Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,067

How immune cells detect and respond to mutations in cancer cells

For the first time, a research team has identified and analyzed the steps by which immune cells “see” and respond to cancer cells, providing insights into reasons some treatments may be effective for certain patients but not others.

The UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists leading the research believe their findings will lead to better, more personalized immunotherapies—even for patients whose immune systems currently do not appear to respond to treatment.

“This is an important step forward in our understanding of what the T-cell responses see in the tumor and how they change over time while they are in the tumor and in circulation in the blood, searching for new tumor cells to attack,” said Cristina Puig-Saus, Ph.D., a UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher, adjunct assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, and the first author of a study in Nature.

Microtubules are Biological Computers: searching for the mind of a cell

In episode 13 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses how microtubules are the most likely candidate to be a universal quantum computer that acts as a single executive unit in cells. First off, computer scientists are trying to model human behavior using neural networks that treat individual neurons as the base unit. But unicellular organisms are able to do many of the things that we consider to be human behavior! How does a single-cell lifeform perform this complex behavior? As Stuart Hameroff puts it, “neuron doctrine is an insult to neurons,” referring to the complexity of a single cell. Let’s look inside a cell, what makes it tick? Many think the DNA holds some secret code or algorithm that is executing the decision-making process of the cell. However, the microscope reveals a different story where the microtubules are performing a vast array of complex behaviors: swimming towards food, away from predators, coordinating protein delivery and creation within the cell. This begs the question: how do microtubules work? Well, they are single proteins organized into helical cylinders. What is going on here? Typically, we think of a protein’s function as being determined by its structure but the function of a single protein repeated into tubes is tough to unravel. Stuart Hameroff proposed that perhaps these tubulin proteins are acting as bits of information and the whole tube is working as a universal computer that can be programmed to fit any situation. Given the limitations of digital computation, Roger Penrose was looking for a quantum computer in biology and Stuart Hameroff was looking for more than a digital computation explanation. Hence, the Hameroff-Penrose model of microtubules as quantum computers was born. If microtubules are quantum computers, then each cell would possess a central executive hub for rapidly integrating information from across the cell and to turn that information into a single action plan that could be quickly disseminated. Furthermore, the computation would get a “quantum” speed-up in that exponentially large search spaces could be tackled in a reasonable timeframe. If microtubules are indeed quantum computers, then modern science has greatly underestimated the processing power of a single cell, let alone the entire human brain.

~~~ Timestamps ~~~
0:00 Introduction.
3:08 “Neuron doctrine is an insult to neurons”
8:23 DNA vs Microtubules.
14:20 Diffusion vs Central Hub.
17:50 Microtubules as Universal Computers.
23:40 Penrose’s Quantum Computation update.
29:48 Quantum search in a cell.
33:25 Stable microtubules in neurons.
35:18 Finding the self in biology.

#quantum.
#consciousness.
#microtubules.

Website: www.justinriddlepodcast.com.
Email: justinriddlepodcast@gmail.com.
Twitter: @JRiddlePodcast.
Music licensed from and created by Baylor Odabashian. BandCamp: @UnscrewablePooch.
Painting behind me by Paul Seli. IG: @Paul. Seli.art

Researchers create mutant mice to study bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating condition characterized by alternating states of depression (known as depressive episodes) and abnormal excitement or irritability (known as manic episodes). Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed that variations in the genes present on the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) locus are linked to an increased risk of BD.

Enzymes coded by FADS genes—FADS1 and FADS2—convert or “biosynthesize” omega-3 into the different forms required by the human body. Omega-3 fatty acids like (EPA) and (DHA) are crucial for the brain to function, and a reduction in the synthesizing activity of these molecules seems to increase susceptibility to bipolar mood swings.

Research on most diseases involves establishment of an animal model of the disease. So, keeping this knowledge in mind, a team of researchers including Dr. Takaoki Kasahara and Hirona Yamamoto from RIKEN Brain Science Institute and Dr. Tadafumi Kato from Juntendo University in Japan, used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create that lack both Fads1 and Fads2 genes.

Scientists unearth potential new therapeutic target for inflammatory diseases such as lupus and sepsis

Scientists working in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College Dublin have made an important breakthrough in understanding what goes wrong in our bodies during the progression of inflammatory diseases and—in doing so—unearthed a potential new therapeutic target.

The scientists have found that an enzyme called fumarate hydratase is repressed in macrophages, a frontline inflammatory cell type implicated in a range of diseases including lupus, arthritis, sepsis and COVID-19.

Professor Luke O’Neill, Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity, is the lead author of the research article that has just been published in the journal, Nature. He said, “No one has made a link from fumarate hydratase to inflammatory macrophages before and we feel that this process might be targetable to treat debilitating diseases like lupus, which is a nasty autoimmune that damages several parts of the body including the skin, kidneys and joints.”

Fresh Understanding of Aging in the Brain Offers Hope for Treating Neurological Diseases

Summary: As the brain ages, microglia adopt dysfunctional states that increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: TCD

Scientists from the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) have shed new light on aging processes in the brain. By linking the increased presence of specialised immune cells to conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury for the first time, they have unearthed a possible new target for therapies aimed at treating age-related neurological diseases.

Model illuminates environmental cues that may contribute to breast cancer recurrence

Nearly 270,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

According to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, about 70%–80% of these individuals experience estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, where need estrogen to grow. In terms of treatment, this presence of hormone receptors provides a nice handle for targeting tumors, say with therapies that knock out the tumor cell’s ability to bind to estrogen and prevent remaining from growing.

However, even if treated successfully, on average, one in five individuals with ER+ breast cancer experience a late recurrence when dormant in distant parts of the body, such as the , reactivate anywhere from five to over 20 years after .

Can We Program Our Cells?

Making living cells blink fluorescently like party lights may sound frivolous. But the demonstration that it’s possible could be a step toward someday programming our body’s immune cells to attack cancers more effectively and safely.

That’s the promise of the field called synthetic biology. While molecular biologists strip cells down to their component genes and molecules to see how they work, synthetic biologists tinker with cells to get them to perform new feats — discovering new secrets about how life works in the process. In this episode, Steven Strogatz talks with Michael Elowitz, a professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Heart disease risk: Protein test more accurate than cholesterol

The health of the heart and blood vessels is vital to body function. Early screening can help people understand their risks and potentially prevent adverse health outcomes.

Testing cholesterol levels is important, but another test can further help identify the risk for cardiovascular disease: apolipoprotein B-100 (ApoB) levels. This protein helps transport cholesterol throughout the body.

Testing for the level of this protein in the blood may help identify people who are more at risk for cardiovascular disease, even when cholesterol levels are normal.

Blurring the line between human and machine: growing electrodes in tissue

A new study has taken ‘biotechnology’ to a whole new level. Researchers have developed a gel that facilitates electrode growth in zebrafish and medicinal leech tissues.

Researchers from Linköping, Lund and Gothenburg universities (all Sweden) have developed a gel that becomes electrically conductive when injected into tissue, relying on molecules found in the body to trigger conductivity. This could lead to the development of further human–machine integrations that can help us understand complex biological functions and fight disease.

Previously, combining bioelectronics with living organisms’ signaling systems has been difficult and often relied on external signals, such as light or electrical energy. The current study’s bioelectronic gel bypasses these issues by being flexible and soft enough to interact with tissues while remaining sturdy enough to be injectable; additionally, the gel requires no external signals to become electrically conductive. Instead, the body’s endogenous molecular signals are enough for activation.

What Plants Are Saying About Us

Iwas never into house plants until I bought one on a whim—a prayer plant, it was called, a lush, leafy thing with painterly green spots and ribs of bright red veins. The night I brought it home I heard a rustling in my room. Had something scurried? A mouse? Three jumpy nights passed before I realized what was happening: The plant was moving. During the day, its leaves would splay flat, sunbathing, but at night they’d clamber over one another to stand at attention, their stems steadily rising as the leaves turned vertical, like hands in prayer.

“Who knew plants do stuff?” I marveled. Suddenly plants seemed more interesting. When the pandemic hit, I brought more of them home, just to add some life to the place, and then there were more, and more still, until the ratio of plants to household surfaces bordered on deranged. Bushwhacking through my apartment, I worried whether the plants were getting enough water, or too much water, or the right kind of light—or, in the case of a giant carnivorous pitcher plant hanging from the ceiling, whether I was leaving enough fish food in its traps. But what never occurred to me, not even once, was to wonder what the plants were thinking.

To understand how human minds work, he started with plants.