Mad Geneticist

The development of antimalarial drugs is fascinating – it is often driven by war and conquest. When human beings got busy trying to kill each other (during the era of colonial expansion, WWII, the Vietnam War), they often found themselves face to face with an even deadlier foe. 

Check out my animation that explores this incredible history.

Scientists discover new system for human genome editing with potential to increase power and precision of genome engineering

A team including the scientist who first harnessed the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 system for mammalian genome editing has now identified a different CRISPR system with the potential for even simpler and more precise genome engineering.

In a study published today in Cell, Feng Zhang and his colleagues at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, with co-authors Eugene Koonin at the National Institutes of Health, Aviv Regev of the Broad Institute and the MIT Department of Biology, and John van der Oost at Wageningen University, describe the unexpected biological features of this new system and demonstrate that it can be engineered to edit the genomes of human cells.

Is it the mercury or the malaria?

Or maybe it’s something else entirely that’s making people sick in the Peruvian Amazon.

Those questions are bedeviling researchers from Duke University who have been studying gold mining in the region. Illegal mining has exploded in the area in the past decade, and the people living downriver have a variety of medical issues, from malaria to anemia to high blood pressure.

Researchers have documented that mercury used in illegal gold mining ends up hundreds of miles downstream from the mines, and it eventually ends up in fish — a major local source of protein.

But you can’t see or smell mercury in fish.

So it’s hard to measure the impact on residents. One of the main effects of mercury is that it causes developmental delays in children. Toxic exposure can cause severe fatigue, headaches and vomiting. Those symptoms could be the result of mercury. Or not. There’s very little data on all the other things that could be responsible for health issues in the area.

They’re Going Door To Door In The Amazon To See Why People Get Sick

(Image caption: An embryonic mouse forebrain shows the genetically modified neurons in the neocortex (orange/yellow). Cortical stem cells and neurons in other brain regions remain unaltered)

Brain cells capable of “early-career” switch

Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered that the role of neurons–which are responsible for specific tasks in the brain–is much more flexible than previously believed.

By studying sensory neurons in mice, the Salk team found that malfunction of a single molecule can prompt the neuron to make an “early-career” switch, changing a neuron originally destined to process sound or touch, for example, to instead process vision.

The finding, reported May 11, 2015 in PNAS, will help neuroscientists better understand how brain architecture is molecularly encoded and how it can become miswired. It may also point to ways to prevent or treat human disorders (such as autism) that feature substantial brain structure abnormalities.

“We found an unexpected mechanism that provides surprising brain plasticity in maturing sensory neurons,” says the study’s first author, Andreas Zembrzycki, a senior research associate at the Salk Institute.

The mechanism, a transcription factor called Lhx2 that was inactivated in neurons, can be used to switch genes on or off to change the function of a sensory neuron in mice. It has been known that Lhx2 is present in many cell types other than in the brain and is needed by a developing fetus to build body parts. Without Lhx2, animals typically die in utero. However, it was not well known that Lhx2 also affects cells after birth.

“This process happens while the neuron matures and no longer divides. We did not understand before this study that relatively mature neurons could be reprogrammed in this way,” says senior author Dennis O’Leary, Salk professor and holder of the Vincent J. Coates Chair in Molecular Neurobiology. “This finding opens up a new understanding about how brain architecture is established and a potential therapeutic approach to altering that blueprint.”

Scientists had believed that programming neurons was a one-step process. They thought that the stem cells that generate the neurons also programmed their functions once they matured. While this is true, the Salk team found that another step is needed: the Lhx2 transcription factor in mature neurons then ultimately controls the fate of the neuron.

In the mouse study, the scientists manipulated Lhx2 to make the switch in neuronal fate shortly after birth (when the mouse neurons are fully formed and considered mature). The team observed that controlling Lhx2 let them instruct neurons situated in one sensory area to process a different sense, thus enlarging one region at the expense of the other. The scientists don’t know yet if targeting Lhx2 would allow neurons to change their function throughout an organism’s life.

“This study provides proof that the brain is very plastic and that it responds to both genetic and epigenetic influences well after birth,” says O’Leary. “Clinical applications for brain disorders are a long way away, but we now have a new way to think about them.”

“Since this study was conducted in mice, we don’t know the time frame in which Lhx2 would be operating in humans, but we know that post-birth, neurons in a baby’s brain still have not settled into their final position–they are still being wired up. That could take years,” Zembrzycki says.

Stunning Timelapse Shows the Aurora Borealis From Space

“The European Space Agency recorded a timelapse video of the Aurora Borealis as seen from the International Space Station. The latest video taken from the International Space Station is short, but it’s about as gorgeous a shot of the glowing phenomenon as one can hope to get.”

It doesn’t take a brain injury to have headache, dizziness and cognitive impairment

A team of researchers based at McMaster University has developed a new understanding of post-concussion syndrome, answering questions that have been plaguing researchers in the field.

Their study, published in the medical journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, provides an explanation for why many people with even very trivial head injuries, or even injuries to other parts of their bodies, experience incapacitating post-concussion like syndromes.

These symptoms include headaches, dizziness, cognitive impairment and other neuropsychiatric symptoms such as irritability, anxiety and insomnia.          

“It’s inflammation that they have in common,” said Michel Rathbone, a professor of medicine for McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and a lead author of the paper. “Rather than a concussion, we’d like to propose a unifying umbrella term of post-inflammatory brain syndromes or PIBS.”

He added that the research will encourage scientists to open up new lines of research into understanding the cause of post-concussion symptoms in the absence of obviously visible brain injury on conventional imaging and into the treatment of these symptoms by targeting inflammatory mediators. For example, people who have a very subtle genetic change in a certain inflammatory protein have poorer recovery after brain injury.

It also explains why many social factors appear to play a role in development of symptoms: “We know that the immune system can be modulated, or sensitized by the current and even the previous environment an individual was in. These social factors, such as preexisting stressors, depression or anxiety, may actually be, in a way, biological factors.”

Rathbone added that this will provide hope for individuals with cognitive dysfunction after major infections, surgeries and traumas, as it suggests that current and future treatments for concussion may hold a benefit for these individuals.

Rats forsake chocolate to save a drowning companion

 A new study shows that rats will rescue their distressed pals from the drink—even when they’re offered chocolate instead. They’re also more likely to help when they’ve had an unpleasant swimming experience of their own, adding to growing evidence that the rodents feel empathy.

Researchers at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan tested the rat’s altruistic behavior by devising an experimental box with two compartments divided by a transparent partition. On one side of the box, a rat was forced to swim in a pool of water, which it strongly disliked. Although not at risk of drowning—the animal could cling to a ledge—it did have to tread water for up to 5 minutes. The only way the rodent could escape its watery predicament was if a second rat—sitting safe and dry on a platform—pushed open a small round door separating the two sides, letting it climb onto dry land.

Within a few days, the high-and-dry rats were regularly aiding their soaking companions by opening the door, the team reports online today in Animal Cognition. They did not open the door when the pool was dry, confirming that the rats were helping in response to others’ distress, rather than because they wanted company, Mason says. Rats that had previously been immersed learned how to save their cagemates much more quickly than those who had never been soaked, suggesting that empathy drove their behavior, she adds. “Not only does the rat recognize distress, but he is even more moved to act because he remembers being in that situation.”

What does “Probably Cause Cancer” actually mean?

Grist asked: “Hey Risk Bites guy, the WHO just said that the herbicide in Roundup probably causes cancer – what’s the deal with that? It seems like every month we find out that something else is probably giving us cancer. Should we be worried?”

http://grist.org/science/watch-stick-figures-explain-what-probably-causes-cancer-even-means/

there are actual people out there who want to genetically modify carnivores so they no longer eat other animals

A promising technique for making brain tumors glow so they’ll be easier for surgeons to remove is now being tested in cancer patients.

Eighteen months ago, Shots first told readers about tumor paint, an experimental substance derived from scorpion venom. Inject tumor paint into a patient’s vein, and it will actually cross the blood-brain barrier and find its way to a brain tumor. Shine near-infrared light on a tumor coated with tumor paint, and the tumor will glow.

Now, after successful tests on dogs, surgeons have used tumor paint on a about a half dozen patients with brain tumors.

Doctors Test Tumor Paint In People