Just take an Aspirin :)

I don't have anyone in my family who suffers from this disease but I have volunteered for the Alzheimer's walk and that was an experience in itself.  My best friend's grandmother had Alzheimer's and those were very difficult times for her as well. I was surprised to read that an aspirin tablet could potentially contain an ingredient for improving the disease and even others.

 

The key ingredient in aspirin, salicylic acid, has been in the eyes of researchers from Boyce Thompson Institute and John Hopkins University for its ability to regulate the immune system of plants. Through their curiosity with the many benefits salicylic acid can offer for plants, they decided to check out humans.  They came upon an enzyme responsible for cell death in diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's. The enzyme, Glyceraldehyde 3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase (GAPDH), is a part of glucose metabolism and it enters the nucleus of neuron cells when it undergoes oxidative stress causing cell death. When neuron cells die, the disease worsens. Salicylic acid is able to bind to GAPDH and inhibit the enzyme from entering the nuclei which in-turn stops cell death. Even better, the researchers were able to find a plant based (Chinese licorice) and lab synthesized derivative of salicylic acid that is more potent than the one found in aspirin.

 

Further research was done and apparently salicylic acid can also bind to High Mobility Group Box 1 (HMGB1) which is involved in inflammation. Therefore, they are trying to see if salicylic acid can also help with diseases like "arthritis, lupus, sepsis, atherosclerosis and certain cancers".

 

It seems like salicylic acid has a promising future for the treatment of diseases that affect a lot of us and our family members. I still feel like more research needs to be done to ensure there are no weird or dangerous side effects from salicylic acid based treatments. Article

 

Walk to end Alzheimer's September 2013

RNA leads the way!

The CRISPR/Cas9 is a system that is used to inactivate or correct certain genes. The system has a downfall, however, because once it is turned on, it stays on and keeps editing genes. This is no bueno because it can cause editing of genes that are not supposed to be cut or corrected.

The original CRISPR/Cas9 system uses a guide RNA that matches the desired sequence and directs the Cas9 enzyme to the location on the gene where it will perform gene editing.

Researchers from at the University of California have developed a new method using “chemically modified RNA base-drugs” that are still able to direct the Cas9 enzyme to the gene for editing. What’s different is that this new RNA is able to activate and inactivate the Cas9 enzyme as needed (or wanted) by the researcher.

The modified RNA stops the Cas9 enzyme’s function when it runs out. Without the presence of the modified RNA, the Cas9 is unable to continue editing genes. Which is what they want! They are also trying a different method where a second modified guide RNA is incorporated and its main role is to shut off the first modified guide RNA. By shutting off the first guide RNA, the CRISPR/Cas9 system is also turned off. This is beneficial for understanding and potentially finding a solution to certain nervous system diseases that are affected by this mechanism.

Article

Lets turn it back on..

There are a lot of people in my family that have suffered from diabetes. Both of my dad's parents died because of the disease and some of my uncles have it as well as my dad. Therefore, my siblings and I are obviously at great risk of getting it. Scary huh?

Although we try our best to help our dad by having a healthy diet and controlling his sugar levels, it is a disease that cannot be reversed. It's hard to see him at such a young age carrying around a "lunch bag" full of pills, but this article gives me hope.

Glucokinase is the enzyme responsible for signaling the pancreas and liver to order the body to process glucose. This is the enzyme that is targeted by pharmaceuticals when creating drugs for diabetic patients. Most of the current drugs aim at activating the enzyme, but they only target one specific pathway.

Glucokinase needs to be turned on are activated in order for it to properly handle glucose in the body, however when somebody has diabetes, glucokinase is impaired and therefore the person develops the disease. Researchers at Florida State University have discovered a new pathway that can be used to potentially interrupt the deactivation of glucokinase. The enzyme has an allosteric site that can be altered due to its flexibility. The researchers have also used NMR to track and visualize the speed or rate of the enzyme and how it changes from the non-variant to the disease variant form. They hope to use the information to successfully activate the enzyme and test it for its ability to control the disease. The only con to this is that, overexpression can also be detrimental since it can cause hyperinsulinemia.

This can be great if they’re able to activate it to the point where it serves its purpose without causing something else.

 Article

Tomatoe, Tomato!

Genetically modified organisms are still very much talked about around the world. Some of us believe they are dangerous and wrong, while others feel they are a step into the future and beneficial. I had a class in my undergrad where we talked about GMOs and I was surprised to see that most of my classmates didn't really care. Food is food. We saw a video however, about places in Europe where people actually have the choice between GMO and regular food. The shelves are stacked and labeled so when you are shopping you can decide from what shelf you want to buy.


 In this article, researchers in the UK have introduced the gene AtMYB12 from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana into a tomato's genome. They used a tomato because it's genome has promoter regions that correspond to genes that code for several metabolic enzymes. The gene AtMYB12 from the Arabidopsis thaliana plant, is able to turn on metabolic pathways that help the tomato plant produce more flavanols and phenylpropanoids as it grows (nutrients!!). Apparenlty, the gene "increases the supply of aromatic amino acid precursors as well as ATP and reducing power".

So there is an accumulation of nutrients that are benericial for us in one "genetically modified" tomato. Also, the gene seems to be pretty versatile because it can be added to other fruits and they are currently working on adding it to vegetables. The researchers hope to have this approved for market, and hope this can make GMO foods have a better reputation and view from the public.

Article

Dangerous but lifesaving?

Wouldn't it be great to be able to stop the bleeding from a cut or wound in as little as six seconds without having to go to extremes? Well, the researchers at Rice University have developed just that (depending on what you consider to be extreme).

They have incorporated the enzyme batroxobin which comes from the venom of a South American pit viper into a hydrogel. This enzyme has been known to help with blood clotting since 1936, but the researchers wanted to find a way to make it useful; especially in the field of medicine. How it works is that the hydrogel is made up of "self-assembling nanofibers" that can be mixed with the enzyme and injected into the site of bleeding. The nanofibers and batroxobin come together and turn into some type of gel which automatically stops the bleeding. This was performed on lab mice in different combinations like the gel without the enzyme or the enzyme without the gel but the only effective combination was having both of them together.

The researchers have named their combination SB50 and hope to have it approved by FDA soon to start incorporating them into the medicine field. They believe this will be a great advantage for patients who need to take anti-coagulants or are using Heparin. Apparently, Heparin is a drug that can block the function of thrombin and this is no Bueno because thrombin is the enzyme that starts all of the reactions that lead to blood clotting. I guess I should add, for those animal lovers, that snakes are not being tortured or forced to donate their venom. The enzyme can be synthesized in a lab without the need of the snake. :)

This seems pretty cool to me and I hope the FDA approves it soon because this can save so many lives!

Article!

Say thank you to your Dad!

Coming from a Mexican family, it is common for the male to be upset with his wife for not giving him a son. However, we now know that the sperm is actually whom determines if the child is a boy or girl, so technically it is the father's fault he didn't get a son. According to this article, there may be more things fathers may be responsible for.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that males who experience a lot of stress through their life can cause their children to have problems with stress as well. Apparently, the sperm of the stressed males have an increase in expression on nine microRNAs. They are not yet sure how these nine miRs have an effect on stress, but they performed three separate studies on mice to confirm that these nine were the ones responsible.

In their first study in 2013, they stressed mice by changing them from cage to cage or by having them smell the urine of a fox (which is their predator). These mice were then allowed to mate, and their offspring were observed in stressful settings. As they expected, the offspring could not cope with stress very well. The sperm of the stressed fathers was compared to the sperm of the mice who were not placed in stressful situations. This is where the researchers noticed the difference in levels of those nine miRs.

To have a better understanding and further confirm that the difference in levels was relevant, the researchers performed a second study. They isolated the nine miRs and microinjected them into mouse zygotes, the control groups were either injected with only one of those miRNAs or with a random, irrelevant miRNA. The zygotes were then injected into surrogate female mice for reproduction. When the offspring became adults, their response to stress was observed and they had the same results as the mice from the 2013 study. The study also showed low cortisone levels for the offspring that received the nine miRs (not sure how this is related).

So how are these nine miRNAs causing stressed mice to pass their problems with stress to their offspring? From what I understood, the miRNAs are targeting “stored maternal mRNA” during the short period of time that it takes the sperm and the egg to fuse and direct zygotic development. In a third study, they injected the nine miRs into new zygotes and controlled injections into other zygotes. The zygotes were incubated for 8 hours and the mRNA from each cell was amplified. The expression of mRNA in the miRs injected mice was lower than the controlled. The miRNAs seem to decide which mRNAs get translated, and in this case it relates to chromatin remodeling genes.

Their next step is to figure out if intervening in the stress of adult male mice may have a positive effect on their offspring. They will also look at the genes upstream of the chromatic remodeling genes to maybe find a way of stopping this trait from being passed on to their offspring. Article

Born This Way?

As an undergrad I learned there was many research being done on identical twins where one had developed a disease such as cancer while the other was perfectly healthy. Scientists were studying the twins DNA to understand why this happened, their conclusion was epigenetics.

Surprisingly, the scientists in this article are kind of doing the same thing. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) presented an abstract for one of their current projects at the American Society of Human Genetics 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore. According to the article, the researchers have developed an algorithm that can identify the nine regions of the human genome that are most relevant to determining the sexual orientation of males. They are looking specifically at the epigenetics information and how methylation patterns affect these regions. Their study consisted of 37 pairs of twins where one was homosexual while the other was heterosexual, and 10 pairs of twins where both were homosexual (as their control). The algorithm is called FuzzyForest, and it found the 9 regions of the DNA that the researchers are now looking into. Their next step is to understand how methylation patterns play a role in the identified regions to result in differences of sexual orientation. Also, they want to test a general population of males to see how the algorithm works with them. From the twins study, their results were of 70% accuracy which doesn't seem very promising but maybe with more tests and research there may be a way of determining if sexual orientation is actually due to our genes.

The article can be found here Article, and the abstract here https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&project=ASHG15&id=150123267.

I bet you Monsanto doesn't know this... yet!

Some researchers at the University of Bonn have developed a way to stop roundworms, specifically the nematode Heterodera schachtii, from producing “tumorous nurse cell systems” in the roots of beets, potatoes, or soy beans. The article focuses on the loss in production of sugar from beet plants. The roundworms act as a parasite and cause the plant to be a lot smaller from its normal size as well as the decrease in the production of sugar.

First the researchers thought the roundworm used the plant hormones to grow and nourish itself. However, after blocking the hormone cytokinin in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, they were surprised to see that the roundworm kept growing! Their next step of course was to block a receptor in the roundworm’s gene that is crucial for the pathway of synthesizing cytokinin. Without this receptor, the roundworm wasn't able to produce cytokinin and it “starve[d] the pest”. So it was the “parasite” itself that was producing the hormone without any help from the plant; well, except as a source of nutrition.

The researchers are now trying to apply their findings to other agricultural plants that experience a similar source of parasitism.

More genetic modifications for our agricultural plants… what do you think?

Article

The Smurfs Secret.

Almost every current add for a new phone emphasizes how much longer its battery life can last. Battery life seems to be an important topic in today’s society due to all of the advancements in technology that we have. Recently, I had been thinking about buying one of those portable things that can charge a phone without needing an outlet but it seems like the researchers at the University of California – Riverside have a better idea, mushrooms.

At first I thought what I was reading was fictitious, how can a mushroom help generate battery life? Portobello mushrooms are edible mushrooms that are commonly found in Europe and North America. They are white or brown and are usually found in backyards or really anywhere; I’m sure you have seen them at least once (maybe even stepped on one accidently).

Well, these common mushrooms have caps with porous skins which are the main components of this experiment. The skin is heated to produce porous, carbon nanoribbons which contain naturally occurring carbon and pores that provide space and surface area. The pores are crucial because they allow for the transfer and storage of energy as well as other fluids (which are needed for lithium-ion batteries to function efficiently). The carbon is also important because it doesn’t need to be prepared, like graphite, from chemicals that harm the environment. Furthermore, the mushroom contains potassium salt which is needed to activate “blind pores” that charge the battery when it begins to discharge. In other words, as the battery begins to lose charge, these pores are activated causing it to gain energy and be charged again.

The researchers believe the use of Potobello mushrooms to increase battery life can be applied to other technology besides cell phones. Their next goal is to try and incorporate this into electrical cars because according to the article, electrical cars produce a lot of harmful chemicals and hazardous waste that harm the environment.

Personally, I am still a little skeptical but if this can help the environment and is cheaper then why not? Maybe this is something the military or even our instruments in the laboratory can use. What do you think?

\Article

Let's unboil a boiled egg..

In working with the denaturation of proteins this week, I thought this article would be relevant.

When an egg is boiled the heat causes the proteins to denture and unfold. The proteins then create new bonds with other proteins causing it to get hard (a boiled egg). Now, have you ever wondered if there was a way to unboil an egg? Some chemists from the University of California -Irvine, have discovered a way to unboil boiled eggs. How is this possible? According to the article, all one needs is a way of denaturing the proteins and letting them refold. Sounds easy and simple, but how does one tell a protein to refold into a desired manner or in this case, to become liquid again? Well, the current method for refolding proteins is a type of dialysis that is done at the molecular level for several days. It seems to be an expensive and long process that not always yields good results. With this new method, however, it can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes (and quite cheaply).

 The chemists introduce a urea substance that dissolves the hard-boiled egg back into its liquid form. Apparently, the addition of urea helps to re-activate the activity of lysozyme which in turn creates a sort of cascade of other proteins being activated as well. Finally, the chemists add some “shear stress” using a “vortex fluid device” to finish unfolding any proteins that are still “folded”.

This method can be beneficial for research, pharmaceutical companies, or even farmers because sometimes proteins that are useful no longer work due to folding incorrectly. This can cause setbacks, or waste of time and money. Therefore, being able to get proteins back to their original state and “re-use” them is exciting.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150126095911.htm

PCR Amplification in Minutes?

My first experience in a lab was back in the summer of 2009 at a neuroscience laboratory in the university of my hometown, Brownsville. In this laboratory I learned about the polymerase chain reaction and all of its uses and benefits. I found this article on science daily about a new advancement in the PCR technique from some researchers in the University of California, Berkley.

We all should know by now that PCR is used to amplify DNA in a series of cycles that undergo different temperatures. This process can take an hour or even more depending on what your experiment needs. The researchers at Berkley have found a way of decreasing the amount of time it takes to complete the process. Through the use of LED lights and a thin film of gold, they were able to cut down the time from hours to minutes! According to the article, micro fluid wells with the PCR and DNA samples are placed in a plastic chip with films of gold. The LED light is then placed under the wells and the cycles can begin. Their results showed a completion of 30 cycles in under five minutes with temperatures ranging from 131-203°F. It doesn't provide any statistics about how efficient the process was compared to a traditional PCR. All it says is that it "compared well with conventional PCR tests". 

You may be wondering why Gold? Well, apparently gold is great at absorbing light and the free electrons on the metal interact with the LED light causing the electrons to get excited and oscillate which in turn creates heat. For cooling off, all they have to do is turn off the light! The researchers at Berkley have big plans for this new way of conducting PCR and hope it can integrated into emergency rooms, developing countries like Africa, and even forensics. it is a cheaper, faster, and portable way of amplifying DNA.

Here is the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150731070215.htm

Review of "An update on molecular biology and drug resistance mechanisms of multiple myeloma"

The overall structure of the article will be discussed in this post.

Multiple myeloma is a type of cancer that affects plasma cells by making them multiply numerously especially in the bone marrow. Plasma cells become cancerous and begin to affect the immune system, the bone, and the number of platelets in the body. In this article, “An update on molecular biology and drug resistance mechanisms of multiple myeloma”, the focus is on the different mechanisms that are known to cause the disease, the developments on the resistances against drugs, and ways in which all of this can be overcome.

 The article is set-up by giving some background of the disease, transitions onto the various ways multiple myeloma can develop, and then describes how it has been found to be drug and treatment resistant.

 The reader is presented with a lot of information within the first paragraphs that can become overwhelming and most of all confusing. It just keeps mentioning one thing after another without really explaining one concept coherently. The reader is left with questions like “where did this information come from” or “how is this issue relevant or being addressed”. However, since the title does say it is an update, it leads the reader to believe that there might be another article that was published before this one which may be able to answer or clear up any confusions.

On the other hand, the article is able to better describe the resistant mechanisms of multiple myeloma. It mentions the drugs that have been effective like melphalan, but also informs the reader of how it can have negative effects by damaging bone marrow stem cells. Therefore, although the article lacks structure and clarity in some sections, it makes up for it in others. A suggestion would be to divide the article into two so that the concepts can be explained better and independently.

 

Link to Article on MySam