Although the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without experiencing any known symptoms. Now, the newly sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they’ve been outsmarting viruses for 65 million years. The findings are an “excellent starting point for understanding the superstar immune systems of bats,” says Laurel Yohe, a postdoc at Yale University who studies bat evolution and was not involved with the work. With more than 1400 species, bats are the second most diverse group of mammals on Earth. They live on every continent except Antarctica, and range in size from two to more than 1000 grams. They fly, they echolocate, and some live up to 41 years—a long time for animals of their size. They are also known to carry many different kinds of viruses, including coronaviruses, with no ill effects.
Newly sequenced genomes reveal the secrets of their “superstar” immune systems.
To get the best measurements of Earth’s atmosphere, you sometimes have to leave it. This November, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft will do just that.
Scientists have isolated the smallest biological molecule to date that completely and specifically neutralises SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19.
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Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.
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Over the past five decades, space travel advocates have been pushing to expand our footprint in space. They dream about lunar bases, missions to Mars and colonies in free space. The visions are ever changing, with government efforts joined by those of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX — in the midst of an effort to send tourists on a trip around the Moon — gravitating toward the space tourism sector. While the goals and how to accomplish them are in constant flux, there remain certain obstacles that must be overcome before we take that next big step. And one of the biggest is the need to protect the health of our future space explorers.
That’s what’s prompted NASA to turn to the fast-moving world of gene therapy to solve several potential medical issues facing astronauts on lengthy space missions.
The US space agency and the associated Translational Institute for Space Health Research (TRISH) at the Baylor College of Medicine are now calling for proposals from private companies and other groups to develop a kind of gene therapy for astronauts. But this would be different than recent gene therapies that target specific diseases such as hemophilia or various types of cancer. Instead, the idea here is to minimize the damage from space radiation through a kind of preventive treatment. Exposure to radiation in space can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease, cataracts and the loss of cognitive function due to accelerated death of brain cells. These different disease categories involve very different mechanisms — cancer and heart disease result from radiation damaging DNA, while loss of brain tissue results simply from radiation killing off mature cells, and still other diseases result from radiation destroying stem cells.
When a virus invades your cells, it changes your body. But in the process, the pathogen changes its shape, too. A new mathematical model predicts the points on the virus that allow this shape-shifting to occur, revealing a new way to find potential drug and vaccine targets. The unique math-based approach has already identified potential targets in the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Outlined in April in the Journal of Computational Biology, the strategy predicts protein sites on viruses that stash energy—important spots that drugs could disable. In a rare feat, the work proceeds from pure mathematics, says study author and mathematician Robert Penner of the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France. “There’s precious little pure math in biology,” he adds. The paper’s predictions face a long road before they can be verified experimentally, says John Yin, who studies viruses at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was not involved in the research. But he agrees that Penner’s approach has potential. “He’s coming at this from a mathematician’s point of view—but a very scientifically informed mathematician,” Yin says. “So that’s highly rare.”
Penner’s method takes advantage of the fact that certain viral proteins alter their shape dramatically when viruses breach cells, and this transformation depends on unstable features. (A stable protein site, by definition, resists change.) By identifying “high free energy sites”—areas on a viral protein that store lots of energy—Penner realized he could spot likely “spring” points that mediate this change in shape. He calls such high-energy spots exotic sites. Finding them required some complex math.
Food contains many bioactive molecules similar to anti-cancer drugs. ML can discover such components and design cancer-beating hyperfoods.
The food we eat contains thousands of bioactive molecules, some of which are similar to anti-cancer drugs. Modern machine learning techniques can help discover such components and help design “hyperfoods” that will let us live longer and healthier.
It’s essentially the guts of a smartphone combined with brain-implanted micro electrodes, as TechCrunch reports. The “Gennaris bionic vision system,” a project that’s more than ten years in the making, bypasses damaged optic nerves to allow signals to be transmitted from the retina to the vision center of the brain.
The system is made up of a custom-designed headgear, which includes a camera and a wireless transmitter. A processor unit takes care of data crunching, while a set of tiles implanted inside the brain deliver the signals.
“Our design creates a visual pattern from combinations of up to 172 spots of light (phosphenes) which provides information for the individual to navigate indoor and outdoor environments, and recognize the presence of people and objects around them,” Arthur Lowery, professor at Monash University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, said in a statement.
Monoclonal antibodies are man-made versions of immune system proteins (antibodies) that are designed to attach to a specific target (in this case, proteins on the surface of cancer cells). These drugs can help your immune system react to and destroy the cancer cells. Some monoclonal antibodies also fight cancer in other ways.
Chemo given along with a monoclonal antibody is a standard treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).
The monoclonal antibodies used to treat CLL can be divided into groups based on which protein they target.
In recent years we have seen the move away from ‘politics as usual’. Non-traditional figures have entered the political arena to disrupt the typical entrenched narratives. The election and worldwide popularity of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister just one example of a new kind of leader who prioritises national wellbeing and happiness in the belief that everything else will follow.
Brigadier General (Retired) Dr. Loree Sutton Next Mayor of New York City?
Brigadier General Dr. Loree Sutton, ex-army general, physician, LGBTQ, mental healthcare advocate, is a further example of a leader who attempts to bridge the gap between people and focus on wellbeing. She is a candidate who is bringing a centrist, holistic, “quality-of-life” based approach to rejuvenating and re-inventing one of the world’s major financial, technological, and cultural capitals, New York City. https://loreeformayor.nyc @NYC Mayor’s Office.
From brigadier general to new york city mayor?
Ira Pastor ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews General Dr. Loree Sutton a retired military officer who served as a Brigadier General in the United States Army for over 20 years (one of only 15 female generals out of the 1.3 million soldiers serving in the Army) as well as a medical psychiatrist (for a period of time the Army’s highest-ranking), who was deployed to various locations including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, ad Egypt in support of the first Gulf War and other missions, and is a current candidate in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.
Ira comments: Over Dr. Sutton’s career she has been awarded Legion of Merit (a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements), as well as the Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and Order of Military Medical Merit. Dr. Sutton is also the founding director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, and served as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
