Biosingularity

As many as 100,000 cases of cancer could be prevented in the U.S. each year if Americans get rid of their excess body fat.

That’s according to estimates released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The estimates suggest that heart disease, diabetes, and joint problems aren’t the only illnesses in which rampant obesity is causing havoc.

The group says overweight and obesity could be the cause of more than 6% of all the estimated 1.6 million cancer cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

via Obesity Linked to Many Cancer Cases in U.S..

A study in mice has hinted at the impact that early life trauma and stress can have on genes, and how they can result in behavioural problems.

Scientists described the long-term effects of stress on baby mice in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Stressed mice produced hormones that “changed” their genes, affecting their behaviour throughout their lives.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Early life stress ‘changes’ genes.

Researchers have used a modified AIDS virus to halt a devastating brain disease in two young boys. The treatment, in which the virus delivered a therapeutic gene, marks the first time gene therapy has been successfully used against X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD)–a disorder that is always fatal if untreated. With this proof of principle, scientists hope versions of the AIDS virus engineered to carry different genes can now be applied to a variety of other diseases.

via Gene Therapy Halts Brain Disease in Two Boys — Kaiser 2009 (1105): 1 — ScienceNOW.

As many as 100,000 cases of cancer could be prevented in the U.S. each year if Americans get rid of their excess body fat.Thats according to estimates released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The estimates suggest that heart disease, diabetes, and joint problems arent the only illnesses in which rampant obesity is causing havoc.The group says overweight and obesity could be the cause of more than 6% of all the estimated 1.6 million cancer cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

via Obesity Linked to Many Cancer Cases in U.S..

It’s Alive! Researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have succeeded in taking embryonic stem cells from mice and growing cardiovascular tissue. The research team, led by Dr. Kenneth Chien, believes that a similar process may one day serve to repair cardiac damage in humans. The work was recently published in the journal Science. You can see the mouse heart cells beating at different speeds in the video from Boston.com after the break.

via Harvard Grows Heart Tissue, Watches it Beat | Singularity Hub.

In a small manufacturing space on a Cambridge, MA, street dotted with biotech companies, Greg Troiano tinkers with a series of gleaming metal vats interweaved with plastic tubes. The vats are designed to violently shake a mix of chemicals into precise nanostructures, and Troiano’s task, as head of process development at start-up BIND Biosciences, is to make kilograms of the stuff–a novel drug-infused nanoparticle. The company hopes the new drug-delivery system will diminish the side effects of chemotherapy while increasing its effectiveness in killing cancer.

via Technology Review: Stealthy Nanoparticles Attack Cancer Cells.

By forcing bacteria to evolve in ever-changing conditions, scientists have induced a behavior in which colonies formed by microbes with identical genes take radically different forms, as if one sibling in a set of identical quadruplets could sprout gills.

Technically known as “stochastic switching between phenotypic states” — or, more conversationally, hedging your bets — the ability may have been critical to the success of primitive forms of life.

via Early Life Hedged Its Bets to Survive | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Eyeball your food a little longer if you’re looking to shed some pounds, because wolfing it down too fast may make you prone to overeat, a new study shows.

So savor those aromas, relish the meal’s presentation, and don’t just dig in like you’ve got to finish it off in a hurry, researchers report in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

via Eating Slowly May Help Weight Control.

A specific type of T helper cell awakens the immune system to the stealthy threat of cancer and triggers an attack of killer T cells custom-made to destroy the tumors, scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the early online edition of the journal Immunity. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturated fats have a deservedly bad reputation, but Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that a sticky lipid occurring naturally at high levels in the brain may help us memorize grandma’s recipe for cinnamon buns, as well as recall how, decades ago, she served them up steaming from the oven.

The Hopkins team, reporting Oct. 29 in Neuron, reveals how palmitate, a fatty acid, marks certain brain proteins – NMDA receptors – that need to be activated for long-term memory and learning to take place. The fatty substance directs the receptors to specific locations in the outer membrane of brain cells, which continually strengthen and weaken their connections with each other, sculpting and resculpting new memory circuits. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists at the University of Bonn have discovered a previously unknown fruit fly gene that controls the metabolism of fat. Larvae in which this gene is defective lose their entire fat reserves. Therefore the researchers called the gene ’schlank’ (German for ’slim’). Mammals carry a group of genes that are structurally very similar to ’schlank’. They possibly take on a similar function in the energy metabolism. The scientists therefore have hopes in new medicines with which obesity could be fought. Read the rest of this entry »

The immune system’s T cells have the unique responsibilities of being both jury and executioner. They examine other cells for signs of disease, including cancers or infections, and, if such evidence is found, rid them from the body. Precisely how T cells shift so swiftly from one role to another, however, has been a mystery.

In a new study, investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used an array of techniques — including “optical tweezers” that exploit laser light to press molecules against surface structures found on T cells — to find out what operates the switch. Their answer: sheer mechanical force. Hence, the T cell receptor is a mechanosensor.

A highly focused laser beam (at right) is used to apply mechanical force (shown as a double headed arrow) to a microsphere (white) coated with histocompatibility protein. The microsphere abuts the surface of a single T cell, shown in gray (top). Activation of the T cell is measured by a change in calcium levels within the cell, which are shown by green colorization (left, prior to force application; bottom, after force application). The direction of force must be tangential, rather than perpendicular, to the T cell surface in order to trigger a rise in calcium levels. Without an application of force, the binding of the histocompatibility protein produces no such rise. Credit: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Researchers at the University of Warwick have identified a particular combination of health problems that can double the risk of heart attack and cause a three-fold increase in the risk of mortality.

The team, led by Assistant Clinical Professor of Public Health at Warwick Medical School Dr Oscar Franco, has discovered that simultaneously having obesity, high blood pressure and high blood sugar are the most dangerous combination of health factors when developing metabolic syndrome. Read the rest of this entry »

A pair of studies in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, lay to rest the decades-long concern that lower total cholesterol may lead to cancer, and in fact lower cholesterol may reduce the risk of high-grade prostate cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers have new evidence to explain how saturated fatty acids, which soar in those who are obese, can lead the immune system to respond in ways that add up to chronic, low-grade inflammation. The new results could lead to treatments designed to curb that inflammatory state, and the insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes that come with it. Read the rest of this entry »

f worms are any indication, all the sugar in your diet could spell much more than obesity and type 2 diabetes. Researchers reporting in the November issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, say it might also be taking years off your life.

By adding just a small amount of glucose to C. elegans usual fare of straight bacteria, they found the worms lose about 20 percent of their usual life span. They trace the effect to insulin signals, which can block other life-extending molecular players. Read the rest of this entry »

Diet soda may help keep your calories in check, but drinking two or more diet sodas a day may double your risk of declining kidney function, a new study shows.Women who drank two or more diet sodas a day had a 30% drop in a measure of kidney function during the lengthy study follow-up, according to research presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology in San Diego.

via Diet Sodas May Be Hard on the Kidneys.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created a new, ultra-sensitive technique to analyze life-sustaining protein molecules. The technique may profoundly change the methodology of biomolecular studies and chart a new path to effective diagnostics and early treatment of complex diseases.Researchers from Boston University and Tufts University near Boston recently demonstrated an infrared spectroscopy technique that can directly identify the “vibrational fingerprints” of extremely small quantities of proteins, the machinery involved in maintaining living organisms.

via Identifying Molecules in Infrared Could Lead to New Medicines – US News and World Report.

An article published online on September 1, 2009 in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences reported the results of a study of men and women aged 65 and older which revealed risk factors associated with dying over a 13 year average period.

via Premature death risk factor analysis points to inflammation.

Scientists have generated the most comprehensive map of the structural variation that exists among normal, healthy humans, according to a study published online today in Nature. Understanding normal variation between individuals is critical to identifying abnormal changes that may contribute to a wide variety of heritable diseases.

Image: Wikimedia commons

“I think it’s considered to be a landmark paper,” said geneticist Frank Speleman of the Center for Medical Genetics at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium, who was not involved in the work. “It’s quite important in the complete context of genome wide association studies and genetic predisposition.”

via Human variation revealed :The Scientist [7th October 2009].

University of Washington (UW) researchers have succeeded in engineering human tissue patches free of some problems that have stymied stem-cell repair for damaged hearts.

The disk-shaped patches can be fabricated in sizes ranging from less than a millimeter to a half-inch in diameter. Until now, engineering tissue for heart repair has been hampered by cells dying at the transplant core, because nutrients and oxygen reached the edges of the patch but not the center. To make matters worse, the scaffolding materials to position the cells often proved to be harmful.

		VIDEO: University of Washington researchers in the Chuck Murry lab at the UW Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative medicine engineered this heart repair patch from a mix of stem cells…. Click here for more information.

Heart tissue patches composed only of heart muscle cells couldn’t grow big enough or survive long enough to take hold after they were implanted in rodents, the researchers noted in their article, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers decided to look at the possibility of building new tissue with supply lines for the oxygen and nutrients that living cells require. Read the rest of this entry »

A Swiss research team has found that using an animal’s own brain cells (autologous transplant) to replace degenerated neurons in select brain areas of donor primates with simulated but asymptomatic Parkinson’s disease and previously in a motor cortex lesion model, provides a degree of brain protection and may be useful in repairing brain lesions and restoring function. Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers have shown how an antiviral protein produced by the immune system, dubbed tetherin, tames HIV and other viruses by literally putting them on a leash, to prevent their escape from infected cells. The insights reported in the October 30th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, allowed the research team to design a completely artificial protein — one that did not resemble native tetherin in its sequence at all — that could nonetheless put a similar stop to the virus. Read the rest of this entry »

Simvastatin, a commonly used, cholesterol-lowering drug, may prevent Parkinson’s disease from progressing further. Neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center conducted a study examining the use of the FDA-approved medication in mice with Parkinson’s disease and found that the drug successfully reverses the biochemical, cellular and anatomical changes caused by the disease. Read the rest of this entry »

A natural probiotic therapy may offer a new treatment option to ease symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease and promote the bodys own healing process.Up to 1 million people in the U.S. have inflammatory bowel disease IBD; the main types are ulcerative colitis and Crohns disease. With inflammatory bowel disease the inner lining of the intestines become inflamed and damaged. Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhea which may be bloody, weight loss, and rectal bleeding.A new study shows treatment with the probiotic Bacillus polyfermenticus reduced rectal bleeding, lessened tissue inflammation, and promoted weight gain in mice with colitis.

via Probiotics May Help Treat IBD Symptoms.

A doctor has some tried and true methods of helping her diagnose a disease: examining the lymph nodes, taking your temperature, that whole “turn your head and cough” thing. Now, we need to add one more: whole genome sequencing. Researchers at Yale have sequenced the genome of a patient in order to diagnose his condition, reportedly for the first time. Richard Lifton and his team examined the protein encoding portion of an infant’s DNA to determine whether or not he had Bartter’s syndrome (he didn’t). Though still too expensive to use in everyday clinical work, Lifton has shown that whole genome analysis is an effective and relatively quick method to diagnose some diseases. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.

via Yale Scientists Diagnose Illness Through Genome Sequencing | Singularity Hub.

An unusual experiment is offering some tantalizing clues about what goes on in the brain before we speak.

The study found that it takes about half a second to transform something we think into something we say. And three very different kinds of processing needed for speech are all happening in a small part of the brain called Broca’s area, which lies beneath the left temple.

via In Milliseconds, Brain Zips From Thought To Speech : NPR.

Medical researchers have long suspected that obscure bacteria living within the intestinal tract may help keep the human immune system in balance. An international collaboration co-led by scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center has now identified a bizarre-looking microbial species that can single-handedly spur the production of specialized immune cells in mice.

This remarkable activation of the immune response could point to a similar phenomenon in humans, helping researchers understand how gut-dwelling bacteria protect us from pathogenic bacteria, such as virulent strains of E. coli. The study, published in the Oct. 30, 2009, issue of Cell, also supports the idea that specific bacteria may act like neighborhood watchdogs at key locations within the small intestine, where they sense the local microbial community and sound the alarm if something seems amiss.

Caption: A little-known bacterial species called segmented filamentous bacterium, or SFB, can activate the production of specialized immune cells in mice. This scanning electron microscope image of an SFB colony shows a mass of long hair-like filaments created when the bacteria stay attached to each other after they divide. Credit: Credit: Ivaylo Ivanov and Dan Littman (NYU Langone Medical Center) and Doug Wei (Carl Zeiss SMT, Inc.)

Read the rest of this entry »

A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation. Just as important, the team believes that the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation, such as an inability to focus, learn or memorize, may be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds up in the hippocampus of the brain. Read the rest of this entry »

A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern University study.

In other words, a genetic vulnerability to depression is much more likely to be realized in a Western culture than an East Asian culture that is more about we than me-me-me.

The study coming out of the growing field of cultural neuroscience takes a global look at mental health across social groups and nations. Read the rest of this entry »

New research from Queen Mary, University of London and Harvard Medical School has revealed precisely why taking fish oils can help with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.

In a paper published in Nature today*, researchers describe how the body converts an ingredient found in fish oils into another chemical called Resolvin D2 and how this chemical reduces the inflammation that leads to a variety of diseases.

The research also suggests that Resolvin D2 could be the basis for a new treatment for diseases including sepsis, stroke and arthritis. Unlike other anti-inflammatory drugs, this chemical does not seem to suppress the immune system. Read the rest of this entry »

To survive in hostile environments, cockroaches rely on their own vermin: Blattabacterium, a microbe that hitched a ride inside roaches 140 million years ago, and hasn’t left since.

Researchers who sequenced the Blattabacterium genome have found that it converts waste into molecules necessary for a roach to survive. Every cockroach is a testimony to the power of recycling — thanks to their microbes, they don’t even need to pee

via Cockroach Superpower No. 42: They Don’t Need to Pee | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Despite a 30-year lifespan that gives ample time for cells to grow cancerous, a small rodent species called a naked mole rat has never been found with tumors of any kind—and now biologists at the University of Rochester think they know why.

The findings, presented in today’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the mole rat’s cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells “claustrophobic,” stopping the cells’ proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells’ growth barely changed, whereas regular mouse cells became fully cancerous.

Scientists discover that the naked mole rat, the only known cancerless animal, has two-tier defense against cancer. Credit: University of Rochester

Read the rest of this entry »

Cornell researchers have discovered a genetic mechanism in fruit flies that prevents two closely related species from reproducing, a finding that offers clues to how species evolve.

When two populations of a species become geographically isolated from each other, their genes diverge from one another over time.

Eventually, when a male from one group mates with a female from the other group, the offspring will die or be born sterile, as crosses between horses and donkeys produce sterile mules. At this point, they have become two distinct species. Read the rest of this entry »

A single injection of DNA into the eyes of four children born with a blindness-causing disease has given them enough vision to walk without help. The study, published today, confirms that if patients with this disease are given gene therapy early in life, the results can be dramatic.

via Gene Therapy Helps Blind Children See — Kaiser 2009 1024: 1 — ScienceNOW.

Our body’s activity levels fall and rise to the beat of our internal drums—the 24-hour cycles that govern fundamental physiological functions, from sleeping and feeding patterns to the energy available to our cells. Whereas the master clock in the brain is set by light, the pacemakers in peripheral organs are set by food availability. The underlying molecular mechanism was unknown.

Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies shed light on the long missing connection: A metabolic master switch, which, when thrown, allows nutrients to directly alter the rhythm of peripheral clocks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brain signals can drive arm movement in a monkey with a paralyzed arm. A monkey with a paralyzed arm can still grasp a ball, thanks to a novel system designed to translate brain signals into complex muscle movements in real time. The research, presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago this week, could one day allow people with spinal cord injury to control their own limbs.

Technology Review: Awakening Paralyzed Limbs.

Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched from ultraviolet vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. The discovery is also the first example of an animal deleting a molecule to change its visual spectrum.

Their findings on scabbardfish, linking molecular evolution to functional changes and the possible environmental factors driving them, were published Oct. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

aption: The scabbardfish (Lepidopus fitchi) is now the only fish known to have switched from ultraviolet to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. Credit: Carol Clark, Emory University

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Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston report that an enzyme known as Mst3b, previously identified in their lab, is essential for regenerating damaged axons (nerve fibers) in a live animal model, in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. Their findings, published online by Nature Neuroscience on October 25, suggest Mst3b – or agents that stimulate it – as a possible means of treating stroke, spinal cord damage and traumatic brain injury. Normally, neurons in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) cannot regenerate injured nerve fibers, limiting people’s ability to recover from brain or spinal cord injuries. Read the rest of this entry »

Applying a small mechanical force to embryonic stem cells could be a new way of coaxing them into a specific direction of differentiation, researchers at the University of Illinois report. Applications for force-directed cell differentiation include therapeutic cloning and regenerative medicine. Read the rest of this entry »

Fate Therapeutics, Inc. announced today the generation of human induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using a combination of small molecules that significantly improves the speed and efficiency of reprogramming. The discoveries, which were made by Sheng Ding, Ph.D. under a research collaboration between Fate Therapeutics and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), represent a more than 200-fold improvement in reprogramming efficiency and reduce the reprogramming period to two weeks as compared to methods using only the four reprogramming factors (Oct 3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc).

Read the rest of this entry »

Red-eye flights, all-night study sessions, and extra-inning playoff games all deprive us of sleep and can leave us forgetful the next day. Now scientists have discovered that lost sleep disrupts a specific molecule in the brain's memory circuitry, possibly leading to treatments for tired brains.

via

Why Sleepyheads Forget — Torrice 2009 (1021): 1 — ScienceNOW.

October 15, 2009 A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has developed a method that dramatically improves the efficiency of creating stem cells from human adult tissue, without the use of embryonic cells. The research makes great strides in addressing a major practical challenge in the development of stem-cell-based medicine. Read the rest of this entry »

A 21-year Michigan State University experiment that distills the essence of evolution in laboratory flasks not only demonstrates natural selection at work, but could lead to biotechnology and medical research advances, researchers said.

Charles Darwin’s seminal Origin of Species first laid out the case for evolution exactly 150 years ago. Now, MSU professor Richard Lenski and colleagues document the process in their analysis of 40,000 generations of bacteria, published this week in the international science journal Nature.

Caption: E. coli cultures in the laboratory of Michigan State University evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski. Credit: Greg Kohuth, Michigan State University

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Biologists long have marveled at the ability of some animals to re-grow lost body parts. Newts, for example, can lose a leg and grow a new one identical to the original. Zebrafish can re-grow fins.

These animals and others also can repair damaged heart tissue and injured structures in the eye. In contrast, humans have only rudimentary regenerative abilities, so scientists hoping eventually to develop ways of repairing or replacing damaged body parts are keenly interested in understanding in detail how the process of regeneration works. Read the rest of this entry »

An insight from the labs of Harvard chemist George Whitesides and cell biologist Don Ingber is likely to make a fundamental shift in how biologists grow and study cells – and it’s as cheap and simple as reaching for a paper towel.

Ratmir Derda, a postdoctoral student co-mentored by Whitesides and Ingber at Harvard’s new Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, has realized that by growing cells on several sheets of uncoated paper, he can solve a problem that has bedeviled biologists for years: how to easily grow and study cells that mimic the three-dimensionality of real tissue.

Endothelial cells grown in small stacks of paper, forming vessel-like structures that crawl among the cellulose fibers (cellulose fibers are purple, nucleus is yellow and the cytoskeleton is red). Harvard researchers have found that paper is an excellent medium for culturing cells with the accuracy of a 3-D medium and the simplicity of a 2-D one - Credit: Ratmir Derda

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he cheeseburger and French fries might look tempting, but eating a serving of broccoli or leafy greens first could help people battle metabolic processes that lead to obesity and heart disease, a new University of Florida study shows.

Eating more plant-based foods, which are rich in substances called phytochemicals, seems to prevent oxidative stress in the body, a process associated with obesity and the onset of disease, according to findings published online in advance of the print edition of the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics. Read the rest of this entry »

Groups of neurons that precisely keep time have been discovered in the primate brain by a team of researchers that includes Dezhe Jin, assistant professor of physics at Penn State University and two neuroscientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “This research is the first time that precise time-keeping activities have been identified in recordings of neuron activity,” Jin said. The time-keeping neurons are in two interconnected brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, both of which are known to play critical roles in learning, movement, and thought control. Read the rest of this entry »