Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers at Umeå University has discovered that an enzyme in human cells has probably evolved from an ancient single-celled organism. The enzyme’s unique properties mean that it could be used as a building block in the design of new enzymes, for example in processing wood raw materials. The discoveries are presented in Science Advances.

Life on Earth is divided into three groups of organisms: bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, with humans belonging to the last group, the eukaryotes. One theory is that we evolved from archaea, which in turn may have evolved from bacteria.

Now, a team of researchers from the Department of Chemistry at Umeå University has discovered clear traces of an archaea (odinarchaeota) in an enzyme found in the nucleus of human cells. The human enzyme is called AK6 and has a variety of functions, such as energy metabolism, genome stabilization and programmed cell death.

The human genome has just over 20,000 genes coding for proteins. Yet, it produces at least ten times that many different non-coding RNA molecules, which can often take on more than one shape. At least some of this RNA structurome is functional in physiology or pathophysiology.

In an invited review for Nature Reviews Genetics, Danny Incarnato, a molecular geneticist from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), and his colleague Robert C. Spitale from the University of Irvine in California (USA) describe ways to develop the, as yet, largely untapped potential of RNA structures.

RNA is perhaps best known as the intermediate between genome and protein synthesis: messenger RNA molecules copy the genetic code of a gene in the cell’s nucleus and transport it to the cytoplasm, where ribosomes translate the code into a protein. However, RNA is also a key regulator of almost every cellular process and the structures that are adopted by RNA molecules are thought to often be key to their functions.

A paralyzed man who cannot speak or type was able to spell out over 1,000 words using a neuroprosthetic device that translates his brain waves into full sentences, US researchers said Tuesday.

“Anything is possible,” was one of the man’s favorite phrases to spell out, said the first author of a new study on the research, Sean Metzger of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

Continue reading “Brainwave-reading implant lets paralyzed man spell out 1,100 words” »

A new approach to stem cell therapy that uses antibodies instead of traditional immunosuppressant drugs robustly preserves cells in mouse brains and has potential to fast-track trials in humans, a Michigan Medicine study suggests.

For this study, researchers used monoclonal antibodies to suppress the immune system in mice and compared the results to traditional immunosuppression with the medications tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. They tracked implanted human neural stem cell survival using luciferase, the protein that makes fireflies glow.

Results published in Clinical and Translational Medicine reveal that suppression with monoclonal antibodies enabled long-term survival of human stem cell transplants in mouse brains for at least six to eight months, while the cell grafts did not survive more than two weeks in most animals when using standard immunosuppressant drugs.

Are online classes the great equalizer?🤣

New psychology findings suggest that attractive students earn higher grades in school, but for female students, this beauty premium disappears when classes are taught remotely. The findings were published in the journal Economic Letters.

A large body of research suggests that physical appearance has an impact on a person’s success. For example, attractive people tend to earn more money and report higher life satisfaction than less attractive people. Interestingly, scholars have yet to agree on the explanation behind this beauty premium.

Continue reading “Attractive female students no longer earned higher grades when classes moved online during COVID-19” »

In a study recently published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers from Kanazawa University use a method called “lasso-grafting” to design therapeutics with enhanced longevity and brain penetration.

Cell growth and repair are stimulated by biomolecules known as cytokines and growth factors. Unfortunately, delivering adequate concentrations of these molecules to the brain for treating neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease is challenging as they are either cleared out of the blood very quickly or do not penetrate neural tissue effectively.

A research team led by Kunio Matsumoto and Katsuya Sakai at Kanazawa University in collaboration with Junichi Takagi, Osaka University and Hiroaki Suga, the University of Tokyo has now used a technique called “lasso-grafting” to design molecules that replicate growth factors with longer retention in the body and brain penetration.

Based on marketing activation events the company ran over the summer in Seattle, Austin, and Palo Alto, the outlook for their first product looks pretty rosy. They gave away bags of salad (which were clearly labeled as being gene-edited) consisting of red-and green-leaf mustard greens, and asked people to complete a short survey about it. Adams estimated that more than 6,000 people tried the salads, and over 90 percent responded that they were “very motivated” or “somewhat motivated” to buy the product.

A New Green Revolution?

Continue reading “From Pitless Cherries to Softer Kale, This Startup Is Using CRISPR to Make Better Produce” »

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule similar to DNA that is essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. Both are nucleic acids, but unlike DNA, RNA is single-stranded. An RNA strand has a backbone made of alternating sugar (ribose) and phosphate groups. Attached to each sugar is one of four bases—adenine (A), uracil (U), cytosine ©, or guanine (G). Different types of RNA exist in the cell: messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA).” RNA is an important information transmitter in our cells and acts as a blueprint for protein production. When freshly formed RNA is processed, introns are removed to produce mature mRNA coding for protein. This cutting is known as “splicing,” and it is controlled by a complex known as the “spliceosome.”

“We found a gene in worms, called PUF60, that is involved in RNA splicing and regulates life span,” says Max Planck scientist Dr. Wenming Huang who made the discovery.

This gene’s mutations resulted in inaccurate splicing and the retention of introns within certain RNAs. As a result, less of the corresponding proteins were produced from this RNA. Surprisingly, worms with the PUF60 gene mutation survived significantly longer than normal worms.

A woman once baffled doctors when she came back to life after being dead for more than 17 hours. Velma Thomas had a heart attack at her home in Virginia in 2008 and was rushed to hospital. While there she had two more heart attacks and was placed on life support — in all, her heart stopped beating three times and she was clinically dead, with no brain activity, for 17 hours.