Lifeboat Foundation

Immune system changes in the pregnant body that protect the fetus appear to extend to the brain, where a decrease in immune cells late in gestation may factor into the onset of maternal behavior, new research in rats suggests.

In adult female rats that had never given birth—which typically don’t like being around babies—depletion of these cells sped up their care for rat newborns that were placed in their cage.

The loss of these cells, called microglia, and the related uptick in motherly attentiveness were also associated with changes to neuron activity in several regions of the rat brain, suggesting shifts in immune function have a role in regulating maternal behavior.

However, there are no drugs that specifically block MAPK4 that could be tested to reduce tumor growth. Instead, Yang and his colleagues explored an alternative approach.

We showed that blocking both AKT and PDK1 effectively repressed MAPK4-induced cancer cell growth, suggesting a potential therapeutic strategy to treat MAPK4-dependent cancers, such as a subset of TNBC, prostate and lung cancer.

“In this study we have not only advanced our understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying the tumor-promoting activity of MAPK4, we also have found a potential novel therapeutic approach for human cancers,” Yang said.

© 2023 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. All Rights Reserved.

For many people, they are tiny pests. These fruit flies that sometimes hover over a bowl of peaches or a bunch of bananas. But for a dedicated community of researchers, fruit flies are an excellent model organism and source of information into how neurons self-organize during the insect’s early development and form a complex, fully functioning nervous system.

That’s the scientific story on display in this beautiful image of a larval fruit fly’s developing nervous system. Its subtext is: fundamental discoveries in the fruit fly, known in textbooks as Drosophila melanogaster, provide basic clues into the development and repair of the human nervous system. That’s because humans and fruit flies, though very distantly related through the millennia, still share many genes involved in their growth and development. In fact, 60 percent of the Drosophila genome is identical to ours.

Once hatched, as shown in this image, a larval fly uses neurons (magenta) to sense its environment. These include neurons that sense the way its body presses against the surrounding terrain, as needed to coordinate the movements of its segmented body parts and crawl in all directions.

Cattle may seem like uniquely American animals, steeped in the lore of cowboys, cattle drives and sprawling ranches. But cattle didn’t exist on the American continents prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who brought livestock with them from Europe by way of the Canary Islands.

In a new study, researchers analyzed ancient DNA from Spanish settlements in the Caribbean and Mexico. Their results indicate cattle were also imported from Africa early in the process of colonization, more than 100 years before their arrival was officially documented.

Records kept by Portuguese and Spanish colonists reference breeds from the Andalusian region of Spain but make no mention of transporting cattle from Africa. Some historians have interpreted this omission to mean that the first wave of colonists relied entirely on a small stock of European cattle initially shipped to the Caribbean Islands.

Study reveals an important discovery in the realm of nanomachines within living systems. Prof. Sason Shaik from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Kshatresh Dutta Dubey from Shiv Nadar University, conducted molecular-dynamics simulations of Cytochromes P450 (CYP450s) enzymes, revealing that these enzymes exhibit unique soft-robotic properties.

Cytochromes P450 (CYP450s) are enzymes found in living organisms and play a crucial role in various biological processes, particularly in the metabolism of drugs and xenobiotics. The researchers’ simulations demonstrated that CYP450s possess a fourth dimension — the ability to sense and respond to stimuli, making them soft-robot nanomachines in “living matters.”

In the catalytic cycle of these enzymes, a molecule called a substrate binds to the enzyme. This leads to a process called oxidation. The enzyme’s structure has a confined space that allows it to act like as a sensor and a soft robot. It interacts with the substrate using weak interactions, like soft impacts. These interactions transfer energy, causing parts of the enzyme and the molecules inside it to move. This movement generates ultimately a special substance called oxoiron species, which serves the enzyme to oxidize a variety of different substances.

Retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells grown on 3D nano scaffolds have the potential to treat age-related macular degeneration, a disease that is making millions of humans blind as they age.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the most common causes of poor eyesight, blurred vision, and blindness in middle and old-age individuals. A team of scientists at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) has figured out a way to treat this condition using cultured retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells.

Continue reading “Lab-grown RPE cells promise to cure age-related blindness” »

As much as we may love them, cats are major reservoirs of zoonotic infections, and their bites and scratches can pose a serious threat to our health. It’s a sad truth that one UK-based man found out the hard way after he was bitten by a stray cat and contracted an extensive soft tissue infection caused by a species of bacteria that had never been described before.

A case report describing the incident details how, back in 2020, the 48-year-old man turned up at the emergency department presenting with a painful, swollen hand. Eight hours earlier, he had been bitten several times by a feral cat. Doctors initially cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds, before giving him a tetanus shot and sending him on his way with a course of antibiotics.

However, within 24 hours he was back, with an intensifying infection in his left little and right middle fingers, as well as both forearms. Again, the area was cleaned, and this time, the damaged tissue was surgically removed and intravenous antibiotics were administered. After five days of oral antibiotics, he made a full recovery.

COVID-19 turned city streets into pop-up restaurants. What if we didn’t go back?