Lifeboat Foundation

Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter that can provide an intense feeling of reward. It has been a long-standing assumption that most, if not all, dopamine neurons solely respond to rewards or reward-predicting cues. However, a study in mice led by researchers at Northwestern University reveals dopamine may also control movements. The researchers uncovered that one genetic subtype fires when the body moves and that these neurons do not respond to rewards at all.

The findings are published in Nature Neuroscience in an article titled, “Unique functional responses differentially map onto genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons,” and shed new light on the brain which may lead to new research on Parkinson’s disease, which is characterized by the loss of dopamine neurons yet affects the motor system.

“Dopamine neurons are characterized by their response to unexpected rewards, but they also fire during movement and aversive stimuli,” the researchers wrote. “Dopamine neuron diversity has been observed based on molecular expression profiles; however, whether different functions map onto such genetic subtypes remains unclear. In this study, we established that three genetic dopamine subtypes within the substantia nigra pars compacta, characterized by the expression of Slc17a6 (Vglut2), Calb1, and Anxa1, each have a unique set of responses to rewards, aversive stimuli, and accelerations and decelerations, and these signaling patterns are highly correlated between somas and axons within subtypes.”

The device was equipped with infrared technology.

A police drone equipped with infrared capabilities has risen as a hero in the search for a missing person with dementia that disappeared from a Delta hospital on July 29. Delta is a city located in British Columbia, Canada.

This is according to a report by Global News published on Wednesday.

Continue reading “Police use drone to find missing person with dementia” »

At Tomorrow Bio, we use the latest technology to preserve you for however long it takes until medical technology can extend your life.

Rotifers are excellent research organisms for studying the biology of aging, DNA repair mechanisms, and other fundamental questions. Now, using an innovative application of CRISPrCas9, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, have devised a method for making precise, heritable changes to the rotifer genome, enabling the larger community of scientists to deploy the rotifer as a genetically tractable lab organism.

Tropical mosquitoes are increasingly widespread across the planet, and their leap to new continents could be incubating the next global human pandemic.

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Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.

The Fresno County Public Health Department has been “evaluating and assessing the activities of an unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, the health department’s assistant director, Joe Prado, said in a statement Thursday. All of the biological agents were destroyed by July 7 following a legal abatement process by the agency.

“The evaluation required coordination and collaboration with multiple federal and state agencies to determine and classify biological and chemical contents onsite, in addition to assessing jurisdictional authority under this unique situation,” Prado said.

When Samuel Peralta contacts artists about putting their work on the moon, they don’t always believe him.

“I say, ‘I’d like to put your art on the moon,’ and they think this is some sort of a scam,” the semiretired physicist and author tells the New York Times’ J. D. Biersdorfer.

But it’s true. Peralta is the mastermind behind the Lunar Codex, a series of time capsules containing the work of 30,000 artists from 157 countries that will journey to the lunar surface. Peralta wants the project to honor artists after the difficulties they faced during the pandemic, he tells the Toronto Star’s Kevin Jiang.

Chemical structures called cyclopropanes can increase the potency and fine-tune the properties of many drugs, but traditional methods to create this structure only work with certain molecules and require highly reactive—potentially explosive—ingredients.

Now, a team of researchers from Penn State has identified and demonstrated a safe, efficient and practical way to create cyclopropanes on a wide variety of molecules using a previously undescribed chemical process. With additional development, the new method—described in a paper publishing Aug. 4 in the journal Science —could transform how this important process occurs during drug development and creation.

Cyclopropanes are a key feature in many drugs currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including those used to treat COVID-19, asthma, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDs. These structures can increase a drug’s potency, alter its ability to dissolve in the body, minimize its interactions with unintended targets, and otherwise fine-tune performance. Cyclopropanes are a ring of three connected carbon atoms, with one carbon attached to the rest of the drug molecule and the other two each attached to two hydrogen atoms.

A research team led by Prof. Yossi Paltiel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with groups from HUJI, Weizmann and IST Austria has published a new study that reveals the influence of nuclear spin on biological processes. This discovery challenges long-held assumptions and opens up exciting possibilities for advancements in biotechnology and quantum biology.

Scientists have long believed that nuclear spin had no impact on biological processes. However, recent research has shown that certain isotopes behave differently due to their nuclear spin. The team focused on stable oxygen isotopes (¹⁶ O, ¹⁷ O, ¹⁸ O) and found that nuclear spin significantly affects oxygen dynamics in chiral environments, particularly in its transport.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), have potential implications for controlled isotope separation and could revolutionize nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology.