Lifeboat Foundation

Photosynthetic bacteria that swarm the oceans could acquire beneficial genetic material using ‘tycheposons’.

An international team of researchers, led by Durham University in the UK, has uncovered previously unknown ways in which nature encodes biological information in a 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).

In recent years, modern medicine has provided us with everything from new vaccines to protect us from deadly diseases through to groundbreaking cancer treatments. It’s provided us with hope on countless occasions – including back in 2011 when doctors unveiled a machine that could allow a human to live without a heart, one of the body’s most important organs.

Summary: A new stem cell therapy approach eliminates established brain tumors and provides long-term immunity, training the immune system to prevent cancer from returning.

Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents.

U.S. health regulators gave early approval to a new Alzheimer’s drug from Eisai Co. and Biogen Inc., the most promising to date in a new class of medicines that may help slow cognitive decline caused by the disease.

The Food and Drug Administration granted conditional approval to the drug, called lecanemab, based on an early study finding it reduced levels of a sticky protein called amyloid from the brains of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s. The companies will sell it under the brand name Leqembi.

You may have come home with it after a recent trip to New England. Or you may have gotten it from that friend or family member who flew in from New York over the holidays.

The newest Omicron subvariant of concern is XBB.1.5, and it has arrived in Southern California. This version of the coronavirus is more contagious and more resistant to existing immunity than any of its predecessors.

“It’s just the latest and greatest and most infectious variant,” said Paula Cannon, a virologist at USC. “It’s amazing to me that this virus keeps finding one more trick to make itself even more infectious, even more transmissible.”

Summary: Lab-created retinal cells created from human stem cells can reach out and connect to neighboring cells, a new study reports. The cells have the capacity to replace damaged retinal cells and carry sensory information. The findings could pave the way for clinical trials for the treatment of a range of diseases associated with vision loss and blindness.

Source: University of Wisconsin.

Retinal cells grown from stem cells can reach out and connect with neighbors, according to a new study, completing a “handshake” that may show the cells are ready for trials in humans with degenerative eye disorders.

Prochlorococcus is the smallest and numerically most abundant cyanobacterium in the oceans. It has a large pangenome and hypervariable genomic islands linked to niche differentiation and phage defense. The smallest and most numerous cyanobacterium in the oceans is Prochlorococcus.

According to recent research by MIT, these microscopic bacteria communicate with one another by a previously unidentified mechanism, even when they are far apart. Because of this, they can pass along entire gene sets, such as those enabling them to assimilate a certain type of nutrition or protect themselves against viruses, even in areas where their population in the water is quite low.

According to the findings, a new class of genetic agents involved in horizontal gene transfer —in which genetic material is directly transferred across animals, whether they are of the same species or not—has been discovered by methods other than lineal descent. Tycheposons are DNA sequences that can spontaneously detach from surrounding DNA and can include multiple complete genes, according to scientists.

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