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Category: biotech/medical

Brown University engineers have developed a new technique to help researchers understand how cells move through complex tissues in the body. They hope the tool will be useful in understanding all kinds of cell movements, from how cancer cells migrate to how immune cells make their way to infection sites.

The technique is described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The traditional method for studying cell movement is called traction force microscopy (TFM). Scientists take images of cells as they move along 2-D surfaces or through 3-D gels that are designed as stand-ins for actual body tissue. By measuring the extent to which cells displace the 2-D surface or the 3-D gel as they move, researchers can calculate the forces generated by the cell. The problem is that in order to do the calculations, the stiffness and other mechanical properties of artificial tissue environment must be known.

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Using a fluorescent molecule to track neurotransmission of dopamine in mouse synapses, scientists made a puzzling discovery. … (credit: Sulzer Lab/Columbia University Medical Center)

Columbia University scientists recently tested a new optical technique to study how information is transmitted in the brains of mice and made a surprising discovery: When stimulated electrically to release dopamine (a neurotransmitter or chemical released by neurons, or nerve cells, to send signals to other nerve cells), only about 20 percent of synapses — the connections between cells that control brain activity — were active at any given time.

The effect had never been noticed. “Older techniques only revealed what was going on in large groups of synapses,” explained David Sulzer, PhD, professor of neurobiology in Psychiatry, Neurology, and Pharmacology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). “We needed a way to observe the neurotransmitter activity of individual synapses, to help us better understand their intricate behavior.”

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Most biology students will be able to tell you that neural signals are sent via mechanisms such as synaptic transmission, gap junctions, and diffusion processes, but a new study suggests there’s another way that our brains transmit information from one place to another.

Researchers in the US have recorded neural spikes travelling too slowly in the brain to be explained by conventional signalling mechanisms. In the absence of other plausible explanations, the scientists believe these brain waves are being transmitted by a weak electrical field, and they’ve been able to detect one of these in mice.

“Researchers have thought that the brain’s endogenous electrical fields are too weak to propagate wave transmission,” said Dominique Durand, a biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve University. “But it appears the brain may be using the fields to communicate without synaptic transmissions, gap junctions or diffusion.”

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Thanks to the cocktail of drugs that make up antiretroviral therapy, HIV is no longer a death sentence. But there are downsides to antiretroviral therapy—taking the treatment for many years is expensive, increases drug resistance, and could cause adverse reactions in a patient. And, because the virus stays in reservoirs in the body, the disease can continue to progress in patients if they stop taking their medication.

Now a team of German researchers has found an enzyme that can “cut” the viral DNA out of a cell’s genetic code, which could eradicate the virus from a patient’s body altogether. The proof-of-concept study, published this week in Nature Biotechnology and reported by Ars Technica, was done in mice, but the researchers believe that their conclusions show that this DNA-snipping enzyme could be used in clinical practice. And if it can cut HIV’s genetic code out of a patient’s body, the technique could be a cure for the disease.

The researchers created the DNA-snipping enzyme called Brec1 using directed evolution, an engineering technique that mimics proteins’ natural evolution process. They programmed the enzyme to cut DNA on either side of a sequence characteristic of HIV—a difficult task since the DNA of organisms and of the virus itself mutates often. Still, the researchers identified a well-conserved sequence, then they tested how reliably the enzyme could snip out that sequence in cells taken from HIV-positive patients, in bacteria, and in mice infected with the human form of HIV. After a number of tweaks, Brec1 would cut only that sequence of DNA, patching up the cell’s genetic code once the HIV sequence was cleaved out. After 21 weeks, the cells treated with Brec1 showed no signs of HIV.

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Vanna Belton from Baltimore has been blind for more than five years, but after undergoing surgery where stem cells extracted from her bone marrow were injected into her right eye’s retina and left eye’s optic nerve, she has regained some of her sight.

“When I realised I could see the license plates, we started walking around the neighbourhood reading them,” she told the Baltimore Sun, adding that for the first time since 2009, she’s been able to navigate her way around without a cane.

While Belton’s recovery is certainly remarkable, it’s also incredibly perplexing. The doctor who performed the stem cell treatment, ophthalmologist Jeffrey N. Weiss, cut so many corners to get her and 277 other patients into surgery, even he can’t explain why it works.

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The most recent Liz talk. According to her in this vid her first test results of telomere length are next month.

Liz Parrish, the Founder and CEO of BioViva Sciences USA Inc, is best known for recently becoming the first person to be treated with gene therapy to reverse aging.

BioViva is committed to extending healthy lifespans using gene therapy. Liz is known as “the woman who wants to genetically engineer you.” She is a humanitarian, entrepreneur and innovator and a leading voice for genetic cures.

This talk, “Gene therapy to save the world”, was co-hosted by Oxford Transhumanism and Emerging Technologies (OxTET) and Oxford University Scientific Society. It was held at IEB building, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford, on Feb 23rd 2016.

For more details about the event, see https://www.facebook.com/events/1682079625367629/.

Help us caption & translate this video!

http://amara.org/v/HvM7/

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BMI’s (according to DARPA and David Axe) could begin as early as 2017 on humans. The plan is to use stentrodes. Testing has already proven success on sheep. I personally have concerns in both a health (as the article highlighted prone to blood clots) as well as anything connecting via Wi-Fi or the net with hackers trying to challenge themselves to prove anything is hackable; that before this goes live on a person we make sure that we have a more secure hack-resistant net before someone is injured or in case could injure someone else.

Soldiers could control drones with a thought.

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After that stem-cell synth yesterday, we’re in the mood for some serious bodymods—so let’s take it from Cronenberg and into Gibson. Software company Chaotic Moon is currently working on tattoos made with conductive ink, which they’re calling Tech Tats. While still mainly used in the medical field, we can already imagine a fully developed 303 implemented under your skin. Who needs a hoverboard when you can make acid with a tattoo?

(via designboom)

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