Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

[wjfox]

New calculations say there are more living cells than grains of sand or stars in the sky

The gargantuan number comes from crunching data on photosynthesis, other means of converting carbon dioxide into organic matter

17 Oct 2023

From bacteria to blue whales, the number of cells in living things exceeds the estimated number of sand grains on Earth by a factor of a trillion. It’s 1 million times larger than all the stars in the universe. And the number of cells that have ever lived is 10 orders of magnitude larger still, according to new estimates researchers reported last week in Current Biology. These calculations aren’t just an exercise in superlatives. They could also help scientists better understand our planet’s fecundity and predict how lifeforms may use carbon in the future.

“These efforts are absolutely indispensable,” says Rob Phillips, a biophysicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved with this work but has collaborated with some of the authors. Quantifying such baselines is crucial to scientists’ ability to ask meaningful questions. “Simply counting and measuring things [is] the difference between being able to do science versus not.”

Peter Crockford, a geologist at Carleton University, and his colleagues began their inventory by combining existing estimates of the number of microbes currently in the ocean, soil, and Earth’s subsurface with the number of cells in larger organisms. The result was the number of cells alive today. That number—an eye-popping 10^30 cells, the majority of them cyanobacteria—was the starting point for calculating the total number of cells that have ever lived.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... yaZ6UQ-_9g



These microbes, called cyanobacteria, helped jump-start life on Earth—and their cells outnumber those of all other organisms. FRANK FOX/Science Source

[wjfox]

In world 1st, virus spotted attached to 2nd virus

The interaction was captured using a specialized piece of kit called a transmission electron microscope.

By Emily Cooke
published about 23 hours ago

In a world first, scientists have observed one virus latching onto another.

The interaction was captured in astonishing detail using a microscope that fires beams of electrons at its subject. The finding revealed how these two different viruses, both categorized as "bacteriophages," interact and may have co-evolved.

"No one has ever seen a bacteriophage — or any other virus — attach to another virus," lead study author Tagide deCarvalho, an assistant director of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Core Facilities at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said in a statement.

https://www.livescience.com/health/viru ... -2nd-virus



Scientists captured a microscope image of this satellite virus, in purple, attaching to the "neck" of a helper virus, in blue. (A nanometer (nm) is a billionth of a meter.) (Image credit: Tagide deCarvalho/UMBC)

[firestar464]

New calculations say there are more living cells than grains of sand or stars in the sky

The gargantuan number comes from crunching data on photosynthesis, other means of converting carbon dioxide into organic matter

17 Oct 2023

From bacteria to blue whales, the number of cells in living things exceeds the estimated number of sand grains on Earth by a factor of a trillion. It’s 1 million times larger than all the stars in the universe. And the number of cells that have ever lived is 10 orders of magnitude larger still, according to new estimates researchers reported last week in Current Biology. These calculations aren’t just an exercise in superlatives. They could also help scientists better understand our planet’s fecundity and predict how lifeforms may use carbon in the future.

“These efforts are absolutely indispensable,” says Rob Phillips, a biophysicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved with this work but has collaborated with some of the authors. Quantifying such baselines is crucial to scientists’ ability to ask meaningful questions. “Simply counting and measuring things [is] the difference between being able to do science versus not.”

Peter Crockford, a geologist at Carleton University, and his colleagues began their inventory by combining existing estimates of the number of microbes currently in the ocean, soil, and Earth’s subsurface with the number of cells in larger organisms. The result was the number of cells alive today. That number—an eye-popping 10^30 cells, the majority of them cyanobacteria—was the starting point for calculating the total number of cells that have ever lived.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... yaZ6UQ-_9g



These microbes, called cyanobacteria, helped jump-start life on Earth—and their cells outnumber those of all other organisms. FRANK FOX/Science Source

The fact that there will be too much CO2 in a billion years should be added to the timeline

[firestar464]

How AI could lead to a better understanding of the brain

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03426-3

[weatheriscool]

US surgeons perform world's first whole eye transplant
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11- ... plant.html
by Issam AHMED

Aaron James (L) kisses his wife Meagan while he recovers from the first whole-eye and partial face transplant, at NY Langone Health in New York.

A team of surgeons in New York announced Thursday they had performed the world's first transplant of an entire eye in a procedure widely hailed as a medical breakthrough, although it isn't yet known whether the recipient will actually regain his sight.

The groundbreaking surgery involved removing part of the face and the whole left eye of a donor and grafting them onto a line worker from Arkansas who survived a 7,200-volt electric shock in June 2021, when his face touched a live wire.

Aaron James, 46, suffered extensive injuries including the loss of his left eye, his dominant left arm above the elbow, his nose and lips, front teeth, left cheek area and chin.

He was referred to NYU Langone Health, a leading medical center for facial transplants, which carried out the procedure on May 27.

[weatheriscool]

New compound outperforms pain drug by indirectly targeting calcium channels
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11- ... ectly.html
by New York University

A compound—one of 27 million screened in a library of potential new drugs—reversed four types of chronic pain in animal studies, according to new research led by NYU College of Dentistry's Pain Research Center and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The small molecule, which binds to an inner region of a calcium channel to indirectly regulate it, outperformed gabapentin without troublesome side effects, providing a promising candidate for treating pain.

Calcium channels play a central role in pain signaling, in part through the release of neurotransmitters such as glutamate and GABA— "the currency of the pain signal," according to Rajesh Khanna, director of the NYU Pain Research Center and professor of molecular pathobiology at NYU Dentistry. The Cav2.2 (or N-type) calcium channel is the target for three clinically available drugs, including gabapentin (sold under brand names including Neurontin) and pregabalin (Lyrica), which are widely used to treat nerve pain and epilepsy.

[weatheriscool]

Wearable stethoscope can continuously monitor patients in real time
By Paul Ridden
November 22, 2023
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/n ... onitoring/

Whether you've booked a health check up or recovering from an illness, your medical professional will likely make use of a stethoscope to hear what's going on inside the body. But doctors are busy people and can't keep a constant ear on a patient's chest. That's where wearables developed by researchers at Northwestern University could come in.

The aim of the study was to design and develop a small wireless device that could be placed directly on the skin on any region of the body to continuously monitor a patient's heart beat, airflow in and out of lungs, listen for sounds as food or fluid (or gas) moves through the gut or even look for swallowing issues – "without encumbrances associated with rigid, wired, bulky technology."

Each wearable is about the size of a Band-Aid, albeit somewhat chunkier, at 40 mm in length, 20 mm wide and 8 mm thick (1.57 x 0.78 x 0.3 in). It's home to a pair of high-performance microphones, flash memory, a small battery and electronics with Bluetooth connectivity.

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

Researchers suggest use of natural fermentation may have led to early human brain size increase

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-natural-f ... brain.html

[firestar464]

A mathematical model connects the evolution of chickens, fish and frogs

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-mathemati ... frogs.html

[weatheriscool]

Nanoparticle flu vaccine design shows promise in early tests

by The Scripps Research Institute

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-nanoparti ... early.html
Existing flu vaccines provide only limited, seasonal protection because they target highly changeable proteins on the virus. Scripps Research scientists have now designed a vaccine that should work broadly against influenza A strains—one of the two types of flu virus that normally circulate in humans.

The new vaccine design, described in a paper titled "Single-Component Multilayered Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticles Displaying Extracellular Domains of Matrix Protein 2 as a Pan-influenza A Vaccine" in ACS Nano on November 21, uses a relatively unchanging influenza A protein fragment, M2e, and presents it on self-assembling nanoparticles to better engage the immune system.

The vaccine's strong results in initial animal tests point to the possibility of a universal flu vaccine that provides long-term protection against serious illness from both ordinary and novel flu strains.

"This experimental vaccine has the potential to protect against diverse seasonal influenza A strains as well as future emergent strains that could cause pandemics," says study senior author Jiang Zhu, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research.

[weatheriscool]

Catalyst makes drugs inside the body to minimize side effects
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-catalyst- ... -side.html
by RIKEN

A highly active catalyst capable of synthesizing drug molecules within the body has been developed by RIKEN chemists. In mice, an anticancer drug assembled near tumors using the injected catalyst suppressed tumor growth.

The paper is published in the journal Chemical Science.

In conventional medicines delivered by injection or pill, the active drug molecule circulates throughout the body, flooding not only the target site but also healthy tissues. The resulting side effects can be so serious that they can cause permanent damage and force treatment to be stopped.

[weatheriscool]

MS drug to treat and repair nerve damage is edging closer to reality
By Bronwyn Thompson
December 11, 2023

Effective targeted treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and even the repair of damaged nerves caused by the disease could soon be within grasp, thanks to yet another breakthrough in the field of small molecule drug research.

Researchers led by a team at Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have focused their work on a small molecule drug that targets the glutamate receptor AMPA, and results from the study show great promise in its new approach to treating MS.

Working with three newly synthesized compounds, one stood out – now known as ZCAN262 – which both reduced MS-like symptoms and showed promise in repairing myelin in two different animal models.

“Our compound had a stunning effect on rescuing myelin and motor function in the lab models, and I hope these effects will translate to the clinic to add to current treatments and bring new hope to patients with MS,” said Fang Liu, who has been researching MS treatment for more than a decade.

https://newatlas.com/medical/ms-drug-re ... ve-damage/

[firestar464]

Unstable 'fluttering' predicts aortic aneurysm with 98% accuracy

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12- ... uracy.html

[weatheriscool]

AI generates proteins with exceptional binding strengths
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-ai-genera ... ngths.html
by Ian Haydon, University of Washington School of Medicine

A new study in Nature reports an AI-driven advance in biotechnology with implications for drug development, disease detection, and environmental monitoring. Scientists at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine used software to create protein molecules that bind with exceptionally high affinity and specificity to a variety of challenging biomarkers, including human hormones.

Notably, the scientists achieved the highest interaction strength ever reported between a computer-generated biomolecule and its target.

[weatheriscool]

Single-dose inhaled dry powder vaccine may replace arm jabs
By Paul McClure
December 17, 2023
https://newatlas.com/medical/inhaled-dr ... -immunity/

Researchers have developed a single-dose powdered vaccine that is inhaled directly into the lungs to produce an effective immune response. The vaccine can deliver multiple antigens, meaning one dose could provide broad-spectrum protection against several respiratory viruses.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to advances in vaccine technologies, including the now well-known mRNA vaccines. Most of these are administered by intramuscular injection, which produces a humoral – a body fluid, not cell-based – immunity and relies on antibodies to neutralize the virus. While intramuscular SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been shown to reduce morbidity and mortality significantly, they have less impact on viral transmission rates.

[caltrek]

Location, Location, Location: The Hidden Power of Intracellular Neighborhoods
December 21, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert)

Highlights

• Messenger RNA (mRNA) is translated into proteins in the cytoplasm of cells. But rather than being a uniform “soup,” the cytoplasm is divided into multiple distinct compartments or regions.

• Each region is largely responsible for translating functionally similar types of mRNA, a new MSK study finds. And the location of translation determines the amount of protein produced by the mRNA.

• The movement of mRNA to specific regions is directed by their size and shape, as well as by RNA-binding protein partners.

• The findings could help develop new approaches to increase or alter the production of proteins in mRNA therapies.

Read more of the Eurkealert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1029748

For a more technical discussion as presented in Molecular Cell : https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fu ... 3)00970-X

[weatheriscool]

Oral peptides: A new era in drug development
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-oral-pept ... -drug.html
by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

For decades, a substantial number of proteins, vital for treating various diseases, have remained elusive to oral drug therapy. Traditional small molecules often struggle to bind to proteins with flat surfaces or require specificity for particular protein homologs. Typically, larger biologics that can target these proteins demand injection, limiting patient convenience and accessibility.

In a new study published in Nature Chemical Biology, scientists from the laboratory of Professor Christian Heinis at EPFL have achieved a significant milestone in drug development. Their research opens the door to a new class of orally available drugs, addressing a long-standing challenge in the pharmaceutical industry.

[Time_Traveller]

Smokers twice as likely to quit by using cytisine, study finds

Mon 1 Jan 2024 05.00 GMT

Smokers who want to quit are more than twice as likely to succeed if they take a pill that dampens nicotine cravings, according to doctors, who said the medicine could play a major role in helping people kick the habit.

Stopping smoking remains one of the most common new year resolutions, but it consistently ranks as one of the hardest to keep, largely because of the highly addictive nature of nicotine.

While many smokers now turn to products that provide nicotine more safely than tobacco, such as vapes, patches and gums, doctors looked at the evidence for a medicine called cytisine, a natural ingredient of laburnum seeds, to help smokers break their addiction.

The medicine has been used in central and eastern Europe for decades, but it is unavailable in most countries, the US included. The drug only recently gained regulatory approval in the UK where the pills will be made available later this month.

Researchers in Argentina analysed 12 randomised controlled trials which compared the success rates of smokers who tried to quit while taking cytisine, a placebo, another smoking cessation drug called varenicline (Champix), or nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gum.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... tudy-finds