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Category: chemistry – Page 5

A rewritable DNA hard drive may help solve the growing data storage crisis

Around the world, scientists are exploring an unexpected solution to the growing data crisis: storing digital information in synthetic DNA. The idea is simple but powerful—DNA is one of the most compact, durable information systems on Earth. But one issue has held the field back. Once data is written into DNA, it can’t be changed.

Now, researchers at the University of Missouri are helping to solve that problem by transforming DNA from a one-time medium into a rewritable digital hard drive. Their research is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

“DNA is incredible—it stores life’s blueprint in a tiny, stable package,” said Li-Qun “Andrew” Gu, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Mizzou’s College of Engineering. “We wanted to see if we could store and rewrite information at the molecular level faster, simpler and more efficiently than ever before.”

Tardigrades Reveal Risks and Rewards of Martian Regolith

“It seems that there’s something very damaging in MGS-1 that can dissolve in water — maybe salts or some other compound,” said Dr. Corien Bakermans. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30263/tardigrades-re…regolith-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30263/tardigrades-re…regolith-2)

How can Martian regolith (often mistakenly called “soil”) be used to benefit human exploration? This is what a recent study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how tardigrades (also called “water bears”) could be used to sterilize the Martian regolith for improved functionality, specifically for growing plants. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, mission planners, and future astronauts develop new methods for eventually living on Mars and long-term settlements.

For the study, the researchers examined states of two types of tardigrades responded to long-term exposure to Martian regolith simulant known as MGS-1 and OUCM-1, which the researchers note are like the regolith examined by NASA’s Curiosity rover. The purpose of a simulant is necessary since Mars regolith samples has never been returned to Earth. Tardigrades are known for their extreme resilience and scientists have established they have two types of states: active and dormant, as opposed to alive and dead.

The goal of the study was to ascertain if tardigrades could be used to improve the chemical composition of Martian regolith. However, the researchers discovered that the MGS-1 caused significant declines in tardigrade activity after only a few days. The team mitigated this by washing the simulant and introduced new tardigrades, resulting in improved numbers. For OUCM-1, the researchers found this simulant also caused increased tardigrade dormancy while one type of tardigrade was less damaging.

Chemotherapeutic drugs: Cell death- and resistance-related signaling pathways. Are they really as smart as the tumor cells?

Cancer is characterized by the uncontrolled cell proliferation, invasion, and check-point evasion of abnormal cells that are mostly nonfunctional. Cancer can arise due to diet insufficiencies, inherited mutations, and tobacco consumption, to say the least [1, 2]. Cancer’s incident is increasing due to the sedentary lifestyle, overpopulated, polluted megacities, and individuals’ growing desire for consuming processed foods containing preservatives additives [3], [4], [5]. Since cancers might not manifest symptoms in their early onset, it would be difficult or even improbable to treat them when they are diagnosed in their late stage. By and large, tumors are composed of two main parts, including the proliferating cells and stroma, which contains connective tissue and blood supply [6]. Chemotherapy has been among our best options against malignancies.

Chemotherapy is defined by the administration of numerous drugs and chemicals either alone or in combination to kill the cancer cells. Chemotherapeutic drugs kill cancer cells or control their progression all over the patient’s body, while radiation-and surgery-based treatments are directed to a particular site. Cure, control, and palliation are the three objectives of chemotherapies. Killing cancer cells by implementing chemotherapy drugs means “Cure”, whereas “Control” defines the situation that full remission seems far-fetched; therefore, the objective of the therapy would be to decrease the tumor size or to diminish the growth rate and angiogenesis. Palliation aims to alleviate the pain, symptoms, and medical conditions arisen due to cancer. It is mostly accomplished when cancer is in the advanced stages and cannot be eradicated; therefore, our aim would be to improve the quality of life.

The chemotherapy prescription approaches rely on various elements, including the cancer’s type, the cancer’s stage, the patient’s age, the patient’s general health status, the other concurrent health issues, and the history of receiving chemotherapies. Since chemotherapeutic drugs cannot distinguish normal cells against cancerous cells, the prescribed dosage is the other crucial aspect toward achieving the best possible response. The administration dosage depends on the patient’s weight, body surface area, age, nutrition status, history of radiation therapy, and blood cell count. Besides, a suitable drug administration schedule might help obtain the most efficient anti-cancer activity and minimum side effects [7, 8].

Genomic reorganization at the transition to gametogenesis

Using a technique called Hi-C analysis, which looks at how DNA is arranged in three dimensions inside the nucleus, the team found that at this transitional point the genome’s three-dimensional organisation becomes less structured and chromosomes become more separated inside the nucleus.

Creating sperm and eggs in the laboratory (in vitro) remains one of the greatest challenges in reproductive biology. To study this process, scientists use primordial germ cell–like cells (PGCLCs), which are lab-generated cells derived from embryonic stem cells that mimic the embryo’s earliest reproductive cells. However, these PCGLCs often fail to complete all the steps of meiosis, making it difficult to create functional sperm and eggs in petri dishes.

After studying the process in germ cells from the embryos, the team studied lab-generated mouse PCGLCs to see if the centromeres migrated to the periphery of the nucleus in vitro too, but they did not see the same phenomenon.

“The presence of this chromosome conformation in embryonic germ cells, but not lab-grown cells, suggests that this structural change could be required for meiosis to proceed properly, and could explain why meiosis is so difficult to recreate outside the body,” says the author, “but we need to do more work to fully characterise the process before we can say for sure.”

“Our study has uncovered a previously unknown and frankly very surprising restructuring of genome architecture that occurs in developing germ cells, which we believe is critical for a successful execution of meiosis,” says the senior author. ScienceMission sciencenewshighlights.

In our cells, our DNA carries chemical or ‘epigenetic’ marks that decide how genes will be used in different tissues. Yet in the group of specialised cells, known as ‘germ cells’, which will later form sperm and eggs, these inherited chemical instructions must be erased or reshuffled so development can begin again with a fresh blueprint in future generations.

Continue reading “Genomic reorganization at the transition to gametogenesis” | >

Gut bacteria can sense their environment and it’s key to your health

Your gut bacteria are chemical detectives—sniffing out nutrients and even feeding each other to keep your microbiome thriving. Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that constantly “sense” their surroundings to survive and thrive. New research shows that beneficial gut microbes, especially common Clostridia bacteria, can detect a surprisingly wide range of chemical signals produced during digestion, including byproducts of fats, proteins, sugars, and even DNA. These microbes use specialized sensors to move toward valuable nutrients, with lactate and formate standing out as especially important fuel sources.

The gut microbiome, also called the gut flora, plays a vital role in human health. This enormous and constantly changing community of microorganisms is shaped by countless chemical exchanges, both among the microbes themselves and between microbes and the human body. For these interactions to work, gut bacteria must be able to detect nutrients and chemical signals around them. Despite their importance, scientists still know relatively little about the full range of signals that bacterial receptors can recognize.

A key question remains. Which chemical signals matter most to beneficial gut bacteria?

Astronomers shocked by how these giant exoplanets formed

JWST just found evidence that some “super-Jupiters” may have formed like planets, not failed stars. A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed like Jupiter, by slowly building solid cores. That’s unexpected because these planets are far bigger and orbit much farther from their star than models once allowed.

Gas giants are enormous planets made primarily of hydrogen and helium. They may contain dense central cores, but unlike Earth, they do not have solid surfaces you could stand on. In our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn are classic examples. Beyond our neighborhood, astronomers have identified many gas giant exoplanets, some far larger than Jupiter. The most massive of these worlds begin to resemble brown dwarfs, substellar objects sometimes called “failed stars” because they do not fuse hydrogen.

This overlap raises a major question in astronomy. How exactly do these massive planets form? One possibility is core accretion, the same process believed to have created Jupiter and Saturn. In this scenario, a solid core slowly builds up inside a disk of dust and ice, gathering rocky and icy material until it becomes massive enough to pull in surrounding gas. Another possibility is gravitational instability, where a swirling cloud of gas around a young star collapses quickly under its own gravity, forming a large object more like a brown dwarf.

Interplay between cancer cell lipotypes and disease states

Lipid metabolism in cancer.

Cancer cells exhibit distinct lipotypes to sustain functional states crucial for tumorigenesis.

Various lipid metabolism components like biosynthesis, uptake, storage, and degradation of lipids contribute to cancer cell fitness.

Cancer cells dynamically transition across lipotypes under microenvironmental stress.

Targeting essential nodes in lipid metabolism may offer novel cancer therapeutics. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/cancer-cell-lipotypes

While the initial transformation of cancer cells is driven by genetic alterations, tumor cell behaviors and functional states are dynamically regulated by cell-intrinsic factors including proteins, metabolites and lipids, and extrinsic microenvironmental factors. Emerging multi-omics technologies highlighted that cancer cells exhibit distinct lipidome compositions and employ specific lipid metabolic circuits for chemical conversions – collectively defined as ‘lipotypes’. We review the interplay between cancer lipotypes and cellular states, focusing on interpreting how being at different positions along the spectra of representative lipid metabolic axes influences cancerous traits. We aim to instill a system biology perspective to integrate ‘lipotypes’ into the established ‘genotype–phenotype’ framework in cancer.

Continue reading “Interplay between cancer cell lipotypes and disease states” | >

High-Pressure Freezing EM Tomography of Entire Ribbon Synapses in the Retina

JNeurosci: Using advanced electron microscopy in rats, Zhang et al. captured 3D images of chemical synapses that perform visual computations in the retina. Their findings reveal how neural connections are structured for efficient visual signaling.

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In the retina, presynaptic active zones in photoreceptors and bipolar cells are distinguished by a plate-like “ribbon” linked to the plasma membrane (PM) and surrounded by dozens of synaptic vesicles (SVs) tethered to it. SVs at the base of the ribbon, closest to the PM, are thought to constitute the readily releasable vesicle pool (RRP), i.e., SVs primed to be released 1–2 ms following stimulation. The number of SVs in the RRP is a critical synaptic parameter that influences synaptic strength and varies with light levels to enable ribbon synapses to compute visual information. Physiological RRP measurements agree well with anatomical estimates obtained via electron microscopy (EM), although EM often employs chemical fixation, which causes exocytotic artifacts that may influence RRP size.

Scientists Uncover the Secret Structure Behind “Nature’s Proton Highway”

Phosphoric acid is vital in both biology and modern technology because of its exceptional ability to move electrical charge. Inside the human body and in devices such as fuel cells, this small molecule helps drive essential chemical reactions.

Scientists at the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz Haber Institute have now uncovered new details about how it performs this task at the molecular level.

The Nervous System and Behavior

Many central issues with which neurosciences is concerned, such as how we perceive the world around us, how we learn from experience, how we remember, how we direct our movements, and how we communicate with each other, have commanded the attention of thoughtful men and women for centuries. But it was not until after World War II that neuroscience began to emerge as a separate and increasingly vigorous scientific discipline that has as its ultimate objective providing a satisfactory account of animal (including human) behavior in biological terms. This ambitious goal has as its basis the central realization that all behavior is, in the last analysis, a reflection of the function of the nervous system. It is the organized and coordinated activity of the nervous system that ultimately manifests itself in the behavior of the organism. The challenge to neuroscience then, is to explain, in physical and chemical terms, how the nervous system marshalls its signaling units to direct behavior.

The real magnitude of this challenge can perhaps be best judged by considering the structural and functional complexity of the human brain and the bewildering complexity of human behavior. The human brain is thought to be composed of about a hundred billion (1011) nerve cells and about 10 to 50 times that number of supporting elements or glial cells. Some nerve cells have relatively few connections with other neurons or with such effector organs as muscles or glands, but the great majority receive connections from thousands of other cells and may themselves connect with several hundred other neurons. This means that at a fairly conservative estimate the total number of functional connections (known as synapses) within the human brain is on the order of a hundred trillion (1014). But what is most important is that these connections are not random or indiscriminate:

They constitute the essential “wiring” of the nervous system on which the extraordinarily precise functioning of the brain depends. We owe to the great neuroanatomists of the last century, and especially to Ramón y Cajal, the brilliant insight that cells with basically similar properties are able to produce very different actions because they are connected to each other and to the sensory receptors and effector organs of the body in different ways. One major objective of modern neuroscience is therefore to unravel the patterns of connections within the nervous system—in a word, to map the brain.

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