Lifeboat Foundation

Cells work around the clock to deliver, maintain, and control every aspect of life. And just as with humans, communication is a key to their success.

Every essential biological process requires some form of communication among cells, not only with their immediate neighbors but also to those significantly farther away. Current understanding is that this information exchange relies on the diffusion of signaling molecules or on cell-to-cell relays.

Publishing in the journal Developmental Cell, a research team at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Medicine reports on a novel method of communication relying on ‘mechano-chemical’ signals to control cell movement. The research group focused on a fundamental pathway—MAPK/ERK, or ERK pathway—and were able to demonstrate how the movement of a single cell could trigger a cascading reaction resulting in the migration of a cell collective.

A technique developed by Miami University associate professors of chemistry and biochemistry Dominik Konkolewicz and Rick Page may help enable more rapid and efficient development of new materials for use in pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and other applications.

Konkolewicz’s and Page’s technique uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology to illuminate how proteins and synthetic polymers interact in chemical substances known as bioconjugates.

(Nanowerk News) Scientists in Australia and the United States have been able to ‘upconvert’ low energy light into high energy light, which can be captured by solar cells, in a new way, with oxygen the surprise secret ingredient. The results are published in Nature Photonics (“Photochemical upconversion of near-infrared light from below the silicon bandgap”).

Scientists in Australia and the United States have been able to ‘upconvert’ low energy light into high energy light, which can be captured by solar cells, in a new way, with oxygen the surprise secret ingredient.

The results are published in Nature Photonics (“Photochemical upconversion of near-infrared light from below the silicon bandgap”).

Continue reading “Oxygen breathes new life into solar cell research” »

Here, we discover prototypical pacemaker neurons in the ancient cnidarian Hydra and provide evidence for a direct interaction of these neurons with the commensal microbiota. We uncover a remarkable gene-expression program conservation between the Hydra pacemaker neurons and pacemaker cells in Caenorhabditis elegans and the mammalian gut. We suggest that prototypical pacemaker cells emerged as neurons using components of innate immunity to interact with the microbial environment and ion channels to generate rhythmic contractions. The communication of pacemaker neurons with the microbiota represents a mechanistic link between the gut microbiota and gut motility. Our discoveries improve the understanding of the archetypical properties of the enteric nervous systems, which are perturbed in human dysmotility-related conditions.

Pacemaker neurons exert control over neuronal circuit function by their intrinsic ability to generate rhythmic bursts of action potential. Recent work has identified rhythmic gut contractions in human, mice, and hydra to be dependent on both neurons and the resident microbiota. However, little is known about the evolutionary origin of these neurons and their interaction with microbes. In this study, we identified and functionally characterized prototypical ANO/SCN/TRPM ion channel-expressing pacemaker cells in the basal metazoan Hydra by using a combination of single-cell transcriptomics, immunochemistry, and functional experiments. Unexpectedly, these prototypical pacemaker neurons express a rich set of immune-related genes mediating their interaction with the microbial environment.

Kansas State University physicists have taken extremely fast snapshots of light-induced molecular ring-opening reactions—similar to those that help a human body produce vitamin D from sunlight. The research is published in Nature Chemistry.

“Think of this as stop-motion like a cartoon,” said Daniel Rolles, associate professor of physics and the study’s principal investigator. “For each molecule, you start the reaction with a laser pulse, take snapshots of what it looks like as time passes and then put them together. This creates a ‘molecular movie’ that shows how the electronic structure of the molecule changes as a function of how much time passes between when we start and when we stop.”

Shashank Pathak, doctoral student and lead author on the paper, said the idea was to study the dynamics of how a ring opens in a molecule on the time scale of femtosecond, which is one quadrillionth of a second. The researchers use a free-electron laser to visualize how these reactions happen by recording electron energy spectra as the atoms in the molecule move apart.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Yaniv Assaf of the School of Neurobiology, Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Sagol School of Neuroscience and Prof. Yossi Yovel of the School of Zoology, the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, conducted a first-of-its-kind study designed to investigate brain connectivity in 130 mammalian species. The intriguing results, contradicting widespread conjectures, revealed that brain connectivity levels are equal in all mammals, including humans.

“We discovered that brain connectivity —namely the efficiency of information transfer through the neural network —does not depend on either the size or structure of any specific brain,” says Prof. Assaf. “In other words, the brains of all mammals, from tiny mice through humans to large bulls and dolphins, exhibit equal connectivity, and information travels with the same efficiency within them. We also found that the brain preserves this balance via a special compensation mechanism: when connectivity between the hemispheres is high, connectivity within each hemisphere is relatively low, and vice versa.”

Participants included researchers from the Kimron Veterinary Institute in Beit Dagan, the School of Computer Science at TAU and the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine. The paper was published in Nature Neuroscience on June 8.

DNA usually forms the classic double helix shape discovered in 1953—two strands wound around each other. Several other structures have been formed in test tubes, but this does not necessarily mean they form within living cells.

Quadruple helix structures, called DNA G-quadruplexes (G4s), have previously been detected in cells. However, the technique used required either killing the cells or using high concentrations of chemical probes to visualise G4 formation, so their actual presence within living cells under normal conditions has not been tracked, until now.

A research team from the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and Leeds University have invented a fluorescent marker that is able to attach to G4s in living human cells, allowing them to see for the first time how the structure forms and what role it plays in cells.

Yesterday, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced it was launching Phase III trials of REGN-COV2, the company’s two-antibody cocktail for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. Today, it announced that it had received a $450 million contract to manufacture and supply the antibody cocktail as part of Operation Warp Speed from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

BARDA is part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contract was also with the Department of Defense Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.

A Phase I trial in 30 hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 received a positive review from the Independent Data Monitoring Committee.

Continue reading “Regeneron Receives $450 Million BARDA Contract for COVID-19 Antibody Cocktail” »

San Jose State’s Claire Komives is testing an antivenom inspired by opossum biochemistry against various snake species to prevent deaths in the developing world.