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A new family of DNA elements which control the activation of certain genes known to cause a rare disease known as MSL3 syndrome in children has been identified.

The study led by researchers at the Queen Mary University of London and published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology shines a new light on the mechanism behind this poorly understood disease, hoping that it can lead to better treatments for this and similar diseases in the future.

Mutations in the MSL3 gene are known to cause a rare disease in children called MSL3 syndrome—a newly discovered disease with only around 50 registered diagnoses worldwide, although scientists predict that more cases are currently undiagnosed.

Elon Musk is exploring the possibility of upgrading the human brain to allow humans to compete with sentient AI through ‘a brain computer interface’ created by his company Neuralink. “I created [Neuralink] specifically to address the AI symbiosis problem, which I think is an existential threat,” says Musk.

While Neuralink has just received FDA approval to start clinical trials in humans (intended to empower those with paralysis), only time will tell whether this technology will succeed in augmenting human intelligence as Musk first intended. But the use of AI to augment human intelligence brings up some interesting ethical questions as to which tools are acceptable (a subject to be discussed… More.

Chat GPT may have an effect on critical thinking. Also early adopters may be at an advantage with GPT. Study with students.

Continue reading “ChatGPT — A Human Upgrade Or Future Malaise?” »

“A new way for artists, record producers, and streaming services to delight listeners with new music.”

Predicting hit music is no easy feat. Popular music streaming services give people a fresh mixtape of music daily or weekly.

Spotify does this with its “Discover Weekly” feature that gives users a playlist of 30 new songs every Monday. Another subscription-based music service Pandora introduces new music using “Personalized Soundtracks” after an analysis of 450 attributes via its Music Genome Project.

A new study shows how space travel may modify the gene expression in white blood cells (WBCs), which fight infections.

Beyond Earth, a less gravity environment poses a significant risk to the health of astronauts, particularly during longer-duration missions.

Understanding how the human body reacts to the space environment is crucial for the long term and designing countermeasures to protect astronauts’ health.

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Watch this video ad free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-insane-engineering-of-mri-machines.

Continue reading “The Insane Engineering of MRI Machines” »

The Y chromosome is the smallest chromosome, and holds the least amount of genes, but scientists are still learning about all of its biological functions. Research has shown that many men start to lose Y chromosomes in blood cells as they get older, and this phenomenon has been linked to some disorders including heart disease and now, cancer. Some studies have suggested that the loss of the Y chromosome may help explain why men tend to die at slightly younger ages compared to women, or why there are sex differences in some types of cancer… Two new studies reported in Nature have explored the link between cancer and the loss of the Y chromosome.

One study used a mouse model to show that a specific gene on the Y chromosome known as KDM5D increases the chance that some types of colorectal cancer will metastasize. The other research report showed that when some cells lose the Y chromosome, bladder tumors are better at evading the immune system, and the risk of aggressive bladder cancer increases.

In a recent study published in the European Journal of Nutrition, scientists investigate the association between diet and cardiometabolic multimorbidity risk among British men between the ages of 60 and 79. To this end, consuming more seafood and fish was linked to a lower risk of first cardiometabolic disease transitioning to cardiometabolic multimorbidity.

Study: Prospective associations between diet quality, dietary components, and risk of cardiometabolic multimorbidity in older British men. Image Credit: fizkes / Shutterstock.com.

People who owned black-and-white television sets until the 1980s didn’t know what they were missing until they got a color TV. A similar switch could happen in the world of genomics as researchers at the Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) have developed a technique called Genome Architecture Mapping (“GAM”) to peer into the genome and see it in glorious technicolor. GAM reveals information about the genome’s spatial architecture that is invisible to scientists using solely Hi-C, a workhorse tool developed in 2009 to study DNA interactions, reports a new study in Nature Methods by the Pombo lab.

“With a black-and-white TV, you can see the shapes but everything looks gray,” says Professor Ana Pombo, a molecular biologist and head of the Epigenetic Regulation and Chromatin Architecture lab. “But if you have a color TV and look at flowers, you realize that they are red, yellow and white and we were unaware of it. Similarly, there’s also information in the way the genome is folded in three-dimensions that we have not been aware of.”

Understanding DNA organization can reveal the basis of health and disease. Our cells pack a 2-meter-long genome into a roughly 10 micrometer-diameter nucleus. The packaging is done precisely so that regulatory DNA comes in contact with the right genes at the right times and turns them on and off. Changes to the three-dimensional configuration can disrupt this process and cause disease.

Ultrasound is most familiar to us as a non-invasive imaging technology used during pregnancy – now it is in clinical trials as a powerful new tool for treating all sorts of medical conditions.

By Kayt Sukel