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Category: chemistry – Page 293

New Research Shows How Dopamine Plays a Key Role in Consciousness

The Brain Chemical Involved in Consciousness

So how do we help these people? The brain is more than just a congregation of different areas. Brain cells also rely on a number of chemicals to communicate with other cells, enabling a number of brain functions. Before our study, there was already some evidence that dopamine, well known for its role in reward, also plays a role in disorders of consciousness.

For example, one study showed that dopamine release in the brain is impaired in minimally conscious patients. Moreover, a number of small-scale studies have shown that patients’ consciousness can improve by giving them drugs that act through dopamine.

Scientists design new inks for 3D-printable wearable bioelectronics

Flexible electronics have enabled the design of sensors, actuators, microfluidics and electronics on flexible, conformal and/or stretchable sublayers for wearable, implantable or ingestible applications. However, these devices have very different mechanical and biological properties when compared to human tissue and thus cannot be integrated with the human body.

A team of researchers at Texas A&M University has developed a new class of biomaterial inks that mimic native characteristics of highly conductive , much like skin, which are essential for the ink to be used in 3D printing.

This biomaterial ink leverages a new class of 2D nanomaterials known as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The thin-layered structure of MoS2 contains defect centers to make it chemically active and, combined with modified gelatin to obtain a flexible hydrogel, comparable to the structure of Jell-O.

New supramolecular plastic heals itself in an instant

Scientists experimenting with next-generation plastics at Finland’s University of Turku have developed a form of the material with some impressive capabilities, most notably an ability to quickly break down after use. The eco-friendly “supramolecular” plastic is therefore highly recyclable and, with careful tuning of its water content, can be turned into an adhesive or even instantly self-heal when damaged.

The reason conventional plastics persist in the environment for so long is the incredibly strong chemical connections between the monomers within them. These particles link up to form polymers through what are known as covalent bonds, but scientists hope to fashion more environmentally forms of the material based on non-covalent bonds instead.

These weaker connections are better suited to degradation and recycling of the material, but do come at a cost in terms of mechanical performance. We have looked at some interesting examples of these “supramolecular” materials in the form of hybrid polymers for drug delivery, self-assembling plastics and adhesives that work at extreme temperatures.

Has a Superintellect Monkeyed With Our Universe’s Physics?

In this second portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Steve Meyer discusses the ways in which groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) dealt with the fact that the universe seems fine-tuned for life. Hoyle’s widely cited comment on the subject was “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” That was an unsettling idea for Hoyle, who was a well-known atheist, and he certainly sought ways around it. How did he fare?

This Artificial Neuron Uses Dopamine to Communicate With Brain Cells

The chip is an artificial neuron, but nothing like previous chips built to mimic the brain’s electrical signals. Rather, it adopts and adapts the brain’s other communication channel: chemicals.

Called neurotransmitters, these chemicals are the brain’s “natural language,” said Dr. Benhui Hu at Nanjing Medical University in China. An artificial neuron using a chemical language could, in theory, easily tap into neural circuits—to pilot a mouse’s leg, for example, or build an entirely new family of brain-controlled prosthetics or neural implants.

A new study led by Hu and Dr. Xiaodong Chen at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, took a lengthy stride towards seamlessly connecting artificial and biological neurons into a semi-living circuit. Powered by dopamine, the setup wasn’t a simple one-way call where one component activated another. Rather, the artificial neuron formed a loop with multiple biological counterparts, pulsing out dopamine while receiving feedback to change its own behavior.

Spider Silk Proteins Developed into Gel for Biomedical Applications

Down the line, the researchers hope to develop an injectable protein solution that forms a gel inside the body. The ability to design hydrogels with specific functions opens up for a range of possible applications. Such a gel could, for example, be used to achieve a controlled release of drugs into the body. In the chemical industry, it could be fused to enzymes, a form of proteins used to speed up various chemical processes.

“In the slightly longer term, I think injectable gels can become very useful in regenerative medicine,” says the study’s first author Tina Arndt, a PhD student in Anna Rising’s research group at Karolinska Institute. “We have a long way to go, but the fact that the protein solution quickly forms a gel at body temperature and that the spider silk has been shown to be well tolerated by the body is promising.”

The ability of spiders to spin incredibly strong fibers from a silk protein solution in fractions of a second has sparked an interest in the underlying molecular mechanisms. The researchers at KI and SLU have been particularly interested in the spiders’ ability to keep proteins soluble so that they do not clump together before the spinning of the spider silk. They have previously developed a method for the production of valuable proteins which mimics the process the spider uses to produce and store its silk proteins.

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