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. 

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.

Fuse nanoparticles of cellulose in a tight matrix and you’ll end up with paper that’s tougher than cast iron. Professor Lars Berglund at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stokholm made the discovery while searching for a better use of cellulose, the most abundant plant material on the planet. Currently, most cellulose is used to make paper products or as filler in other materials. It’s the stuff that gives plant cells their structure, long sugar molecules that form durable cell walls.

Processing cellulose usually turns it to mush, which is why your typical strong man can tear a phone book in two without breaking a sweat. Berglund developed a gentle process that uses enzymes and a mechanical beater to ease cellulose molecules out of wood pulp. The pristine cellulose forms extremely strong hydrogen bonds when dried, giving the material a tensile strength of about 214 megapascals. That’s greater than cast iron (130 MPa) and not far off from structural steel (250 MPa). Compare that to run-of-the-mill paper, which has a tensile strength of less than 1 MPa.

No word on potential uses for the material, but it could turn out to be the best renewable building material yet discovered.

Link to NewScientist article.

Either it’ll give you the screaming heebeegeebees or fill you with a rapturous awe of nature: Fetal cuttlefish can identify and remember prey through the gelatinous, translucent shells of their eggs. That’s right, everyone’s favorite tentacle-mustachioed mollusk is a dyed-in-the-wool killer before birth.

It’s the first known instance of a fetus learning visual cues and scientists are wondrously confounded. So how does one teach a fetal cuttlefish? Ludovic Dickel and a team of scientists at the University of Caen Basse-Normandy, France, simply placed crabs alongside cuttlefish eggs. These cuttlefish preferred to dine on crab when they grew up. Cuttlefish who aren’t exposed to crab before they hatch prefer shrimp.

Dickel believes the fetal cuttlefish can see through their shells and make mental menus of their future prey.

Add this feat to the cuttlefish’s already impressive list of talents: dextrous tentacles, ink cloud, hydro-jet propulsion and color-changing dermis.

Link to BBC article.

The spiky, Sputnik-shaped fossils of several microorganisms have reinvigorated biologists hopes that life once wriggled on Mars. The tiny creatures wallowed in brackish, acidic pools of water in the deserts of North Dakota about 250 million years ago—pools that are strikingly similar to those that once dotted the surface of the red planet. 

Kathleen Benison, a geologist at Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, discovered the fossilized microorganisms in sediment at the bottom of pools. They’re not much to look at: clumps of inorganic crystals about 0.05 to 1.5 millimeters in diameter with spiky graphite “hairs.” Benison’s team believes that each one of the hairs represents a remnant of an organism because they are made of disordered graphite, which signals organic assembly. 

The pools where the organisms were found are described as some of the harshest environments on earth; too salty and acidic for even basic bacteria. So how did the bugs survive? The team of scientists believe they dined on a mineral diet, extracting energy from chemical reactions of sulfur in the salty water.

The Mars connection: A few hundred million years ago, Mars was covered with tiny pools with a similarly salty composition. Tentative proof that life survived in hellish ponds on earth makes biologists think that it could have eked out a living on Mars. 

NASA’s Phoenix rover, currently on a geological mission in the red planet’s norther polar region, isn’t equipped to search for fossils. It is, however, equipped to check for more signs of water and the types of minerals that could’ve supported life. 

Fossilized microscopic martians may not sound exciting, but their discovery could signal that life isn’t confined to our little planet and may be blooming across the universe.

Link to NewScientist article.

Researchers at UC Berkeley are working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to target and eliminate (with extreme prejudice) genetic weaknesses that can cause general performance deficits in otherwise healthy people.

The team of scientists, led by researcher Nicholas Marini and molecular and cell biology prof Jasper Rine, hope to pinpoint small genetic defects that can affect the efficiency of common enzymes. These enzyme deficiencies don’t express themselves as full-blown illness, but can cause fatigue, general malaise and other mild symptoms that can really screw up your day. Once the weaknesses are identified, doctors should be able to brew customized vitamin concoctions to counteract them.

ScienceDaily recently spoke with Marini. From the interview:

“Our studies have convinced us that there is a lot of variation in the population in these enzymes, and a lot of it affects function, and a lot of it is responsive to vitamins,” Marini said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everybody is going to require a different optimal dose of vitamins based on their genetic makeup, based upon the kind of variance they are harboring in vitamin-dependent enzymes.”

No news on whether these super serums would turn the average cubicle jockey into a superstar, but the research looks promising so far. The team injected a sampling of human genes that code for an enzyme called methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) into yeast cells. The enzyme uses the B vitamin folate to build DNA nucleotides. The researchers found that some variations of the gene were better at synthesizing MTHFR than others. They were then able to add supplements to the yeast diet to make up for the differences.

Marini and Rine guess that most people have about five rare mutant enzymes that could be counteracted with proper supplementation. 

From the ScienceDaily interview:

“There are over 600 human enzymes that use vitamins or minerals as cofactors, and this study reports just what we found by studying one of them,” Rine said. “What this means is that, even if the odds of an individual having a defect in one gene is low, with 600 genes, we are all likely to have some mutations that limit one or more of our enzymes.”

With the price of genetic testing approaching an all-time low (some estimate that it’ll soon cost about 100 bucks for a full sequence), the findings seem promising.

So what’s the DARPA connection? Again, from the ScienceDaily interview:

“Our soldiers, like top athletes, operate under extreme conditions that may well be limited by their physiology,” Rine said. “We’re now working with the defense department to identify variants of enzymes that are remediable, and ultimately hope to identify troops that have these variants and test whether performance can be enhanced by appropriate supplementation.”

Link to the ScienceDaily article.