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COVID-19 turned city streets into pop-up restaurants. What if we didn’t go back?

Dr. Scott O’Neill (PhD, FAA, FAAAS) is Founder of the World Mosquito Program (https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/en/work/about-us/team/scott-oneill) and Professor at Monash University (https://lens.monash.edu/@scott-oneill), where he leads a large international research collaboration (formerly known as Eliminate Dengue), which is focused on developing the Wolbachia bacteria as a novel method to block the transmission of dengue fever and other mosquito-transmitted viral diseases, such as Zika and chikungunya. This global, not-for-profit program is currently conducting field trials of the Wolbachia method in multiple countries, in areas where these diseases are endemic, working closely with communities, local health organizations and governments to implement its self-sustaining method through controlled releases.

Dr. O’Neill has spent his academic career at the University of Illinois, Yale University, the University of Queensland and Monash, where he was previously the dean of the Faculty of Science.

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The naked mole rat lives much longer than iI’s than other members of its species. Can it’s ability to repair DNA and fold proteins be employed in Humans to extend our lifespan?

Several animal species are considered to exhibit what is called negligible senescence, i.e. they do not show signs of functional decline or any increase of mortality with age. Recent studies in naked mole rat and long-lived sea urchins showed that these species do not alter their gene-expression profiles with age as much as other organisms do. This is consistent with exceptional endurance of naked mole rat tissues to various genotoxic stresses. We conjectured, therefore, that the lifelong transcriptional stability of an organism may be a key determinant of longevity. We analyzed the stability of a simple genetic-network model and found that under most common circumstances, such a gene network is inherently unstable. Over a time it undergoes an exponential accumulation of gene-regulation deviations leading to death.

In a bizarre experiment researchers from US and Russia connected the circulatory systems of young and old mice for a whole 12 weeks, slowing the older animals’ cellular aging and increasing their lifespan by as much as 10 percent.

The study expands on previous research showing there are components in young mammalian blood worth investigating for anti-aging health benefits.

As impressive as the results seem, they fall well short of supporting whole-blood transfusion treatments in humans. Putting aside the huge biological leap between mice and humans, there are numerous known and severe risks associated with such treatments for the receiver, not to mention questionable ethics of donation.

A team at Nottingham Trent University analyzed the full set of more than 11,000 gene transcripts inside muscle cells, finding that the ‘development pathways’—the different ways in which genes work together to regenerate muscle—become weakened in aged cells.

The study may help to shed some light on why muscle damage take longer to recover from as we age. The study is published in the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.

The researchers developed a new approach to examine muscle cells in vitro in the laboratory to enable them to observe the different molecular mechanisms that drive muscle aging.

Your gums help to keep your teeth and mouth healthy, but they often get overlooked when it comes to dental care. Gums play an important role in the overall health of your mouth, here’s how to take good care of them.

In men, loss of the Y chromosome in bladder cancer cells helped tumors evade the immune system and grow unchecked, a new study shows.

Inaugurated in 2018, the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP) endeavours to construct comprehensive spatial maps that feature a range of biomolecules such as RNA, proteins, and metabolites in human organs at single-cell resolution. This collection features the research, datasets, methods and tools generated by this project, accompanied by a Perspective, a News and Views, and links to other resources.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Biomedical Science, researchers investigate whether M2 macrophage-derived exosomes (M2-Exos) could prevent inflammation-associated damage during sepsis-associated acute lung injury (ALI) by modulating abnormal polymorphonuclear neutrophil (PMN) behaviors.

Study: Exosomal PGE2 from M2 macrophages inhibits neutrophil recruitment and NET formation through lipid mediator class switching in sepsis. Image Credit: Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock.com.