Caltech and Harvard Bioengineers Explain Artificial Jellyfish Research - YouTube

Learning from the Jellyfish: Squishy pumps for biomedical and engineering applications

A big goal of our study was to advance tissue engineering,” says Janna Nawroth, a doctoral student in biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and lead author of the study. “In many ways, it is still a very qualitative art, with people trying to copy a tissue or organ just based on what they think is important or what they see as the major components—without necessarily understanding if those components are relevant to the desired function or without analyzing first how different materials could be used.”

Because a particular function—swimming, say—doesn’t necessarily emerge just from copying every single element of a swimming organism into a design, “our idea,” she says, “was that we would make jellyfish functions—swimming and creating feeding currents—as our target and then build a structure based on that information.”

Their method for building the tissue-engineered jellyfish, dubbed Medusoid, is outlined in a Nature Biotechnology paper.

Turing's Morphogen Theory: Supporting Evidence Discovered

A team of UK researchers claims to have put forth the first ever experimental evidence in support of a long-standing theory about how biological patterns such as a leopard’s spots or a tiger’s stripes are formed.

The study was the work of experts from King’s College London, and according to a February 19 press release from the school, “The findings provide evidence to support a theory first suggested in the 1950s by famous code-breaker and mathematician Alan Turing,” who championed the idea that “regular repeating patterns in biological systems are generated by a pair of morphogens that work together as an ‘activator’ and ‘inhibitor’.”

Their work “not only demonstrates a mechanism which is likely to be widely relevant in vertebrate development, but also provides confidence that chemicals called morphogens, which control these patterns, can be used in regenerative medicine to differentiate stem cells into tissue,” the college added.

To test their theory, the King’s College London researchers analyzed the development of regularly-spaced ridges that can be found in the mouths of mice.

Alan Turing

By conducting experiments using embryos of the rodents, they were able to discover the pair of morphogens that work together to help determine where each of the ridges will be formed.

Each chemical influenced the other, the university said, alternately activating or inhibiting production in order to control the creation of the ridge pattern on the roof of a mouse’s mouth.

The morphogens involved in the process were identified by the scientists as Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF) and Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), and by studying them, they learned that when each chemical’s activity is increased or decreased, it affected the pattern of the ridges in the mouth in the same way that Turing’s equations had predicted they would.

“For the first time the actual morphogens involved in this process have been identified and the team were able to see exactly the effects predicted by Turing’s 60-year-old speculative theory,” the college press release stated.

“Regularly spaced structures, from vertebrae and hair follicles to the stripes on a tiger or zebrafish, are a fundamental motif in biology.

There are several theories about how patterns in nature are formed, but until now there was only circumstantial evidence for Turing’s mechanism.

Dr Jeremy Green

Our study provides the first experimental identification of an activator-inhibitor system at work in the generation of stripes – in this case, in the ridges of the mouth palate,” Dr. Jeremy Green from the Department of Craniofacial Development at King’s Dental Institute added in a statement.

While Green admitted that the discovery was “not of great medical significance,” he said that they are “extremely valuable” in validating Turing’s theories from the 1950s.

He also says that their discovery has made them confident that these morphogen chemicals could be used in the future to create regenerative medicine to heal or recreate structures and/or patterns when turning stem cells into other types of tissues.

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and is published online in the journal Nature Genetics.

Scientists Propose Use of Cryopreservation To Save Snow Leopards From Extinction

Scientists from the Monash University are pursuing the possible use of cryopreservation of genetic material for future cloning and other assisted reproduction techniques, particularly the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Cryopreservation, a process where cells or whole tissues are preserved by cooling to low sub-zero temperatures, aims to enable stocks of cells to be stored to prevent the need to have all cell lines in culture at all times.

It is invaluable when dealing with cells of limited life span, thus, this breakthrough procedure could help in the survival of the endangered snow leopard, a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia, researchers said.

The study, which is part of the PhD project of Rajneesh Verma, supervised by Dr Paul Verma, both from the Monash Institute of Medical Research (MIMR), could allow scientists to create reproductive cells from adult snow leopard tissues, which will then be used in breeding this animal.

According to the researchers, the use of iPS have never before been generated from a member of the cat family. For the study, researchers used ear tissue samples taken from adult snow leopards at Mogo Zoo in NSW to generate the iPS cells.

"The power of stem cells is that they can differentiate into all the cell types in the body. This means, they have the potential to become gametes. In fact, mouse iPS cells have given rise to entire off-spring, so the possibilities are enormous," Dr Verma said.

"By generating these stem cells, we've taken the first step in creating reproductive cells from adult tissues of an endangered animal. In the future, we aim to harness the potential of the iPS cells and create off-spring. This would help save species from extinction," he added.

According to Dr. Verma, the breakthrough was significant due to the difficulty of obtaining reproductive cells, or gametes, even from animals in captivity. However, he plans to apply the same techniques to other members of cat family, including the Bengal tiger, the jaguar and the serval.

Associate Professor Peter Temple-Smith of Monash University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Professor Michael Holland of the University of Queensland also collaborated in this study which was published in Theriogenology.

Scientists Nearer to Finding Solution for Age-Related Problems

A team of scientists from the Salk Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Lausanne have created super strong mice by controlling its natural muscle growth.

This invention will help solve genetic muscular degeneration and other age-related problems.

The scientists changed the activity of certain genes by tweaking a genome regulator called NCOR1.

They suppressed a thyroid hormone which regulates growth in most mammals and created mice that were twice as strong as normal.

According to Johan Auwerx, the lead author from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), "This could be used to combat muscle weakness in the elderly, which leads to falls and contributes to hospitalizations."

"In addition, we think that this could be used as a basis for developing a treatment for genetic muscular dystrophy."

"There are now ways to develop drugs for people who are unable to exercise due to obesity or other health complications, such as diabetes, immobility and frailty," said Ronald M Evans, a professor at the Salk Institute.

"We can now engineer specific gene networks in muscle to give the benefits of exercise to sedentary mice."

It may be recalled that cell biology expert Norman S Wolf dealt with muscular degeneration in his book 'Comparative Biology on Aging.' Wolf had argued that by restricting calories and doing regular exercise, humans could slow aging process and reduce muscular degeneration.

In the present case, the mice, which underwent genetic mutation, became true marathoners, running faster and longer before showing any signs of fatigue. They were able to cover almost twice the distance compared to the normal mice. They also exhibited better tolerance to cold.

Unlike "genetic accelerators," the new work shows that suppressing an inhibitor is a new way to build muscle, which in this experiment confirmed that the muscle fibers of the modified mice are denser, more massive, and the cells in the tissue contain higher numbers of mitochondria-cellular organelles that deliver energy to the muscles.

Auwerx said that if these results were confirmed in humans, the experiment would attract attention especially from the athletes and medical experts.

The Salk Institute conducts biological research on molecular biology, genetics, neuroscience and plant biology. Five scientists from here have won Nobel Prizes.

Recently, the institute discovered a safer way to cure asthma, allergies and arthritis. It has also done research on a drug that reduces baldness.

The EPFL (Switzerland) focuses on education, research, technology and has conducted several researches on subjects like microbiology and robotics.

Gene therapy proposed to treat depression

A NOVEL treatment for depression may soon get the go ahead: injecting genes directly into the brain. It would be the first attempt to treat a psychiatric illness with gene therapy.

A gene called p11 is vital for enabling neurons to respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. A lack of p11 has been shown to lead to depression in humans.

To test whether gene therapy could help, Michael Kaplitt of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and colleagues first demonstrated that mice lacking p11 showed symptoms of depression, failing to respond with the same vitality as healthy mice when exposed to challenges, such as showing decreased effort when having to swim to an island.

Next they injected viruses containing p11 directly into the nucleus accumbens of the mice lacking p11. This part of the brain is where a lack of p11 manifests itself as depression in humans. The team found this reversed the depression in the mice (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001079).

Although the proposal to do the same in humans sounds drastic, Kaplitt points out that a similar procedure has already been used to deliver genes to the brain's of people with Parkinson's disease.

"We're already doing a primate study to support a potential human trial, so this is moving ahead very rapidly," says Kaplitt.

No Relaxing for Cancer Cells

No relaxing for cancer cells

Many tumour cells would not be viable due to aberrant chromosome distribution if they had not developed a special trick. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Centre have investigated which genes are responsible for this survival strategy of cancer cells.

The revealed that cancer cells rely on the tension of specific protein fibers to be able to multiply. Thus, proteins which maintain this tension are promising targets for new, target-specific anticancer drugs: If they are switched off, cancer cells die.

The two centrosomes of a cell are responsible for cell division to proceed correctly. From these polar bodies in the cytoplasm protein fibers form which correctly distribute the duplicated chromosome set to the newly forming daughter cells. Seen under the microscope, these fibers have the shape of a spindle.

Cancer cells, however, often have more than two centrosomes. As a result, their spindle fibers do not necessarily assume the normal shape of a spindle with two poles; instead, they can have a dysfunctional, multipolar shape. Such malformed spindles distribute the chromosomes unevenly among the daughter cells, which are then no longer viable.

Hence, tumor cells only survive if they manage to partition their chromosomes correctly in spite of extra centrosomes. To do so, many cancer cells have developed a special trick: They form clusters of centrosomes.

Two clusters are formed per cell and a functioning bipolar spindle can develop between these two. Professor Dr. Alwin Krämer, head of a Clinical Cooperation Unit of DKFZ and Heidelberg University Hospitals has recognized this trick as a previously underrated Achilles’ heel of cancer cells, which might be used for destroying them.

Jointly with colleagues from DKFZ, Heidelberg University Hospitals, Mannheim Medical Faculty and Mayo Clinic in the U.S., he systematically investigated the question of which genes enable cancer cells to form centrosome clusters and, thus, to escape cell death.

Lake sturgeon have genes from parasite, signs of human STD

Lake sturgeon have genes from parasite, signs of human STD

While trying to find a DNA-based test to determine the sex of lake sturgeon, Purdue University researchers found that the sturgeon genome contains trematode genes that didn't originally belong to it and may harbour a protozoan parasite that causes a sexually transmitted disease in humans.

Genetics professor Andrew DeWoody and postdoctoral associate Matthew C. Hale found the parasite and pathogen genes while analyzing DNA from the gonads of lake sturgeon, a species that is on the decline because of overfishing and pollution of its habitats. The only way to determine a lake sturgeon's sex currently is to examine its internal sexual organs.

DeWoody said about 15 genes found in the lake sturgeon came from Schistosoma, a parasitic worm. Lateral gene transfer from one organism to another is rare, especially in multicellular animals, he said, but could be part of some evolutionary process for the sturgeon.

"Organisms may accept some new genes from other species because the new genes can serve as raw material for evolution," said DeWoody, whose findings were reported in the early online version of the journal Genetica. "The genome may be more fluid than we usually think."

Hale said genes often work in combination, and new genes may one day become involved with other genes to help the lake sturgeon create new traits needed to adapt to changes in its environment.

"It isn't necessarily a bad thing for the sturgeon. It probably doesn't have a cost," Hale said. "It's either neutral or has a benefit or it wouldn't be there."

While lateral gene transfer from a trematode worm could ultimately benefit the lake sturgeon, evidence of the Trichomonas pathogen is more likely to have a negative effect.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a human version of this pathogen causes Trichomoniasis, a common sexually transmitted disease that mostly affects women and can cause pregnant women to deliver early or have children with lower birthweights.

The finding is the first suspected case of Trichomonas in a fish, DeWoody said. While it's unclear how the parasite might affect lake sturgeon, DeWoody said it could negatively impact the fish's reproductive ability, which is especially alarming in a species of conservation concern.

"If it has the same effect in lake sturgeon as it does in humans, that wouldn't be good," he said.

John Cleese Explains the God Gene

Turmeric: The Indian Spice of Life

Rates of Alzheimer's in India are about four times lower than in the USA and studies suggest that Indian curry contains a powerful substance that might protect the brain from damage that leads to Alzheimer's. The growing file on the benefits of eating curry, includes compelling evidence gleaned from animal and human studies.

The findings from Western science are becoming more aligned with what traditional Indian healers have long said about turmeric. They call it the "spice of life".

For centuries, doctors trained in Ayurvedic medicine, a traditional medical system in India, have turned to turmeric to treat inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. In the USA, many people with arthritis take over-the-counter supplements that contain curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric.

Ina scientific study, rats that were bred to develop rheumatoid arthritis, were given injections of turmeric. The turmeric almost completely prevented the onset of arthritis. The spice also seemed to help stop joint destruction in rats that had already started to develop the disease.

Curry also may offer some protection against cancer. Indians eat from 100 to 200 milligrams of curry every day, and US cancer experts think that that might be enough to prevent cancer.

The curcumin in curry seems to shut down genes that trigger the development and the spread of breast cancer, animal studies in suggest and a preliminary human study suggests curcumin supplements might — in a handful of cases — be able to stabilise pancreatic cancer.

Epidemiology studies in humans also have linked frequent use of turmeric spice to lower rates of breast, prostate and colon cancer but more extensive clinical studies still need to be carried out.

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After Years of Searching, a Breakthrough Discovery of Alzheimer's Genes

Fifteen years since the last discovery of its kind, scientists have finally identified a new set of genes that may contribute to Alzheimer's disease.

The three new genes, known as clusterin, complement receptor 1 (CR1) and PICALM, were uncovered by two separate research groups, one in Wales and one in France, who linked the genes to the most common form of the memory disorder, late-onset Alzheimer's — the type that affects patients in their 60s or later and accounts for about 90% of all Alzheimer's cases.

The only other gene connected with the condition, apolipoprotein E (ApoE), was identified in 1993; since, researchers have tirelessly hunted for other key genes, knowing that 60% to 80% of the progressive, incurable disease is genetically based.

In the current studies, researchers amassed the largest set of genetic data to date in the study of Alzheimer's, and took advantage of the most recent advances in genetic screening to determine which new genes conferred a high risk of developing the disease.

"I think this technique is going to be very valuable, especially for diseases of the brain, where it is very difficult to get in there and see what's going on," says Julie Williams, professor of neuropsychological genetics at the MRC Center of Cardiff University, and one of the authors of the U.K. study, published today in the journal Nature Genetics.

Memes: Replace Genes as Engine driving Human Evolution

The idea of memes as a cultural analogue of genes has been much maligned, and most biologists still reject it. Yet memetics has much to offer in explaining human nature.

MemeTheory
According to meme theory, humans are radically different from all other species because we alone are meme machines.

Human intelligence is not just a bit more or a bit better than other kinds of intelligence, it is something completely different, based on a new evolutionary process and a new kind of information.

Differentiating
The main difference between conventional theories and memetics is this: most biologists assume that culture and language evolved because they helped humans survive and pass on their genes, and that genes retain ultimate control.

Memetics challenges that assumption. Although the capacity for imitation must once have been adaptive for the apes who started it, evolution has no foresight and could not have predicted the consequences of letting loose a new evolutionary process. Nor could it have retained control of memes once they began evolving in their own right.

Proliferation
So memes began to proliferate. What began as an adaptation soon became like a parasite - a new evolving entity that changed the apes and their world forever. Once memes were proliferating, individuals benefited from copying the latest and most successful ones, and then passed on any genes that helped them do so.

Memetic Drive
This "memetic drive" forced their brains to get bigger and bigger, and to become adept at copying the most successful memes, eventually leading to language, art, music, ritual and religion - the successful designs of human culture.

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