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Biochemists have long imagined that autocatalytic sets can explain the origin of life. Now a new mathematical approach to these sets has even broader implications. What makes the approach so powerful is that the mathematics does not depend on the nature of chemistry--it is substrate independent. So the building blocks in an autocatalytic set need not be molecules at all but any units that can manipulate other units in the required way.
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HIV patients treated with genetically modified T cells remain healthy up to 11 years after initial therapy, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report in the new issue of Science Translational Medicine. The results provide a framework for the use of this type of gene therapy as a powerful weapon in the treatment of HIV, cancer, and a wide variety of other diseases.
"We have 43 patients and they are all healthy," says senior author Carl June, MD, a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Penn Medicine. "And out of those, 41 patients show long term persistence of the modified T cells in their bodies."
Early gene therapy studies raised concern that gene transfer to cells via retroviruses might lead to leukemia in a substantial proportion of patients, due to mutations that may arise in genes when new DNA is inserted. The new long-term data, however, allay that concern in T cells, further buoying the hope generated by work June's team published in 2011 showing the eradication of tumors in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia using a similar strategy.
"If you have a safe way to modify cells in patients with HIV, you can potentially develop curative approaches," June says. "Patients now have to take medicine for their whole lives to keep their virus under control, but there are a number of gene therapy approaches that might be curative." A lifetime of anti-HIV drug therapy, by contrast, is expensive and can be accompanied by significant side effects.
They also note that the approach the Penn Medicine team studied may allow patients with cancers and other diseases to avoid the complications and mortality risks associated with more conventional treatments, since patients treated with the modified T cells did not require drugs to weaken their own immune systems in order for the modified cells to proliferate in their bodies after infusion, as is customary for cancer patients who receive stem cell transplants. Delete the scoop?
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Three-dimensional printing allows for the production of highly detailed objects through a process known as additive manufacturing. Traditional, mold-injection methods to create models or parts have several limitations, the most important of which is a difficulty in making highly complex products in a timely, cost-effective manner. However, gradual improvements in three-dimensional printing technology have resulted in both high-end and economy instruments that are now available for the facile production of customized models. These printers have the ability to extrude high-resolution objects with enough detail to accurately represent in vivo images generated from a preclinical X-ray CT scanner. With proper data collection, surface rendering, and stereolithographic editing, it is now possible and inexpensive to rapidly produce detailed skeletal and soft tissue structures from X-ray CT data. Even in the early stages of development, the anatomical models produced by three-dimensional printing appeal to both educators and researchers who can utilize the technology to improve visualization proficiency.
The real benefits of this method result from the tangible experience a researcher can have with data that cannot be adequately conveyed through a computer screen. The translation of pre-clinical 3D data to a physical object that is an exact copy of the test subject is a powerful tool for visualization and communication, especially for relating imaging research to students, or those in other fields. Here, we provide a detailed method for printing plastic models of bone and organ structures derived from X-ray CT scans utilizing an Albira X-ray CT system in conjunction with PMOD, ImageJ, Meshlab, Netfabb, and ReplicatorG software packages. Delete the scoop?
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A Japanese company, Pioneer, has unveiled a service that creates 3D holograms of unborn fetuses. Ultrasound photos - sooo old school from last century! Make way for hologram-babies. The service uses data gathered during a routine pregnancy checkup. The information from an echogram is used to create a 3D digital model of the baby on a computer. That digital model is then printed using Pioneer's compact hologram printer, first developed end of 2012. Within two hours, you have a stunning, but slightly creepy, multi-colored 3D image that lets you see your child from a range of angles.
Holograms are recordings of "light fields", the sum of the scattered light reflecting off a surface in a range of directions. (As opposed to an ordinary photograph, which captures only the light scattered in one direction). By capturing the light from a range of directions, the "light field", the hologram allows a 3D recreation of the original object. Creating a hologram from scratch is a straightforward but tricky process. (See our "How To" here). But the printer developed by Pioneer bypasses all of that, at least as far as you're concerned.
"Previously, holograms were produced by making a model of the subject, shining two lights on the model, and photographing it. That method involved a lot of work, because it required a darkroom, knowledge of techniques, and specialized equipment," said a spokesperson for Pioneer. "But with the device we've developed, even if you don't have the actual object, as long as you have a CG design, then that can be used to record a hologram easily."
Advances in holographic technology have seen holograms invade various areas of modern life. Researchers at Cambridge are investigating the security applications of holograms embedded in carbon nanotubes; it has been suggested that infrared holographic images could aid firefighters; and in 2012, Coachella festival in California featured a performance from a holographic Tupac -- though it wasn't a "hologram"in the strictest sense of the word. Delete the scoop?
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How does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly? Scientists from the University of Manchester have taken 3D images of a caterpillar and watched the whole process using micro-CT scanning technology.
Studies of model insects have greatly increased our understanding of animal development. Until now, studying metamorphosing insects has mainly involved dissection. But as you might know, dissection destroys the specimen. So researchers were never able to follow the full development of a creature. So researchers came up with a new idea - using micro-computed tomography, or micro-CT scanning to get images of the insects. Two teams of scientists, Tristan Rowe and Russell Garwood from the University of Manchester and Thomas Simonsen from London's Natural History Museum use high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) to overcome these issues, and three-dimensionally image numerous lepidopteran pupae throughout their development.
The researchers scanned nine painted lady butterflies in their chrysalis, over a period of 16 days. The study has revealed — in three dimensions at various stages in development — a number of the organ systems, principally the tracheae and portions of the gut. The insect's guts change shape within the body, but never disappear entirely. It also demonstrates early and rapid development of the tracheae, which become visible in scans just 12 h after pupation.
"This suggests that there is less remodelling of the tracheal system than previously expected, and is methodologically important because the tracheal system is an often-understudied character system in development." Note the researchers in their paper.
Researchers say that this form of time-lapse CT-scanning they've developed could allow faster and more detailed developmental studies on a wider range of taxa than is presently possible.
However, there are a number of limitations when applying micro-CT to insects. A number of tissues, for example, the muscles and central nervous system — are not resolved in the current scans due to lack of contrast. And ionizing radiation causes tissue damage and thus risks altering the development of the specimen when repeatedly scanned. This technique doesn't drastically revolutionise what we knew about metamorphosis, but it does provide some small insights and gives scientists new options for their experiments. Delete the scoop?
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The experiment is proof of principle that one brain can transmit information to another without visual or tactile cues.
It's not quite telepathy, but it's the closest anyone has ever come to getting a mammal to read another mammal's mind. A research team led by neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University has wired together the brains of two rats, allowing them transmit information between each other and cooperate. The results could help improve the design of neural-controlled prosthetic devices. And perhaps more than that, they also show that one day we could network brains as well as computers, or communicate by translating neural activity in the brain into electronic signals.
In the experiment, the Duke scientists first trained two rats to press one of two levers when a particular light switched on. Next, they then connected the animals' brains with tiny electrodes, each a fraction the size of a human hair. The electrodes linked the parts of the rats' brains that process motor signals. Rat number one was called the "encoder" and rat number two was the "decoder." The first rat's job was to receive the visual cue to press the lever. If it got it right, it got a reward.
As the encoder rat did its task, the electrical activity in the encoder rat's brain was then translated into a signal and transmitted to the decoder rat. That rat would then press its own lever. For the second rat, though, there was no light cue to tell it which corresponding lever was correct. It could only go by the signal it received from the other rat. It hit the correct lever an average of about 64 percent of the time, and sometimes up to 72 percent -- much better than if it were only doing it by chance.
To confirm that this was an effect of the signals from the encoder rat's brain, Nicolelis and his team gave the decoder rat the same stimulation, but this time from a computer. They got a similar result.
Another experiment tested whether the rat's brain could transmit information about touch. This time the rats were trained to put their nose through an opening and, using their whiskers, distinguish whether the opening was wide or narrow. For wide openings, the rats were taught to poke a computer port on their right. For narrow openings, they poked to the left.
Once trained, the rats were wired up to each other. When the encoder rat poked the relevant port, the scientists recorded the brain activity and sent the signal to the decoder rat. The decoder chose the correct side – left or right – to poke 60 to 65 percent of the time. Delete the scoop?
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Tropical rainforests are known to harbor a high biodiversity of untold species, many of them unknown and unnamed by scientists as of yet. Insects, especially beetles, make up a large proportion of this undiscovered life on Earth.
Experts in remote tropical countries’ fauna such as the wilderness of New Guinea, Alexander Riedel of the Natural History Museum Karlsruhe (SMNK) and Michael Balke of the Zoological State Collection Munich (SNSB) know this well. They have discovered a special “hyperdiverse” case, the weevil genus Trigonopterus. The jungles of New Guinea are home to hundreds of distinct species, most of which have not been recorded by scientists. It would take more than a lifetime to describe this huge diversity using traditional approaches, but time is short. Forests are disappearing for the sake of expanding palm oil plantations on this island, and good arguments are needed in the battle for the conservation of each hectare of primary forest.
“This called for a new approach”, said Dr Riedel. “A portion of each weevil species’ DNA was sequenced, which helped to sort out and diagnose species efficiently. Besides, we have taken high-resolution photographs of each weevil that will be uploaded to Species ID, along with a short scientific description. More than 100 species were brought to the light of science and public attention this way right now – about five times faster than possible with traditional techniques!”
That just left naming the new species. The scientists tackled this problem with an equally innovative idea: using the Papua New Guinea phonebook. Many of the new species were named for popular family names found in the yellowpages, like the Trigonopterus moreaorum, which is based on the family name “Morea.” The families might not even guess the honor they have been given – a weevil species with their own name in the backyard. Delete the scoop?
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Scientists discovered unique cellular and molecular mechanisms behind tooth renewal in American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis).
Humans naturally only have two sets of teeth – baby teeth and adult teeth. Ultimately, we want to identify stem cells that can be used as a resource to stimulate tooth renewal in adult humans who have lost teeth. But, to do that, we must first understand how they renew in other animals and why they stop in people,” Prof Chuong said.
Whereas most vertebrates can replace teeth throughout their lives, human teeth are naturally replaced only once, despite the lingering presence of a band of epithelial tissue called the dental lamina, which is crucial to tooth development.
Because alligators have well-organized teeth with similar form and structure as mammalian teeth and are capable of lifelong tooth renewal, the team reasoned that they might serve as models for mammalian tooth replacement.
“Alligator teeth are implanted in sockets of the dental bone, like human teeth. They have 80 teeth, each of which can be replaced up to 50 times over their lifetime, making them the ideal model for comparison to human teeth,” explained study lead author Prof Ping Wu, also from the University of Southern California.
The team found that each alligator tooth is a complex unit of three components – a functional tooth, a replacement tooth, and the dental lamina – in different developmental stages. The tooth units are structured to enable a smooth transition from dislodgement of the functional, mature tooth to replacement with the new tooth. Identifying three developmental phases for each tooth unit, the researchers conclude that the alligator dental laminae contain what appear to be stem cells from which new replacement teeth develop.
“Stem cells divide more slowly than other cells,” said co-author Prof Randall Widelitz of the University of Southern California.
“The cells in the alligator’s dental lamina behaved like we would expect stem cells to behave. In the future, we hope to isolate those cells from the dental lamina to see whether we can use them to regenerate teeth in the lab.”
The team also intends to learn what molecular networks are involved in repetitive renewal and hope to apply the principles to regenerative medicine in the future.
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"We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially", says Miami University (Ohio) computational biologist Iddo Friedberg. "But for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered." Understanding the function of genes is a problem that has emerged at the forefront of molecular biology. Many groups develop and employ sophisticated algorithms to decipher these "words". However, until now there was no comprehensive picture of how well these methods perform, "To use the information in our genes to our advantage, we first need to take stock of how well we are doing in interpreting these data".
To do so, Friedberg and his colleagues, Predrag Radivojac, of Indiana University, Bloomington IN and Sean Mooney, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato CA organized the Critical Assessment of protein Function Annotation, or CAFA. CAFA is a community-wide experiment to assess the performance of the many methods used today to predict the functions of proteins, the workhorses of the cell coded by our genes.
Thirty research groups comprising 102 scientists and students participated in CAFA, presented a total of 54 methods. The participating groups came from leading universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The groups participated in blind-test experiments in which they predicted the function of protein sequences for which the functions are already known but haven't yet been made publicly available. Independent assessors then judged their performance.
The results are published in this month's issue of Nature Methods co-authored by members of all the participating groups, with Friedberg and Radivojac as lead authors. Fifteen companion papers have been published in a special issue of BMC Bioinformatics detailing the methods "We have discovered a great enthusiasm and community spirit", said Friedberg, who since 2005 has been organizing Automated Function Prediction (AFP) meetings internationally. This, despite the competitive environment in which research groups want their methods to perform better than their peers' methods. Overall, throughout CAFA there was a highly collegial spirit, and a willingness to share information and science. "Everyone recognized that this is an important endeavor, and that only by a group effort can we move the field forward and learn to harness the deluge of genomic data, turning it into useful information."
"For the first time we have broad insight into what works, where improvement is needed, and how we should move the field forward. We will continue running CAFA in the future, as we are confident it will only help generate better methods to understand the information locked in our genomes, and those of other organisms," Friedberg said.
The initial analysis suggests that algorithms combining disparate prediction clues taken from different knowledge-bases provide more accurate predictions. The lead methods combined data from phylogenetic, gene-expression and protein-protein interaction data to provide predictions.
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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that DNA "linker" strands coax nano-sized rods to line up in way unlike any other spontaneous arrangement of rod-shaped objects. The arrangement -- with the rods forming "rungs" on ladder-like ribbons linked by multiple DNA strands -- results from the collective interactions of the flexible DNA tethers and may be unique to the nanoscale. "This is a completely new mechanism of self-assembly that does not have direct analogs in the realm of molecular or microscale systems," said Brookhaven physicist Oleg Gang, lead author on the paper, who conducted the bulk of the research at the Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials.
Broad classes of rod-like objects, ranging from molecules to viruses, often exhibit typical liquid-crystal-like behavior, where the rods align with a directional dependence, sometimes with the aligned crystals forming two-dimensional planes over a given area. Rod shaped objects with strong directionality and attractive forces between their ends-resulting, for example, from polarized charge distribution-may also sometimes line up end-to-end forming linear one-dimensional chains. Using synthetic DNA as a form of molecular glue to guide nanoparticle assembly has been a central approach of Gang's research at the CFN. His previous work has shown that strands of this molecule-better known for carrying the genetic code of living things-can pull nanoparticles together when strands bearing complementary sequences of nucleotide bases (known by the letters A, T, G, and C) are used as tethers, or inhibit binding when unmatched strands are used. Carefully controlling those attractive and inhibitory forces can lead to fine-tuned nanoscale engineering.
In the current study, the scientists used gold nanorods and single strands of DNA to explore arrangements made with complementary tethers attached to adjacent rods. They also examined the effects of using linker strands of varying lengths to serve as the tethering glue.
After mixing the various combinations, they studied the resulting arrangements using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy at the CFN, and also with small-angle x-ray scattering at Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS,http://www.bnl.gov/ps/nsls/about-NSLS.asp). They also used techniques to "freeze" the action at various points during assembly and observed those static phases using scanning electron microscopy to get a better understanding of how the process progressed over time.
The various analysis methods confirmed the side-by-side arrangement of the nanorods arrayed like rungs on a ladder-like ribbon during the early stages of assembly, followed later by stacking of the ribbons and finally larger-scale three-dimensional aggregation due to the formation of DNA bridges between the ribbons.
This staged assembly process, called hierarchical, is reminiscent of self-assembly in many biological systems, for example, the linking of amino acids into chains followed by the subsequent folding of these chains to form functional proteins.
The stepwise nature of the assembly suggested to the team that the process could be stopped at the intermediate stages. Using "blocker" strands of DNA to bind up the remaining free tethers on the linear ribbon-like structures, they demonstrated their ability to prevent the later-stage interactions that form aggregate structures.
"Stopping the assembly process at the ladder-like ribbon stage could potentially be applied for the fabrication of linear structures with engineered properties," Gang said. "For example by controlling plasmonic or fluorescent properties-the materials' responses to light-we might be able to make nanoscale light concentrators or light guides, and be able to switch them on demand." Delete the scoop?
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First predicted by American physicist Douglas Hofstadter in 1976, the butterfly pattern emerges when electrons are confined to a two-dimensional plane and subjected to both a periodic potential energy and a strong magnetic field. The Hofstadter butterfly is a fractal pattern—meaning that it contains shapes that repeat on smaller and smaller size scales. Fractals are common in systems such as fluid mechanics, but rare in the quantum mechanical world. The Hofstadter butterfly is one of the first quantum fractals theoretically discovered in physics but, until now, there has been no direct experimental proof of this spectrum.
Columbia University led the study and also involved scientists from the City University of New York, Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. Columbia prepared the sample and the UCF team measured the regular recurrence of the high-fidelity periodic pattern, engineered by inducing nanoscale ripples on graphene, a carbon material. The measured recurrence served as the essential proof that the measured spectrum was indeed the Hofstadter butterfly. The image that captured the evidence was taken in UCF Assistant Professor Masa Ishigami’s laboratory.
Jyoti Katoch, Ishigami’s graduate student, used a non-contact atomic force high-resolution microscope to image the ripples, which have the height of only 0.2 angstroms (twenty trillionth of a meter), to confirm that the observed Hofstadter butterfly spectrum indeed matched the theoretical prediction.
“The arrangement of individual atoms, even just one atom can drastically alter properties of nanoscale materials. That is the basis for nanotechnology,” Ishigami said. “Atomic structures must be resolved to understand the properties of nanoscale materials. What we do here at UCF is to explain why nanoscale materials behave so different by resolving their atomic structures. Only when we understand the origin of the extraordinary properties of nanoscale materials, we can propel nanoscience and technology forward. What Jyoti has done here is to image how graphene is rippled to explain the observed Hofstadter spectrum.”
UCF’s laboratory utilizes a novel, the state-of-the-art microscopy technique to simultaneously determine the atomic structure and electronic properties of nanoscale materials such as graphene.
Katoch has been working with Ishigami since 2008, when Ishigami joined UCF. Katoch helped build the laboratory and developed the atomic-resolution capability critical to capturing the picture proof for this study.
Ishigami has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has won multiple awards, including the Intelligence Community postdoctoral fellowship and the Hertz graduate fellowship, and has published more than 30 papers in journals including Science. Delete the scoop?
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Just after the Big Bang, the Universe's dimensions may have been completely different to the four-dimensional space-time we know and love today.
Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe possessed only one dimension of space and one dimension of time. It was basically a straight line. As the Universe began to cool, and expanded, this one dimension of space became “wrapped up” in such a way to create two dimensions of space and one of time — a plane, like a sheet of flat paper.
The transition from one to two dimensions of space was calculated by the researchers to occur when the Universe “cooled” to an energy level of 100 TeV (tera-electron volts, a measurement of energy commonly used in particle physics). A period of time after that, the Universe continued to expand and cool until it reached an energy of 1 TeV. At this point, the Universe got promoted to a higher dimension; three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, i.e., the Universe we live in today.
Mureika and Stojkovic think the Universe will eventually be promoted again, to a five-dimensional state, at some point in the future. Delete the scoop?
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Scouring the caves of Southwest Oregon, scientists have made the incredible discovery of a fearsome apex predator with massive, sickle claws. No, it's not the Velociraptor fromJurassic Park: it's a large spider that is so unique scientists were forced to create a new taxonomic family for it. This is the first new spider family to be discovered in North America in over 130 years.
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A whopping 42% of Americans will be obese by 2030, and the swelling ranks of the rotund could end up costing the nation hundreds of billions of dollars. The scary statistics are revealed in a study released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently more than a third of Americans are obese and the number is rising, particularly in men and the elderly. Buried in the CDC’s research is a nugget of good news. Even though the number of obese Americans continues to go up, it’s starting to go up at a slower rate.
The slowdown is a small victory in the fight for better health. Were obesity to rise at the same rapid rate it has in the last two decades, half the U.S. population would be obese by 2030, the study found.
The CDC’s study looked at the ramifications of the obesity crisis, including its economic impact. If the problem isn't curbed, it could cost the country $550 billion in health care costs over the next 20 years, researchers found. Obesity — defined as a Body Mass Index over 30 — can lead to diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems. And 27% of the rise in medical costs over the last 30 years can be pinned to excess weight, researchers wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Even tiny progress in preventing obesity-related health conditions would save millions of dollars in health care costs, researchers wrote.
The Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit health organization, released national strategies for combating obesity Tuesday on its website, such as making nutritious foods more widely available and promoting health in schools and the workplace.
The study is based on BMI data collected by the CDC and state health departments from 1990 through 2008 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Delete the scoop?
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Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images.
After several technical glitches shut down operations for a while, Curiosity resumed its science investigations earlier this week. Before the shutdown, the rover had been hard at work drilling into the Martian surface and discovering excellent evidence that the planet was once a place that could have hosted life. Though the probe is back up and running, it will be ceasing operations for a while beginning in April, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, which can mess with communications. In the meantime, we can enjoy this mosaic created by photographer Andrew Bodrov of Estonia, whose previous panorama let you stand on Mars next to Curiosity. The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover’s two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover’s eventual destination. Delete the scoop?
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The great ecological success of spiders is often substantiated by the evolution of silk and webs. Biologists of the Kiel University and the University of Bern now found an alternative adaptation to hunting prey: hairy adhesive pads, so called scopulae. The scientists published their results in the May issue of the scientific journal PLoS One. Delete the scoop?
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From soccer balls to cookstoves, engineers are working on a range of devices that provide cheap, clean energy.
In the wealthy world, improving the energy system generally means increasing the central supply of reliable, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly power and distributing it through the power grid. Across most of the planet, though, simply providing new energy sources to the millions who are without electricity and depend on burning wood or kerosene for heat and light would open up new opportunities.
With that in mind, engineers and designers have recently created a range of innovative devices that can increase the supply of safe, cheap energy on a user-by-user basis, bypassing the years it takes to extend the power grid to remote places and the resources needed to increase a country’s energy production capacity. Here are a few of the most promising technologies.
The picture above shows the Window Socket, the perhaps simplest solar charger in existence! Just stick it on a sunny window for 5 to 8 hours with the built-in suction cup, and the solar panels on the back will store about 10 hours worth of electricity that can be used with any device. If there’s no window available, a user can just leave it on any sunny surface, including the ground. Once it’s fully charged, it can be removed and taken anywhere—inside a building, stored around in a bag or carried around in a vehicle. The designers, Kyuho Song and Boa Oh of Yanko Design, created it to resemble a normal wall outlet as closely as possible, so it can be used intuitively without any special instructions.
Solar window chargers are reviewed here:
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In 8 May 1980, the World Health Organisation declared that “the world and its peoples are free from smallpox.” Through decades of intense vaccination, this once fatal disease had been wiped out. It was a singular victory and having won it, countries around the world discontinued the vaccination programmes. After all, why protect against a disease that no longer exists, except in a few isolated stocks?
Unfortunately, this is not a rhetorical question. The smallpox vaccine did more than protect against smallpox. It also reduced the risk of contracting a related illness called monkeypox, which produces the same combination of scabby bumps and fever. It’s milder than smallpox but it’s still a serious affliction. In Africa, where monkeypox originates from, it kills anywhere from 1-10% of those who are infected. And more and more people are becoming infected.
Anne Rimoin from the University of California, Los Angeles compared data on the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the last three decades. She found that, during those years, monkeypox has become 20 times more common in humans. In one particular area, 72 people out of every million were infected each year between 1981 and 1986. Between 2005 and 2007, that figure rose to 1442 per million. Rimoin thinks that we eased up the pressure on smallpox vaccination too soon. Between 1981 and 1985, only 404 cases turned up in all of Africa, and simulations predicted that the disease was unlikely to spread too far in a human population before dying out. This was no public health threat. In 1986, even the monitoring programme was stopped. In 2005 however, Rimoin’s group, together with the DRC Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization set up a new round of monkeypox surveillance and they spent two years collecting data. Their research showed that the disease is gaining ground.
Rimoin found that monkeypox was disproportionately affecting children and almost all of those who fell sick were born after 1980, when the smallpox vaccination programme was halted in the DRC. The vaccine wasn’t a perfect defence against monkeypox but it was still around 85% effective. Among people who were born during the vaccination era, those who were immunised were 5 times less likely to develop monkeypox than their protected peers. And this protection is clearly long-lasting; even 25 years on, they could still ward off the related virus.
These figures are probably underestimates too. The region’s inconsistent healthcare isn’t exactly conducive to accurate disease monitoring and Rimoin says that her team had word of many more cases, but couldn’t always check them out because of their remote location.
Monkeypox is spread by animals including squirrels and, fairly obviously, monkeys. As humans encroach upon the DRC’s tropical rainforests, the risk of being exposed to an infected carrier grows. Indeed, Rimoin found that the odds of contracting monkeypox were higher for people living near forested areas, and for men. As civil strife continues to affect the DRC, locals are being forced to rely more on hunting to get enough food and that brings men in close contact with furry viral reservoirs.
It’s an emerging threat, but Rimoin isn’t calling for smallpox vaccination to resume. Doing so would be logistically difficult in an area where even collecting data can be fraught. It might be better to take a more targeted approach, vaccinating only health workers who treat infected patients, and people who come into frequent contact with animal carriers. It may also be worth educating local people about the dangers of handling carrier species and the benefits of isolating people who show the very obvious symptoms, until they can be treated.
But most importantly, Rimoin wants active surveillance in regions where the virus circulates, especially since there are still so many unknowns about the virus. We need to better understand how it moves from human to human (and from animal to human), how often it’s fatal, or what the complications are.
It’s a good opportunity to take action now, at a time when the monkeypox is still confined to specific areas. Things might not stay that way. In 2003, there was a bizarre outbreak in the United States, as rodents from Ghana brought the disease to American prairie dogs, who handed it over to humans. All sorts of rodents the world over might become reservoirs for the disease and Rimoin writes, “If monkeypox were to become established in a wildlife reservoir outside Africa, the public health setback would be difficult to reverse.” Delete the scoop?
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A team of British scientists and engineers have created a full scale model for a car they intend to drive more than 1,000 mph. Delete the scoop?
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Australian scientists have created the most detailed atlas of the mouse brain, a development that is helping in the fight against brain disease.
“The new brain atlas provided a fundamental tool for the neuroscience community,” said Dr Jeremy Ullmann, lead author of a paper describing the atlas in the journal NeuroImage.
The new tool will allow researchers to map what parts of the brain are affected in mouse models of brain disease – such as brain cancer, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimers disease.
“The mouse is now the most widely used animal model for neuroscience research and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is fundamental to investigating changes in the brain,” Dr Ullman said.
“Our atlas is already much in demand internationally because it allows researchers to use MRI to automatically map brain structures.”
“In making these world-first maps, we had the advantage of using the most powerful MRI scanners in the Southern Hemisphere, backed up by leaders in digital image analysis, resulting in remarkably clear images of the brain,” explained senior author Prof David Reutens from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Advanced Imaging.
The project’s lead neuroanatomist, Prof Charles Watson from Curtin University, said: “the study will open the door to accurate analysis of gene targeting in the mouse brain.”
“The invention of gene targeting in the mouse has made this species the centerpiece of studies on models of human brain disease. MRI allows researchers to follow changes in the brain over time in the same animals,” he said. Delete the scoop?
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Looks like this 100-million-year old spider didn’t get to enjoy its final meal. Trapped in a piece of amber, the juvenile spider appears to be on the cusp of devouring a male wasp that was caught in its web. Such a grisly scene between spider and prey has never before been found in the fossil record.
The amazing snapshot shows an event that occurred in the Early Cretaceous period, about 97 to 110 million years ago, in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar, “almost certainly with dinosaurs wandering nearby,” as the press release about this discovery reports. The spider is a social orb-weaver spider, formally known asGeratonephila burmanica, and its victim is a wasp of the species Cascoscelio incassus. Both species are extinct today but the fossil suggests that insect behavior from the past is not too different from the present.
Related wasp species are known to parasitize spider eggs, so there is some poetic justice in the spider’s attack. “This was the wasp’s worst nightmare, and it never ended. The wasp was watching the spider just as it was about to be attacked, when tree resin flowed over and captured both of them,” said entomologist George Poinar Jr. of Oregon State University in the release.
This latest fossil doesn’t just capture the dramatic spider attack but also evidence of spider social life in the Early Cretaceous. Another spider, an adult male, is captured some distance away in the amber, co-habiting on the same web as the juvenile. Males of modern-day social orb-weavers are typically found living on female-constructed webs, where they assist in capturing insects and maintaining the web. Delete the scoop?
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Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab. That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light.
According to the scientists' calculations, these short-lived droplets are the size of three to five protons. To provide a sense of scale, that is about one-100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom or one-100,000,000th the size of a virus.
"With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior," said Velkovska, professor of physics at Vanderbilt who serves as a co-convener of the heavy ion program of the CMS detector, the LHC instrument that made the unexpected discovery. "Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 sub-atomic particles before we begin to see collective, flow-like behavior."
These tiny droplets "flow" in a manner similar to the behavior of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that is a mixture of the sub-atomic particles that makes up protons and neutrons and only exists at extreme temperatures and densities. Cosmologists propose that the entire universe once consisted of this strongly interacting elixir for fractions of a second after the Big Bang when conditions were dramatically hotter and denser than they are today. Now that the universe has spent billions of years expanding and cooling, the only way scientists can reproduce this primordial plasma is to bang atomic nuclei together with tremendous energy. Delete the scoop?
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Despite decades of study, scientists remained unsure as to how insulin binds to the insulin receptor on the surface of cells to allow them to take up sugar from the blood and transform it into energy. Now, a definitive answer has now been found with a team of scientists capturing the first three-dimensional images of insulin “docking” to its receptor. It is hoped that the new knowledge can be exploited to develop new and improved insulin medications to treat type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
The international research team was led by scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, with collaborators from La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Chicago, the University of York and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague.
Using the MX2 microcrystallography beamline at Australia’s Synchrotron, the researchers were able to obtain highly detailed, three-dimensional x-ray images of insulin and the insulin receptor to reveal how the two interact.
“We have now found that the insulin hormone engages its receptor in a very unusual way,” Associate Professor Mike Lawrence from the WEHI said. “Both insulin and its receptor undergo rearrangement as they interact – a piece of insulin folds out and key pieces within the receptor move to engage the insulin hormone. You might call it a 'molecular handshake'.” Delete the scoop?
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An international team of scientists announced today that for the first time ever, they were able to create new human stem cells by cloning older, fully mature human cells. The process cannot be used to create full human clones, as the scientists involved were quick to point out, but it does allow for cells to be grown to fit specific functions within an individual's body — resulting in new, patient-specific liver cells or heart cells that actually pulse on their own, for example.
Eventually, scientists hope to refine the process to the point it could be used to help treat disease and even create whole custom organs, but that is likely to be several years away at the earliest. "While there is much work to be done in developing safe and effective stem cell treatments, we believe this is a significant step forward in developing the cells that could be used in regenerative medicine," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the leader of the research team and a senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), in a news release.
The research team was led by scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University, who used a technique similar to the one that created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from adult cells, back in 1996. In a basic sense, this method involves taking an adult cell from a patient's body, sucking out the central portion containing DNA (the nucleus), then injecting this material into an empty egg cell donated by another human volunteer. The genetic material from the adult cell tells the empty egg cell what type it should mature into. Delete the scoop?
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‘Hijacking’ cells that normally attack common infections to target cancer instead could offer the body a ready-made army against the killer disease University researchers and Oxford-based biotech company, Immunocore Limited have uncovered.
The Immunocore team engineered a range of TCRs to bind very tightly to cancer cells and equipped them with the ability to activate non-cancer specific T cells. This new class of drug, named ‘ImmTACs’ (Immune Mobilising mTCR against Cancer), can be used to ‘hi-jack’ the body’s existing T cells that normally kill viruses and redirect them to kill cancer cells instead.
The team included Nat Liddy and Katy Adams, Immunocore employees and PhD students at Cardiff University, as well as Professors Andy Sewell and David Price, School of Medicine.
Nat Liddy said: "With Immuncore’s novel ImmTAC drugs we found we could effectively target cancer cells and mark them for destruction by the killer T cells that might normally fight common infections.
"Our initial studies and findings show that administration of ImmTAC could, potentially, result in the regression of established tumours". The Immunocore team engineered a range of TCRs to bind very tightly to cancer cells and equipped them with the ability to activate non-cancer specific T cells. Recent advances have enabled molecular targeting of disease using immune molecules called antigen receptors. There are two main classes of antigen receptor: antibodies and T cell receptors.
Therapeutic application of antibodies has been a huge medical success over the last decade and over 40% of the new drugs on the market in 2011 were based on these molecules. Exploitation of T cell receptors (TCRs) has so far lagged behind, but research led by Immunocore Ltd, with help from Cardiff University’s Institute of Infection and Immunity, is set to close the gap and open up an entirely new field of medical treatments.
Professor Andy Sewell, School of Medicine, said: "T cell receptors have advantages over antibodies as these molecules can see inside cells and tell if they are abnormal. Similar technology based around antibodies has shown great promise in clinical trials. This new TCR-based research technology extends this potential as it could possibly be applied to any form of cancer."
The most advanced of Immunocore’s ImmTACs, a drug called IMCgp100, is already in clinical trials in the UK and US for the treatment of melanoma. A second oncology ImmTAC, IMCmage1, is set to enter the clinic in both countries later this year and is applicable to the treatment of a large number of poorly served cancer indications.
James Noble, Immunocore’s CEO, said: "The power of this new technology lies in its ability to be used for a host of cancers that are currently very difficult to treat. We look forward to building on the emerging clinical data and generating a robust pipeline of products over the coming years". Delete the scoop?
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Scientists have mapped the evolutionary relationships among all 9,993 of the world's known living bird species. The study is an ambitious project that uses DNA-sequence data to create a phylogenetic tree — a branching map of evolutionary relationships among species — that also links global bird speciation rates across space and time.
“This is the first dated tree of life for a class of species this size to be put on a global map,” says study co-author Walter Jetz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
But the endeavour is also controversial, owing to the large number of species for which no sequence data are available. “This is a conceptually brilliant attempt to link space with time while crafting a complete phylogeny,” says Trevor Price, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “But there are almost certainly introduced artefacts by lacking one-third of the sequences used to create it.”
Jetz and his colleagues built on an extensive phylogenomic study, published in 2008, to divide bird species into 158 clades, well-established groups believed to have evolved from a common ancestor2. Using ten fossils, the researchers dated and anchored that backbone, and placed all the living species on the tree, starting with the roughly 6,600 for which genetic information was available. For the remaining 3,330 species for which no genetic data were available, the researchers used specific constraints — such as membership in the same genus — to identify where species would most likely be placed in the tree. They then created thousands of possible tree configurations and modeled estimates of speciation and extinction rates for each one to account for the uncertainty. The researchers found that although rapid radiations have occurred throughout time and space, the rate of speciation has sharply increased over the past 40 million years. Some scientists question the finding. “For a tree this size, any small systematic biases in assumptions, integrated over 10,000 species, may result in the detection of trends that simply didn’t exist,” says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, UK. But when the researchers repeated the analysis using only species for which genetic data exists, they saw roughly the same pattern. Delete the scoop?
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