Researchers at the University of San Diego have created hunter-killer nanoparticles that seek out and destroy cancer cells. The particles stick to the fast-growing blood vessels that feed cancerous growths and release chemotherapy drugs at the site, killing the vessels and starving the cancer cells of oxygen.
Biologist David Cheresh and his team developed the particles, essentially nanocapsules coated in a protein that sticks to the quickly multiplying blood vessels. Each capsule contains a dose of the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin (Dox), which was developed in the ’50s based on a toxin in soil fungus. Dox is still used to treat cancer, but in very low doses. Fighting cancer with Dox is similar to carpet bombing a village to get a single enemy soldier. The drug is potent, but it tends to wreak havoc on the entire body. Side effects of the drug include nausea and heart failure.
Cheresh and his team injected the nanoparticles into mice with pancreatic and renal tumors that had spread throughout the rodents’ systems. The nanoassassins reduced the size of original tumors by 35 percent and the secondary tumors by 91 percent. Cheresh hopes to refine the particles and eventually use them to treat cancer in humans.
Link to NewScientist article.
The early morning light lances gleefully through the holes in your mini-blinds, searing your tender eyelids and turning your slothful dreamworld bloody pink. For some of us, dawn brings a hellish realization that we’ll trudge through the day wearing a shroud of exhaustion, a clammy sheet of fatigue that will dull our senses, smarts and motivation. We’re called “night owls,” and we’re forced to live in a world run by early risers.
Researchers in Portugal have proven what we’ve always known; night people are burdened with greater sleep debt during the week, sleep more on weekends and suffer more sleep-wake irregularities than early birds. Ana A. Gomes, of the University of Aveiro in Portugal, studied 1,654 undergrads at her university, where most classes start at 9 a.m. She found that night people were at a significant disadvantage when compared to early risers. Their performance and grades suffered, as did their sleep. She found the same performance deficits even after night owls were given a few weeks to adjust to a morning schedule.
Gomes believes that the university should adapt to the students’ variations in sleep-wake cycles, offering at least two different schedules. From the ScienceDaily article:
“Given the inevitable existence of diurnal-type variations from person to person, we may infer that any single standardized schedule is likely to be inappropriate. We share the idea that a wiser alternative would be the availability of at least two schedules (early/later), so that all diurnal types may gain. Sleep education would also be of great value in helping students to better adjust the sleep-wake cycle to externally imposed timetables.”
With any luck, Gomes’ suggestion will be taken to heart, both in school and in the workplace. A simple switch in schedule could improve learning and productivity for night owls. Globalization and digitally connected virtual offices should also help shatter rigidly structured work schedules. Internet connectivity means that workers and students can collaborate without being in the same space, or even country, 24-hours a day.
Link to ScienceDaily article.
Exposure to stressful situations during childhood—bickering parents, bullies, dog attacks, Disney films—could increase the risk of childhood allergies. German über-scientists at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig (UFZ), the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the “Institut für Umweltmedizinische Forschung” (IUF) in Duesseldorf, conducted a long-term study of 234 six-year-olds.
They found stressed-out kids had higher levels of the stress-related peptide VIP (vasoactive intestinal polypeptide) in their blood than mellow kids. These peptides can turn the immune system into a hyperactive, yippy little dog that attacks pretty much anything it comes across. This, researchers say, can lead to more allergic reactions.
Link to ScienceDaily article.
We’ve all seen how dames are drawn to bad dudes like iron filings to electro-magnets. Now scientists have confirmed the anecdotal evidence: Bad guys really do get the girls. Peter Jonason at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces found that guys who harbor three antisocial personality traits, dubbed the “Dark Triad,” had far more sexual partners than nice guys.
What’s the Dark Triad? A nasty, prickly trident forged from narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Members of the Dark Triad aren’t antisocial like chain-smoking basement shut-ins huddling in the warmth of their Xbox 360s. They’re charismatic, outgoing and popular. They just don’t give a flying squirrel about other people’s feelings and will do pretty much anything to get what they want. Which, in this case, is lots of sex with multiple partners.
Jonason tested 200 college guys for the telltale signs of Dark Triadism. Those who racked up the highest evil scores had far more sexual partners than goody-two-shoes. The scientist theorizes that there must be some sort of evolutionary advantage to being just a little evil, otherwise the Dark Triad of personality traits would’ve been bred out of the population ages ago. He believes that it simply comes down to bad guys being able to spread their seed more effectively than good guys. They may not stick around to raise psychologically healthy kids, but they produce a lot of them.
If being a card-carrying member of the Triad is so good, from an evolutionary standpoint, then everybody should be a certified psychopath, right? That’s obviously not the case and researchers have yet to discover why. There must be negative aspects of membership in Club Evil (like incarceration, getting gunned-down by other psychopaths in Old-West style shootouts, contracting STDs).
Another possibility, and I’m just talking off the cuff now, is that these personality traits aren’t actually inborn. They’re learned. It may explain why the kids of Dark Triad dads don’t all turn out to be bad apples.
Research is still being carried out to answer these questions. In the meantime, it may payoff to flip up your collar and adopt a wicked scowl.
Link to NewScientist article.
A U.C. Berkeley team has rejuvenated geriatric stem cells, restoring their youthful vigor and ability to rebuild damaged muscle tissue. With a simple injection of bioengineered antibodies, crotchety mice were able to recover from strenuous exercise and injury as well as spry young mice. The trick? The antibodies modified how adult stem cells respond to natural chemical signals that trigger aging.
Irina Conboy, assistant professor of bioengineering and an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center and at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), led the research team. She noticed that adult mice stem cells, when placed in “young” blood, behaved like young stem cells. They kicked into overdrive, dividing and repairing. Conversely, young stem cells slowed to a crawl when placed in “old” blood.
The researcher discovered that the cells were responding to two natural chemical signals via a set of receptors. The first receptor, called Notch, activates elated cell replication. The second, a receptor for the protein TGF-beta, sets off a chain reaction that slows cell division. Too much Notch and cells can divide too quickly, hastening tumor and cancer growth. Too much TGF-beta and adult stem cells slow down; cells succumb to the ravages of aging.
Conboy and her team knocked out the “aging pathway” that halts cell replication using a method of RNA interference and a custom antibody. The result: Old mice with the stem cells of young mice.
More research needs to be carried out before any such methods can be used on humans. Conboy fears that interrupting the aging pathway could lead to hyperactive cell division and increased rates of cancer.
Link to U.C. Berkeley article.
Craig Venter etched his name into the annals of history by decoding the human genome (his own genome, in fact) in less time than it takes the ebola virus to replicate. Now he has his sights set on oil. In a recent Newsweek interview with Fareed Zakaria, Venter outlines his plans to genetically engineer bacteria that will suck up C02 and spit out ethanol or biodiesel. The bug could solve two of humanity’s biggest problems—global warming and a dwindling supply of fossil fuels. From the interview:
Zakaria: How are you going to create the fuel of the future?
Venter: We think multiple fuels of the future are going to come out of biology, by manipulating the genetic code of simple organisms to convert things like sugar or sunlight or carbon dioxide into fuels that people are very familiar with, like diesel fuel and gasoline.
What would a “refinery” that uses microorganisms to create fuel look like?
They’re just large, bacteria-processing fermenters. People are familiar with this: that’s how wine and beer are made. We’re using similar processes, but ones that are designed to produce much more complex molecules than ethanol, and therefore fuels that will be much higher in energy content, and will work well with the existing energy infrastructure.
How close are you to creating an organism that can produce fuels in this way?
We think the first fuels are maybe one to two years away. We’re definitely thinking in terms of years, not decades.
It’s a must-read interview that’ll fill even the most pessimistic doomsday prognosticators with warm fuzzy optimism. Kinda like wine and beer. All hail our genetically modified bacterial overlords!
Link to Newsweek article.
The Bloom bicycle accessory concept spews seeds as you ride, littering your local concrete jungle with tiny plantlets that will inexorably smother blacktop and pavement, turning your city into a green paradise. Or that’s the concept, anyway. The curious little attachment latches onto your bike near the rear wheel like a lamprey. You load it with water and seed-laden soap lumps. As you pedal, the soap lumps dissolve into seed-filled bubbles that bounce gleefully in your wake.
The concept is one of many from Design 21’s “Power to the Pedal” competition. It’s a neat idea, one that would likely gain traction among Whole Foods shoppers (myself included) and card-carrying members of LOHAS.
Link to Gizmodo article.
Scientists have discovered new evidence that the basic building blocks of life were sprinkled across the solar system like the spores of a great intergalactic mushroom. The joint team of U.S. and U.K. scientists uncovered nucleobases—the bits that make up DNA and RNA—within fragments of the Murchishon meteorite, which plowed into the Australian desert in 1969.
The two nucleobases, racil and xanthine (which, incidentally would be fantastic names for fraternal twins), were analyzed to ensure that they weren’t created when the meteorite crashed to earth. Both compounds contained heavy carbon atoms which can only be formed in space.
Lead researcher Dr Zita Martins, of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, told ScienceDaily that primeval life on earth could have incorporated nucleobases from meteorites about 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago, when meteor showers were common.
The discovery gives hope that life could flourish across the universe. Co-researcher Professor Mark Sephton, in a ScienceDaily article:
“Because meteorites represent left over materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components for life — including nucleobases — could be widespread in the cosmos. As more and more of life’s raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely.”
Link to ScienceDaily article.
Photo: Date Palms from Wikipedia
A team of Swiss and Israeli scientists recently discovered a 2,000-year-old stash of desiccated date seeds near the Dead Sea and, in a fit of horticultural madness, planted them. Against all odds, one of the ancient seeds sprouted, becoming the oldest known seed to germinate.
The date pits were found among the heat-blasted ruins of the Masada Fortress in Israel. The area was once legendary for its delectable dates, but the trees of yore have long since disappeared. Scientists believe that the recently revived date palm is related to the mythical trees—it’s genetically distinct from any contemporary date species. The plant’s genes could unlock the secrets to breeding more resilient varieties of date palms.
Link to NewScientist article.
Why settle for one lovable pooch when you could have two genetically identical lovable pooches? U.S. biotech firm BioArts International is auctioning off its recently perfected dog cloning service to five lucky pet owners on June 18th. The company has been working since 1998 to make dog clones a reality and has, to date, xeroxed at least four pups.
The company uses somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to spawn the canines, the same procedure that scientists used to create Dolly, the first sheep clone, at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. The process involves swapping the nucleus (and thus, DNA) of an animal’s cell with the nucleus of an unfertilized egg cell. If the switcheroo works, the clone will grow. Clones begotten by SCNT aren’t genetically identical to their parents, however. SCNT does not clone mitochondrial DNA, so the dopplegangers are actually genetic chimeras, borrowing mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg cell.
BioArts International is an offshoot of Genetic Savings & Clone, a company known for its cat duping service. The company grew the world’s first cat clone in 2001 and began replicating felines for customers in 2004. Lou Hawthorne, CEO of Genetic Savings & Clone, founded BioArts International in 2006 to research companion animal cloning, livestock cloning and human genomics. The company has been granted the only worldwide license for cloning cats, dogs and endangered species.
Link to gizmag article.
Link to BioArts site about the first dog clones.
