Whereas textbooks depict metabolism in perfect homeostasis, disturbances occur in real life. One particularly relevant disturbance, caused by excess food and alcohol consumption and exacerbated by genetics, is reductive stress. New work by Goodman et al. identifies a biomarker of reductive stress and uses a gene therapy solution in mice. This work suggests how exercise and an accessible nutritional technology can synergistically increase catabolism and relieve reductive stress.
Sirtuins, telomeres, A.I. experiment with vitamin A and personalized medicine, a bit of everything here.
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Not all viruses set out to cause widespread death and sickness — some have the potential to fight cancer, according to new research.
Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan have genetically engineered adenoviruses, which is a family of viruses that cause mild symptoms, to replicate inside cancer cells and kill them, according to a new paper in the journal Cancers.
To do this, Fumihiro Higashino, a molecular oncologist, and his team inserted adenylate-uridylate-rich elements (AREs) from two human genes — a stabilizing element found in a type of macromolecule present in all biological cells — into two strains of the virus to help specifically attack cancer cells.
Masks and testing are necessary to combat asymptomatic spread in aerosols and droplets.
Respiratory infections occur through the transmission of virus-containing droplets (5 to 10 μm) and aerosols (≤5 μm) exhaled from infected individuals during breathing, speaking, coughing, and sneezing. Traditional respiratory disease control measures are designed to reduce transmission by droplets produced in the sneezes and coughs of infected individuals. However, a large proportion of the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appears to be occurring through airborne transmission of aerosols produced by asymptomatic individuals during breathing and speaking (1–3). Aerosols can accumulate, remain infectious in indoor air for hours, and be easily inhaled deep into the lungs. For society to resume, measures designed to reduce aerosol transmission must be implemented, including universal masking and regular, widespread testing to identify and isolate infected asymptomatic individuals.
Humans produce respiratory droplets ranging from 0.1 to 1000 μm. A competition between droplet size, inertia, gravity, and evaporation determines how far emitted droplets and aerosols will travel in air (4, 5). Respiratory droplets will undergo gravitational settling faster than they evaporate, contaminating surfaces and leading to contact transmission. Smaller aerosols (≤5 μm) will evaporate faster than they can settle, are buoyant, and thus can be affected by air currents, which can transport them over longer distances. Thus, there are two major respiratory virus transmission pathways: contact (direct or indirect between people and with contaminated surfaces) and airborne inhalation.
Some immune responses may be enough to make a person impervious to reinfection, but scientists don’t yet know how the human body reacts to this new virus.
CRISPR gene-editing trials have taken off—and may hold the key to medical breakthroughs.
[Illustration: Jamie Cullen]
Peter Piot, 71, one of the giants of Ebola and AIDS research, is still battling a coronavirus infection that hit him “like a bus” in March.
Vox interviewed Bill Gates in 2015 about his fears of a global pandemic. Now that we’re living in that reality, what does he think comes next?
Watch our 2015 interview with Bill Gates here: https://youtu.be/9AEMKudv5p0
This interview was conducted on April 25, 2020. You can listen to the rest of the interview on the Ezra Klein Show, available wherever you listen to podcasts, or read it here: https://bit.ly/2TCZx9O
For more information on The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s efforts to fight coronavirus: https://bit.ly/3elJyog
For more of our sources:
The latest data on the pandemic around the world: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
Politicians have become more cautious about immunisation prospects. They are right to be.
Meticulously organised fatty acids are responsible for the bacteria-killing, superhydrophobic nanostructures on cicada wings. The team behind the discovery hopes that its work will inspire antimicrobial surfaces that mimic cicada wings for use in settings such as hospitals.
When in contact with dust, pollen and – importantly – water, the cicadas’ superhydrophobic wings repel matter to self-clean. These extraordinary properties are down to fatty acid nanopillars, periodically spaced and of nearly uniform height, that cover the wings.
Past work has generally only described cicadas’ wings as ‘waxy’ and not explained how these fatty acids nanopillars give rise to unique traits. Nor is it known exactly why cicada wings evolved antibacterial nanostructures. These gaps in our knowledge exist, in part, because of how diverse the cicada family is. But Marianne Alleyne’s group at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, along with colleagues at Sandia National Labs, set out to understand what role chemistry plays in the wings of two evolutionarily divergent species.
