Lifeboat Foundation

Once aboard, the four-member team faces a busy workload of more than 200 experiments and technology demonstrations, ranging from studies of human cell growth in space to controlling combustible materials in microgravity.

Some of the research will help pave the way for future long-duration human expeditions to the Moon and beyond under NASA’s Artemis program, its successor to Apollo, the U.S. space agency said.

The ISS crew also is responsible for performing maintenance and repairs aboard the station, and to prepare for the arrival and departure of other astronauts and cargo payloads.

A new study from Sanford Burnham Prebys has discovered a drug that can spur liver regeneration in patients with Alagille syndrome.

For the first time, research conducted by Associate Professor Duc Dong, Ph.D. has revealed that the detrimental effects of Alagille syndrome, a genetic disorder that has no cure, can be reversed using a single drug. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have the potential to revolutionize the treatment approach for this rare condition, and could also shed light on more widespread diseases.

“Alagille syndrome is widely considered an incurable disease, but we believe we’re on the way to changing that,” says Dong, who is also the associate dean of admissions for Sanford Burnham Prebys’ graduate school. “We aim to advance this drug into clinical trials, and our results demonstrate its effectiveness for the first time.”

According to a recent study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, a protein that prepares DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

Adding evidence to the importance of early development, a new study links neutral maternal behavior toward infants with an epigenetic change in children related to stress response.

Epigenetics are molecular processes independent of DNA that influence gene behavior. In this study, researchers found that neutral or awkward behavior of mothers with their babies at 12 months correlated with an epigenetic change called methylation, or the addition of methane and carbon molecules, on a gene called NR3C1 when the children were 7 years old. This gene has been associated with regulating the body’s response to stress.

“There is evidence of a relationship between the quality of maternal-infant interaction and methylation of this gene though these are small effects in response to a relatively small variation in interaction,” said Elizabeth Holdsworth, a Washington State University biological anthropologist and lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Human Biology.

Poor sleep could lead to between two and seven years worth of heightened heart disease risk and even premature death, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Sydney in collaboration with Southern Denmark University.

The study analyzed data from more than 300,000 middle-aged adults from the UK Biobank and found that different disturbances to sleep are associated with different durations of compromised cardiovascular health later in life compared to healthy sleepers.

In particular, men with clinical sleep-related breathing disorders lost nearly seven years of cardiovascular disease-free life compared to those without these conditions, and women lost over seven years. Importantly, even general poor sleep, such as insufficient sleep, insomnia complaints, snoring, going to bed late, and daytime sleepiness is associated with a loss of around two years of normal heart health in men and women.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has made a discovery that may have implications for therapeutic gene editing strategies, cancer diagnostics and therapies and other advancements in biotechnology.

Kathy Meek, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborators at Cambridge University and the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a previously unknown aspect of how DNA double-stranded breaks are repaired.

Continue reading “DNA repair discovery could improve biotechnology” »

Summary: Using AI, researchers identified Probucol, an existing anti-cholesterol drug that promotes the disposal of mitochondria, as a potential new therapy for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Source: PLOS

The words that researchers use to describe their results can be harnessed to discover potential new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study publishing March 2nd in the open access journal PLoS Biology by Angus McQuibban of the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues.

So much here I never knew:

Dr. Axel Montagne is a chancellor’s fellow and group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. His group aims to understand how, when, and where critical components of the blood-brain barrier become dysfunctional preceding dementia and in the earliest stages of age-related cognitive decline. With this knowledge, they hope to develop precise treatments targeting brain vasculature to protect brain function.

Continue reading “Axel Montagne, PhD, on Solving Alzheimer’s and Dementia with Blood-Brain Barrier Repair” »

There is this picture—you may have seen it. It is black and white and has two silhouettes facing one another. Or maybe you see the black vase with a white background. But now, you likely see both.

It is an example of a visual illusion that reminds us to consider what we did not see at first glance, what we may not be able to see, or what our experience has taught us to know—there is always more to the picture or maybe even a different image to consider altogether. Researchers are finding the process in our brain that allows us to see these visual distinctions may not be happening the same way in the brains of children with autism spectrum disorder. They may be seeing these illusions differently.

“How our brain puts together pieces of an object or visual scene is important in helping us interact with our environments,” said Emily Knight, MD, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and first author on a study out today in the Journal of Neuroscience. “When we view an object or picture, our brains use processes that consider our experience and contextual information to help anticipate sensory inputs, address ambiguity, and fill in the missing information.”