
When munched by grazing animals (or mauled by scientists in the lab), some herbaceous plants overcompensate – producing more plant matter and becoming more fertile than they otherwise would. Scientists say they now know how these plants accomplish this feat of regeneration.
A new way to look at Global Warming
Global warming, nothing new with that and it’s here to stay for now. But while computer models churn out bleak forecasts for the planet’s future, we also have a more conceptual understanding of what is happening as humans pump carbon dioxide into the air. Unfortunately the traditional conceptual understanding of carbon dioxide wrapping the planet in a sort of blanket that traps more heat is not quite right.
If being sad is “bad”, then why is there sad music?
We tell children not to look so sad. We tell adults to wipe that sad look off their face and smile. We even worry that if you are sad too long, you might need medical attention. Yet, for most of us, when life gets you down, you put on some sad music. So if sadness is such a negative, why do we spend our money and time wallowing in these sad tunes?
When it comes to sleep recommendations, what about the children?
Sleep is a hot topic lately, are we getting too much, too little, how much is enough? However, most of these questions are for adults, so what about children? Well as it turns out a new study used activity monitors to track how sleep habits changed in younger and older teens as they grew during a two-year period. Key findings from this study has also lent t0 new support to recent recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics that middle and high schools avoid starting earlier than 8:30 a.m.
A Possible Genetic “Cure” for HIV… Maybe
Let’s face it, a cure for HIV probably won’t be coming around for awhile. That slippery little virus manages to avoid everything we throw at it. Well researchers at Massachusetts General (MGH) and Boston Children’s hospitals (BCH) tried to take another crack at the problem. For the first time they have used a relatively new gene-editing technique to create what could prove to be an effective technique for blocking HIV from invading and destroying patients’ immune systems.
A Big Break for Bio-Gasoline
While the world waits for a better battery (and a energy grid system that doesn’t require constant power making), scientists are hard at work trying to teach old fuels a new trick. Thankfully an international team of bioengineers has boosted the ability of bacteria to produce isopentenol, a compound with desirable gasoline properties. The finding, if it is not obvious, is a significant step toward developing a bacterial strain that can yield industrial quantities of renewable bio-gasoline.
Steak is bad for the heart and now we know why
“Red meat is bad for your heart”, that is typically the story we hear from people. While some might take this as meat is bad for us, or that it is wrong to eat red meat, science has been trying to find a better answer to that question. After all it wouldn’t do for science to say, it just does. Well as luck may have it, new research provides details on how gut bacteria turn a nutrient found in red meat into metabolites that increase the risk of developing heart disease. The findings may lead to new strategies for safeguarding individuals’ cardiovascular health.
Reshaping the Limits of Synthetic Biology
Ever think you could have built something better if you had a hand in the design? Sometimes people just have a desire to make, after all the maker movement is huge for a reason. Well geneticists have a new toy tool to play with —dubbed “the telomerator”—that could redefine the limits of synthetic biology and advance how successfully living things can be engineered or constructed in the laboratory based on an organism’s genetic, chemical base-pair structure. How cool is that?!
Boosting Crop Yields via Genetics
CSHL scientists have identified a set of genetic variants that can dramatically increase tomato production. On the far left is the average yield from a plant that grows standard canning tomatoes. The next three piles were produced by plants with mutations found in the toolkit. The combination of genetic mutations on the far right produces twice as many tomatoes as the standard variety.
Photo credit goes to: Zachary Lippman/ Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Genetic engineering techniques offers many different promises, some of which will obviously come sooner than others. One of those promises was a possible end to famine, while most famine in the world today is in developing countries, that could spread as population increases. To that end scientists have announced a new way to dramatically increase crop yields by improving upon Mother Nature’s offerings. The team has discovered a set of gene variations that can boost fruit production in the tomato plant by as much as 100%.
Where HIV hides
HIV is hard to get rid of,not because it primarily resides in the blood, but because of where it hides when antiretrovirals drop HIV levels. So the real question is where does HIV hide? Unfortunately those antiretroviral drugs can usually control the virus, but can’t completely eliminate it. So any strategy to eradicate HIV from the body has to take into account not only the main group of immune cells the virus targets, called CD4 or helper T cells, but other infected cells as well.
New Genetic Editing Technique Offers Novel Treatment of Defects
The promises of genetic modifications are endless, longer life, better health, cures for genetic based diseases that would otherwise cause an unimaginable amount of suffering all wiped out. We’ve come a long way in genetic alteration thanks, in part, to the ever faster moving pace of science. While genetic modification is the thing of horror movies, it also can change the world in ways we cannot even imagine — unfortunately getting genome-editing proteins into cells, where they need to be to access the genome, is a major challenge, especially in live animals or human patients.
Zombies: Science Fiction vs. Fact
Well in the spirit of Halloween I thought I would make a nice little zombie post. Zombies, those brain loving little guys, [and girls] are everywhere. From shows like The Walking Dead — a zombie show where they call them anything but zombies– to video games, music videos, and weird romance stuff. Even the zombie itself takes on a different life depending on the person and film.
More Genetic Links Behind Autism
Vaccines do NOT cause autism. One more time, vaccines DO NOT cause autism. So what does cause autism, that problem has been plaguing scientists for awhile now. Thankfully two major genetic studies of autism and involving more than 50 laboratories worldwide, have newly implicated dozens of genes in the disorder. The research shows that rare mutations in these genes affect communication networks in the brain and compromise fundamental biological mechanisms that govern whether, when, and how genes are activated overall.
Scientists resurrect 700-year-old viruses, Just in time for Halloween!
You know how some zombie movies start with a discovery of a virus, it gets loose, and things quickly spiral out of control from that? Well in breaking news a team of researchers have found two 700-year-old viral sequences in frozen caribou dung in an arctic ice patch. The group isolated part of a viral RNA genome and the complete genome of a DNA virus. Then they infected living plants with the DNA virus, what could go wrong?
Research Shows Synapses are Always Ready to Go
The inner workings of the brain are quick, but really they have to be. Neurons need to be able to rapidly propagate information in their interior via electrical signals and they communicate with each other at special contact points known as the synapses. These chemical messenger substances (known as neurotransmitters) are stored in vesicles at the synapses. When a synapse becomes active, some of these vesicles fuse with the cell membrane and release their contents. To ensure that valuable time is not lost, synapses always have some readily releasable vesicles on standby.
The Cause Behind Seizures post-Vaccination
The anti-vaccination movement is a dangerous one. Children are falling ill (and in certain cases dying) over nothing more than fear and misinformation. The problem is science doesn’t have all the answers and it is tempting to look to someone — or in this case a group of someones– who claim to have those answers, true or not. Well science eventually gets the answers we need and now scientists have found genetic clues to explain why a small number of children have febrile seizures—brief convulsions—after receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The Oceans Link to Climate Change
An estimated 35,000 walruses are resting on land because the sea ice has melted
Photo credit goes to: Corey Accardo NOAA/NMFS/AFSC/ANML.
Hold on to your hats folks, we can all agree that most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere. But in a new study a group of researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean global warming isn’t a man-made problem, please.
The Genetics of Congenital Heart Defects Slowly Emerge from Down Syndrome Study
Down syndrome, of all the genetic defects people are born with, is the most common (as far as chromosomal abnormalities go). Down syndrome involves having a third copy of all or part of chromosome 21 (for those who do not recall we are typically born with 23 pairs of chromosomes). In addition to intellectual disability, individuals with Down syndrome have a high risk of congenital heart defects. However, not all people with Down syndrome have them – about half have structurally normal hearts.
The Genes Responsible for Immune System Reset after Infection
We’ve all been sick before, the aches and pains that come with it– most of the time including a fever — are all responses to our immune system kicking into high gear. But what if your body didn’t reverse course and go back to a, let’s call it” relaxed state.” Once the battle is won, the body’s efforts would be wasted on energy costing defense. A bad thing when the body really should be focusing on repairing the damage done by the foreign invaders.
Converting Skin Cells to Neurons: A Fight Against Huntington’s
A sad thought indeed.
Photo credit goes to: Huntington Society of Canada PSA
Neurological diseases are some of the hardest to fight against (in my opinion). The big reason is the brain, we still know so little about it and treatment for anything effecting it can be difficult to say the least. Take Huntington’s disease, an ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disorder. There is no cure and no real treatment, but that might change relatively soon thanks to a new discovery.
Dude, wheres my Hover Car? Oh wait…
Photo from Back to the Future
We all (of a certain age) remember the Jetsons, a futuristic family with hi-tech gadgets and gizmos. However, nothing said, “the future is here” quite like things hovering. Even in the movie Back to the future, they have hover boards and flying cars. Unfortunately we don’t, which is a shame because according to the 1950’s we are the future, we should have hover-cars and hover boards… well the wait is over. Yep, introducing the first real hover board!
A Venusian Mystery Explored Once More
Photo Credit goes to NASA. Venera 13 Russian Probe, offering some of the only color photos on the surface of Venus. Fun fact: It only operated for about two hours before it died.
Venus, the place where women are from… supposedly. To say Venus has a harsh climate would be an understatement, this is one of many reasons why we will never (or maybe not soon) see a “long lasting” Venus rover counterpart to our Mars rover missions. Still, the planet (much like all the other plants) can teach us a lot about not just our own origins, but the origins of the universe. Also like all our neighbor planets Venus is hiding something beneath its brilliant shroud of clouds, a mystery that might be soon solved, all thanks to a new re-analysis of twenty-year-old spacecraft data.
DNA Nanotech: The First Large DNA Crystals
DNA is the stuff of life as we know it, but it is the potential as a programmable material platform that could spawn entire new and revolutionary nanodevices in computer science, microscopy, biology, and more. Researchers have been working to master the ability to coax DNA molecules to self assemble into the precise shapes and sizes needed in order to fully realize these nanotechnology dreams. A dream that been going on for 20 years now and was just realized.
New Genetic Test to help Solve Rare Disease Diagnosis
Photo credit goes to the Lapidus family
My sister suffers from a rare disease which causes small fiber polyneuropathy, or the killing of nerves in her hands and feet. As it progresses she has trouble standing or using her hands. If that was the worst of it, then it might be liveable given the time between severe attacks is years or more. Unfortunately, it also causes intense and mostly constant pain and burning sensations, pain so bad that conventional narcotic painkillers have trouble controlling it. After some time working with the hospital I narrowed it down to autoimmune mediated. Her Doctors finally agreed, but only after first dismissing it as anything from she was faking it, all the way to lupus.
A look at Air Pollution and Your Body
We have all probably seen stories from China on the horrid air pollution there. Accompanying those reports of course are the statistics for air pollution that deaths have caused. For the record, the World Health Organization estimated that ambient air pollution caused 3.7 million premature deaths (worldwide) in 2012 alone – yet what exactly happens to your body when it encounters pollutants?
The “New” Roots of our Friends the Mitochondria
![Image credit goes to biovisions, by Harvard University [see video below]](https://loonylabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/biovisions-mitochondria.jpg?w=590)
Image credit goes to biovisions, by Harvard University [see video below]
You can tell [my mood] by the way I walk
Ever see a guy walking down the street and know he’s depressed? Or how about someone happy, with a little bounce in their step? The way we walk says a lot and by some estimates roughly 90% of what we are telling people isn’t coming out our mouth, it’s all body language. Our walk says a lot about the kind of mood we are in, but in the question of what came first our mood or our walk, researchers have now shown that it works both ways.
Carbon’s Place in a Silicon World
Everything is silicon based, well mainly your computer, your TV, your ipad, and pretty much every piece of electronics in existence. Still the world turns and so does technology; at a similarly fast pace no less. Even as the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today, scientists around the world continue unabated to search for the even-better-bulbs of tomorrow. In this search we are now ditching silicon for new carbon-based electronics.
Free Radicals and Wound Healing
Free radicals, said in the right crowd and you might hear someone scream for their life. Of course, to be perfectly transparent antioxidants have already shown to be bad in plenty of cases, so maybe it’s just bad PR. Still they were long assumed to be destructive to tissues and cells causing a host of age related problems with them. Well new research is showing that “free radicals” generated by the cell’s mitochondria—the energy producing “powerhouse” structures in the cell—are actually beneficial to healing wounds.
Nothing Sticks to a new Bioinspired coating for medical devices
Putting things in the body can be tricky, I mean we need things from joint replacements to cardiac implants and dialysis machines, these medical devices are needed to enhance or save lives on a daily basis. However, any device implanted in the body or in contact with flowing blood faces two critical challenges that can threaten the life of the patient the device is meant to help: blood clotting and bacterial infection. Problems that sound easier to fix than they actually are.
Poop Pills, Yeah they are a Thing Now
When someone is lying it isn’t too abnormal to hear someone say, “you’re full of sh…” well you get the idea. Our poop defines us, the microbes that live in our digestive tract make it possible for us to digest food, absorb nutrients, and stay healthy. Heck they may even cause your cravings! Unfortunately sometimes –whether due to abuse of antibiotics or some medical condition like C. diff infection– gut bacteria can work against us, leading to all sorts of problems. As of now, the only real way to fix it is a poop transplant, which can be invasive and the most effective poop transplants are not done anally, but orally.
How the Brain Heals After a Stroke
You have all the brain cells you’ll ever have when you reach adulthood. That was the science lesson I was taught in high school from, maybe a misguided teacher, or maybe just misinformed, I do not know. That statement however is not true, we know that the brain is very plastic and ever changing. It’s resilience still amazes us, even today with all that we know about it. Now a previously unknown mechanism through which the brain produces new nerve cells after a stroke has been discovered, showing us just how resilient the brain truly is.
Solar Panel Hybrid is Cheap and Super Efficient
Solar cells are inefficient, it’s a sad fact. With todays technology they boast about a 10-15% efficiency, compare that to todays gas engine at roughly 20-25% and you can see it’s not quite up to par. Well that could all change very soon thanks to a new method for transferring energy from organic to inorganic semiconductors. This could boost the efficiency of widely used inorganic solar cells to as close as 100% efficiency as they can get.
tRNA lookalikes in the Human Genome
There was a time not long ago when we knew we had the longest genome. It was an obvious assumption because we are “in fact” the most intelligent and complex species on the planet. Boy were we wrong, as genetics progressed we came to realize that we weren’t as genetically special as we thought we were. We found that we had tons of “junk” DNA. Of course we continue to be wrong and we now know that we may not be the biggest genome on the planet, but we are still very complex and new research is proving that once again.
The Blood-Brain Barrier and the Future of Medicine
The blood-brain barrier, not quite a brick and mortar defense from the outside world, but strangely enough it is extremely effective. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) acts as a bouncer, it keeps the bad things out, while helping to regulate certain aspects of the brain. To circumvent the BBB thousands of people have stimulators placed deep in their brains in the hope of curing their ills. Many require tubes, catheters, and shunts penetrating deep into their brain ventricles to deliver medicine or to drain over pressurized cerebral fluids. These devices have a crude and bulky insertion that is simply plowed through healthy brain tissue, sparing little in its path. In other words, we need to do better.
Orange Corn Aims to Fight Vitamin A Deficiency
Corneal blindness often affects people at a young age, such as this twelve year old girl who is blind from vitamin A deficiency. She has had a penetrating corneal graft in her left eye; this has unfortunately failed. Image credit goes to: Lance Bellers
GMO food is still a hot button topic, honestly for no other reason than fear. Sure Monsanto is a big evil corporation, but the science is only as bad as what you do with it. In the modern fortified world we don’t think about vitamin deficiency or the horrible things that come with it, however vitamin A deficiency is a huge problem in developing countries. To combat this researchers have identified a set of genes that can be used to naturally boost the provitamin A content of corn kernels, a finding that could help combat vitamin A deficiency and macular degeneration in the elderly.
Using “Programmable” Antibiotics to Attack Drug-Resistant Microbes
The body is pretty great at self regulation, that is up until it isn’t. The antibiotic era was one that improved human health hundreds of times over. Unfortunately health is a joint effort, a multitude of microbes scientists have found populating the human body have good, bad and mostly mysterious implications for our health. But when something goes wrong, we defend ourselves with the undiscriminating brute force of traditional antibiotics, which wipe out everything at once like a wild fire, regardless of the consequences.
The Path of Antibiotic Resistance
MRSA, not that long ago we had no idea what MRSA was… mostly because it hadn’t come into prevalence. With an increase in the use and abuse of antibiotics there has been an ever growing pressure for the pathogens we treat to mutate in order to survive, this pressure is called selective pressure and helped cause drug-resistance in pathogens. In response to the rise of these drug-resistant pathogens, doctors are routinely cautioned against over prescribing antimicrobials. But when a patient has a confirmed bacterial infection, the advice is to treat aggressively to quash the infection before the bacteria can develop resistance.
The Neurobiological Basis of a Human-Pet Relationship
My wife adores our cats. Now, I’m not a cat person, but my wife loves them. In fact if we had children and someone held a gun to her head and said choose between the kid or the cats, there would likely be an uncomfortable amount of time before a response. The big question is, why do we love animals like we do our own children? Well a small study helps try to answer this complex question by investigating differences in how important brain structures are activated when women view images of their children compared to images of their own dogs.
The Mysterious Origins of HIV Discovered
There have been a lot of theories on where HIV came from, anywhere from the mundane, it spread from other animals. To the down right crazy, the government created it to wipe out homosexuals. Well bad news for conspiracy theorists, a new study suggests that the HIV pandemic with us today is almost certain to have begun its global spread from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Ever Plastic Brain and Intellectual Disabilities
The plasticity of the brain is always somewhat of a shock. It’s near incredible what the brain can achieve, look at people who have strokes, or any other sort of brain injury and yet still somehow manage to get up and move, or perform tasks. So I guess it should be no surprise, but still amazing that studying mice with a genetic change similar to what is found in Kabuki syndrome (an inherited disease of humans) researchers report they have used an anticancer drug to improve mental function.
New Immune System Discovery
The immune system is sort of this big enigma, we know how pieces of it work, but we don’t know it as well as we would like or we wouldn’t have autoimmunity to contend with. Well new research reveals new information about how our immune system functions, shedding light on a vital process that determines how the body’s ability to fight infection develops. Which brings us one step closer to the big picture of the immune system.
New Protein Implicated in Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s prevention has made some strides in recent years. We’ve even identified some new causes, and in some cases we can do both. In fact, researchers have now shown that low levels of the protein progranulin in the brain can increase the formation of amyloid-beta plaques (a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease). These plaques can cause neuroinflammation, and worsen memory deficits in a mouse model of this condition. Conversely, by using a gene therapy approach to elevate progranulin levels, scientists were able to prevent these abnormalities and block cell death.
The Genetic Evolutionary Arms Race
Genes are tricky little buggers, the stuff that makes us up has fought the test of time to make it to where we are today. It is thought that our genes changed in an attempt to outpace other life, albeit random changes.That might only be half right however, new findings suggest that there is an evolutionary arms race going on within the genome against, of all things, itself. This inherent competition of primates drove the evolution of complex regulatory networks that orchestrate the activity of genes in every cell of our bodies
Are Black Holes just in Our Imagination?!
Black holes, physicists have been fighting over them forever, heck there is even a book entitled the black hole war! (which I do recommend for anyone interested) It’s no real surprise since they are the ultimate unknown – the blackest and most dense objects in the universe that do not even let light escape. And as if they weren’t bizarre enough to begin with, now add this to the mix: they don’t exist.
“GMO” Foods (Once Again) Proven Safe
GMO, I shudder every time I hear someone talk about the “dangers”. It’s one of the new buzzwords that doesn’t actually mean anything, but still manages to scare people. Well a new scientific review reports that the performance and health of food-producing animals consuming genetically engineered feed, first introduced 18 years ago, has been comparable to that of animals consuming non-GE feed. Not that this will stop people from spreading fear, but it’s a start.
A New Discovery in the Treatment of Autoimmunity and Chronic Inflammation
Lupus, Type 1 diabetes, and multiple sclerosis are all diseases brought on by autoimmunity — the bodies inability to tell itself apart from foreign invaders. Finding a cure, or even a suitable treatment has been to put it gently a long, painful road, with little to show for it. On the forefront of the war against the body betrayal is immunosuppressants, which with them carry their own set of side effects and in most cases only off mild to moderate relief of symptoms. But that is all changing and new research on something called immunoproteasomes offer that new hope.
A new Medicine may help Lupus Sufferers
It’s never Lupus, until it is… that’s because it’s more common than you might think.
Lupus, a particularly bad hell on earth for people suffering from it. Lupus is caused by autoimmunity, in where the body attacks itself. I have a special place in my heart for people suffering from the disease because my Uncle suffered from it. There is no cure and only moderately effective treatments for the disorder, which causes, in some cases, the most excruciating pain you will ever feel. Thankfully new findings by a biomedical engineering team raise hope for a new class of drugs to treat lupus that may not include the long list of adverse risks and side effects often associated with current treatments.
Lie Detection using Brain Waves: It’s just as creepy as it sounds…
Currently lie detectors (polygraphs) are not admissible in court, this is because (despite what you may read) there is little proof to show that they are much better than a guess — coming in at roughly 50% accuracy. They aren’t really based in science, making them more of a toy. There might just be a new contender in the lie detection department coming soon however, researchers have found that brain activity can be used to tell whether someone recognizes details they encountered in normal, daily life. This finding may have very real implications for criminal investigations and use in courtrooms.
Autism and the Low Iron Connection
The topic of autism is a charged one. Maybe it’s because it isn’t a simple diagnosis; there are many roads to autism. Most of them are probably genetic, some of them are likely environmental, and none of them are related to vaccination (sorry to burst your bubble anti vax people, it’s called science). Some new research shows another possible (environmental) cause. The new study shows that mothers of children with autism are significantly less likely to report taking iron supplements before and during their pregnancies than the mothers of children who are developing normally.
Lunatic Laboratories 