You’re exhausted. The world is veiled in haze, your thoughts plod aimlessly like zombies in a B movie. Sleep deprivation curtails cognitive function. It kills focus and learning, zaps memory, and slows critical thinking to a crawl. No amount of caffeine can reverse the effects of sleep deprivation and more powerful stimulants can make things even worse. There simply is no substitute for sleep. Or so we thought.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have pinpointed one of the chemical pathways in the brain that causes the cognitive deficits associated with sleep deprivation. They found, in mice, that sleep deprivation leads to increased levels of the enzyme PDE4 and reduced levels of the molecule cAMP in the brain. cAMP is key to forming new synaptic connections in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with learning.

The team injected the mice with a PDE4 inhibitor. Miraculously, the mice recovered their lost cognitive abilities (which no doubt involves maze-running). Biologist Ted Able with the university says he and his team plan to refine the inhibitor and look for other possible sleep-deprivation treatments in the future.

“Millions of people regularly obtain insufficient sleep,” Abel said. “Our work has identified a treatment in mice that can reverse the cognitive impact of sleep deprivation. Further, our work identifies specific molecular changes in neurons caused by sleep deprivation, and future work on this target protein promises to reveal novel therapeutic approaches to treat the cognitive deficits that accompany sleep disturbances seen in sleep apnea, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.”

Unfortunately, Sleep in a Pill is still years away and will likely only be available via prescription. Still, it’s exciting to think how it could help the sleep deprived (especially new parents) be more productive, creative, and generally in a better mood.

Link to University of Pennsylvania article

If you’re going to build a swarm of nanobots to take over the world, you’ll need a lot of very tiny batteries. You could build microscopic AAs with exceedingly diminutive tools, or turn to the best nano-scale builder known: Nature. Scientists at Yale were studying how some cells turn chemical energy into electrical energy (brain cells, the cells that give electric eels their zap) when they inadvertently created synthetic cell batteries.

The simple cells are essentially lipid sacks filled with salt water and a modified protein. When two of the synthetic cells touch, they stick together. The proteins create pores between the two cells. If the two cells have different salt concentrations, positive or negative ions will pass through the pores shared wall until salt concentrations in both cells reach an equilibrium. Stick the cells with electrodes to siphon off the ions and you’ve got a microscopic battery.

Two 200-nanoliter drops of the cells in solution can deliver electricity for about 10 minutes. An 11-microleter volume can put out a charge for more than four hours.

Researchers say the cells turn chemical energy into electrical energy at about 10 percent efficiency, which is frankly pretty terrible for a battery. But it’s pretty good when compared to tiny solar cells or piezoelectric devices that generate electricity from mechanical stress.

Link to Gizmag article

Biologists at San Francisco State University (my alma mater) have discovered seven new species of bio-luminescent mushrooms—completely unaided by mind-altering fungi. Biology professor Dennis Desjardin and his team discovered the species of mushrooms in Belize, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico. Four of the discovered species are completely new to science and three have never been known to glow.

Desjardin named two of the new species after movements in Mozart’s Requiem – Mycena luxaeterna (eternal light) and Mycena luxperpetua (perpetual light). Both glow 24 hours a day.

All the new mushrooms belong to the genus Mycena, which also include the mushrooms that produce the hallucinogen psilocybin. Mycena also includes 33 species that glow, collectively and commonly known as foxfire.

Bioluminescent mushrooms glow as they break down organic matter. When a high-energy molecule is broken down into a lower-energy one, it throws out a few photons (light). In biology the process is sometimes referred to as “reverse photosynthesis.”

Desjardin thinks the newly discovered mushrooms glow to attract nocturnal animals that may help in spreading spores.

Link to SF State article

Québécois researchers have created solar-powered cyborg nanobots that use bacterial swarms to navigate Petri dishes.

Sylvain Martel and his team at the NanoRobotics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique de Montréal built a tiny solar-powered machine approximately 300 microns square that indirectly manipulates a swarm of bacteria that’s naturally sensitive to magnetic fields. The nanobot contains a pH sensor and a simple transmitter that sends electromagnetic pulses to an external computer. The computer reads the signals and adjusts a magnetic field to direct the bacteria. The machine is swept along in the swarm, moving from low to high pH areas in the dish.

It isn’t the researchers’ first foray into cyborg nanobot construction. They initially attached bacteria directly to the robots. But bacteria only have a lifespan of a few hours, making the symbiosis impractical. With the new method, fresh bacteria can be injected into the dish to revive the propulsion system.

The researchers say the method of propulsion could be used to guide tiny medical devices in the future.

Link to Technology Review article

Chemists at MIT have hacked a periwinkle plant to produce anti-cancer and hypertension-fighting drugs. The chemical engineers modified the plant’s existing chemical assembly line, tweaking genes to create chemical components of the medicines. The researchers engineered mutant forms of a gene and inserted them into plant cell cultures, causing the plant to produce chemical compounds it would never produce in nature.

Plants are essentially chemical factories, capable of fusing molecules to form virtually any compound. With enough tweaking, we could coax them to build everything from medicines to fuels to super-strong building materials to revolutionary soda pop. If we can control how plants grow, we can do almost anything.

Link to MIT story

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.

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.

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.