Lifeboat Foundation

Cool paper that adds a useful tool to the gene therapist’s toolbox! Young et al. utilize an in vivo screening method to develop adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) which target microglia. They show that their AAVs transduce central nervous system microglia as well as tissue macrophages after intravenous injection. #biotechnology

Tissue macrophages, including microglia, are notoriously resistant to genetic manipulation. Here, we report the creation of Adeno-associated viruses (AAV) variants that efficiently and widely transduce microglia and tissue macrophages in vivo following intravenous delivery, with transgene expression of up to 80%. We use this technology to demonstrate manipulation of microglia gene expression and microglial ablation, thereby providing invaluable research tools for the study of these important cells.

Researchers have shown that high concentrations of key proteins in human breast milk, especially osteopontin and κ-casein, are associated with a greater abundance of two species of bacteria in the gut of babies: Clostridium butyricum and Parabacteroides distasonis, known to be beneficial for human health and used as probiotics. These results suggest that proteins in breast milk influence the abundance of beneficial gut microbes in infants, playing an important role in early immune and metabolic development

More than 320 million years of mammalian evolution has adapted breast milk to meet all the physiological needs of babies: it contains not only nutrients, but also hormones, antimicrobials, digestive enzymes, and growth factors. Furthermore, many of the proteins in breast milk, for example casein and milk fat globule membrane proteins, aren’t just sources of energy and molecular building blocks, but also directly stimulate immunity, at least under preclinical conditions.

The humble neutrino, an elusive subatomic particle that passes effortlessly through normal matter, plays an outsized role among the particles that comprise our universe. To fully explain how our universe came to be, we need to know its mass. But, like so many of us, it avoids being weighed.

Now, an international team of researchers from the United States and Germany leading an ambitious quest called Project 8 reports that their distinctive strategy is a realistic contender to be the first to measure the neutrino mass. Once fully scaled up, Project 8 could help reveal how neutrinos influenced the early evolution of the universe as we know it.

In 2022, the KATRIN research team set an upper bound for how heavy the neutrino could possibly be. That milestone was a tour-de-force accomplishment that has been decades in the making. But these results simply narrow the search window. KATRIN will soon reach and may one day even exceed its targeted detection limits, but the featherweight neutrino might be lighter still, begging the question: “What’s next?”

Following your gut. Losing your appetite. A gutsy move. Though we often consider the gut as merely a digestive tool, these common expressions reflect the central role the gut plays in a much wider range of essential functions.

The entire digestive tract is lined by the enteric nervous system (ENS), a vast network of millions of neurons and glial cells—the two primary cell types also found in the central nervous system. While often called the second brain, the ENS not only generates the same neurotransmitters but actually predates the evolution of the central nervous system in the brain.

The functions of the ENS are crucial to life and extend far beyond digestion, as it regulates immunity, gut secretions, and enables complex, bi-directional communication between the gut and the brain. This is why a happy gut co-exists with a happy brain, and why digestive issues can lead to changes in mood and behavior.

We may have become the most complex living creature in part by accident and replication of error.

AAV development for cell and gene therapy in 2023 is being impacted by manufacturing and regulation challenges, however advancing technologies offer opportunity, according to leaders in the field.

As proven by recent regulatory approvals sweeping the cell and gene therapy industry, particularly within Europe and the US, these pioneering treatments have demonstrated great capacity in helping to resolve hard-to-treat diseases.

Astronomers have observed the outer edge of a disk of matter surrounding a feeding supermassive black hole for the first time.

These observations could help scientists better measure the structures that surround these cosmic monsters, understand how black holes feed on those structures and put together how this feeding influences the evolution of galaxies that house such phenomena.

Dr Michael Russel’s lecture at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, May 2011. The topic of the symposium was “Origin of Life and Molecular Evolution”. Check our YouTube channel for more exciting science videos! For more information, visit www.molecularfrontiers.org.

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Continue reading “Michael Russel: On the Emergence of Life Through ‘Negative’ Entropy Trapping” »

Mathematicians delight in the beauty of math that so many of us don’t see. But nature is a wonderful realm in which to observe beauty born out of mathematical relationships.

The natural world provides seemingly endless patterns underpinned by numbers – if we can recognize them.

Luckily for us, a motley team of researchers has just uncovered another striking connection between math and nature; between one of the purest forms of mathematics, number theory, and the mechanisms governing the evolution of life on molecular scales, genetics.