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Scientists created a synthetic genome for a bacterium by stringing together building blocks of DNA — and the new genome made the microbe immune to viral infection.

Even when exposed to a cocktail of bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — the designer Escherichia coli remained unscathed, while an unmodified version of the bacterium quickly succumbed to the viral attack and died, the research team reported in their new study, published Thursday (June 3) in the journal Science. That’s because viruses usually hijack a cell’s internal machinery to make new copies of themselves, but in the designer E. coli, that machinery no longer existed.

This is a technological triumph.

Twenty-one years ago, researchers announced the first “draft” of sequencing the complete human genome. It was a monumental achievement, but the sequence was still missing about 8 percent of the genome. Now, scientists working together around the world say they’ve finally filled in that reclusive 8 percent.

If their work holds up to peer review and it turns out they really did sequence and assemble the human genome in its entirety, gaps and all, it could change the future of medicine.

Continue reading “Scientists Say They’ve Finally Sequenced the Entire Human Genome. Yes, All of It” »

Scientists may have found a promising new treatment for Covid-19 after an experimental oral antiviral drug demonstrated the ability to prevent the coronavirus from replicating, the National Institutes of Health said Thursday, citing a new study.

The drug, called TEMPOL, can reduce Covid-19 infections by impairing an enzyme the virus needs to make copies of itself once it’s inside human cells, which could potentially limit the severity of the disease, researchers at the NIH said. The drug was tested in an experiment of cell cultures with live viruses.

“We urgently need additional effective, accessible treatments for COVID-19,” Dr. Diana W. Bianchi, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, wrote in a statement. “An oral drug that prevents SARS-CoV-2 from replicating would be an important tool for reducing the severity of the disease.”

“We began this work last spring with the understanding that, like all viruses, mutations would occur in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19,” said senior study author Barton F. Haynes, M.D., director of the DHVI. “The mRNA vaccines were already under development, so we were looking for ways to sustain their efficacy once those variants appeared.

This approach not only provided protection against SARS-CoV-2, but the antibodies induced by the vaccine also neutralised variants of concern that originated in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. And the induced antibodies reacted with quite a large panel of coronaviruses.

Haynes’ team – whose work is published in Nature – built on earlier studies involving SARS, a respiratory illness caused by SARS-CoV-1. The original SARS virus emerged in November 2002, lasting until May 2004, with more than 8000 cases and 774 deaths, mostly in East Asia. The DHVI team found that a person infected with SARS developed antibodies capable of neutralising multiple coronaviruses, suggesting that a pan-coronavirus might be possible.

Global Automobile Infotainment System Market 2020 Industry Research, Review, Growth, Segmentation, Key Players Analysis and Forecast to 2025.

MIT researchers have developed the first fiber with digital capabilities that is able to capture, store, analyze and derive activity after it has been sewn into a shirt.

Yoel Fink, professor of materials science and electrical engineering, lead researcher at the Electronics Research Laboratory and lead author of the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for monitoring physical performance, medical conclusions and early disease detection are used.

Continue reading “Engineers create a programmable fiber | MIT News” »

The maximum lifespan for humans is between 120 and 150, according to a longitudinal analysis of blood markers, published in Nature.

This in turn led the team to an FDA-approved drug called Sirturo, which is used to treat tuberculosis and works by targeting this process in bacteria. In vivo animal experiments showed that the drug could target the fuel supply of these ultra-fit cancer cells and selectively create a “power failure” in them, while leaving healthy cells unharmed. This blocked 85 percent of metastasis in the animal experiments.

Leveraging a newfound ability to identify the “fittest” metastatic cancer cells, scientists at the UK’s University of Salford have discovered that an already approved drug can be deployed to cut off their fuel supply, while leaving normal healthy cells unharmed.

Metastatic cancer cells are dangerous, fast-moving cells cancer cells that have spread away from the primary site to other parts of the body where they can give rise to new tumors. These cells have often already survived chemotherapy and radiation treatments which makes tackling them difficult, though scientists continue to learn more about their behavior and how they might be targeted for better outcomes.

Continue reading “Tuberculosis drug causes ‘power failure’ in ultra-fit cancer cells” »

The team says that the technique could be used to develop new vaccines against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and potentially even wipe out some dangerous strains in a similar way to how smallpox was eradicated.

Pathogens like bacteria and viruses are extremely good at evolving in response to drugs, which can render vaccines ineffective. But now, researchers at ETH Zurich have found a way to weaponize that ability against them, forcing the bugs down harmless evolutionary dead ends.

Continue reading “Experimental vaccine forces bacteria down an evolutionary dead end” »

The published results indicate several possible methods of preventing metastasis: immunotherapy based on interleukin-15, which increases the number of natural killer cells in the tissue; interferon gamma therapy, which maintains the dormant state of the cancer cells; and inhibitors of the mechanism through which the hepatic stellate cells paralyze the natural killer cells. Appropriate therapies already exist for all these approaches, but they still need to be clinically tested.

Metastases can develop in the body even years after apparently successful cancer treatment. They originate from cancer cells that migrated from the original tumor to other organs, and which can lie there inactive for a considerable time. Researchers have now discovered how these “sleeping cells” are kept dormant and how they wake up and form fatal metastases. They have reported their findings in the journal Nature.

A tumor can leave behind an ominous legacy in the body: cancer cells can migrate from the tumor to other tissues in the body, where they survive after treatment in a kind of hibernation called dormancy. Currently, cancer medicine relies on monitoring cancer patients after their initial treatment in order to detect the awakening of these cells to form metastases. One of the biggest questions in cancer research is what exactly causes this transition.

Continue reading “Researchers identify how to prevent cancer metastases” »