#How human cells can dissolve damaging protein aggregates Cellular repair systems can dissolve aggregated proteins
Their in-vitro experiments uncovered a multi-stage biochemical process in which protein molecules are dissolved from the aggregates.
Researchers at the Center for Molecular biology of Heidelberg University, the German Cancer Research center and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies collaborated on the project,
which we see in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and even in aging processes,"explains Prof.
Dr. Bernd Bukau, Director of the Center for Molecular biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH), who is also a researcher at the German Cancer Research center (DKFZ.
Protein aggregates can also occur through changes in the protein structure due to mutation or chemical or environmental stresses.
"The formation of protein aggregates in different organs of the human body is associated with a large number of diseases,
"Dissolving protein aggregates is a critical step in recycling defective proteins and providing protection against stress-induced cell damage.
"The key finding of our work is that two types of these J-proteins must dynamically interact to maximally activate the Hsp70 helper proteins to dissolve the protein aggregates.
"Scientists from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) performed the computational data analysis for this research.
For the experimental design and integrating the data from a range of experiments, they developed a special modelling methodology for protein-protein docking to simulate the formation of chaperone complexes.
and develop novel strategies for therapeutic interventions. In addition to scientists from the ZMBH, DKFZ and HITS, researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology in Berlin, the Northwestern University in Illinois (USA) and The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich (Switzerland) also participated in the work k
#Bringing the Tasmanian devil back to mainland Australia would restore ecosystem health Reintroducing Tasmanian devils to the mainland could improve biodiversity by limiting the spread of red foxes
and feral cats in habitats where dingoes have been culled, a new study suggests. Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) once lived across the Australian continent,
Today, extensive dingo culls to protect livestock have shifted the ecological balance, paving the way for invasive predators to wreak havoc with native mammals,
Ecologists from UNSW Australia in Sydney have assessed now--for the first time--the impact of reintroducing Tasmanian devils to forest ecosystems in South Eastern parts of New south wales, Australia."
"says Phd candidate Daniel Hunter from the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental sciences.""The devil is the obvious answer.
It doesn't pose as serious a risk to livestock, and it has played a major role in stopping foxes from establishing a foothold in Tasmania."
"Hunter is the lead author of a study published in the journal Biological Conservation, which highlights the potential benefits of using the devil as a replacement apex predator.
which has seen massive population decline over the last two decades from devil facial tumour disease.
and their young,"says co-author Associate professor Mike Letnic from UNSW.""There is very good evidence from Tasmania that cats modify their movements
"Devils aren't a silver bullet, but we think that they could do a lot of good on the mainland,
and this study indicates that a monitored process of reintroduction could actually work, "says Associate professor Letnic."
"We need to take action to arrest the extinction crisis we have in Australia, and that requires being bold and trying something new
#Fiber-like light emitting diodes for wearable displays A research team at Korea Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology (KAIST) has developed fiber-like light emitting diodes, applicable to wearable displays. Professor Kyung-Cheol Choi and his research team from the School of Electrical engineering at KAIST have developed fiber-like light emitting diodes,
which can be applied in wearable displays. The research findings were published online in the July 14th issue of Advanced Electronic Materials.
Traditional wearable displays were manufactured on a hard substrate, which is attached later to the surface of clothes.
Such technique has posed limitations in applying it for wearable displays because inflexible displays were not adequate in practice,
and the characteristics of fabric were ignored. For a solution, the research team discarded the tradition of creating light emitting displays on a plane board.
Instead, they focused on fibers, a component of fabrics, and developed a fiber-like light emitting diode that has the characteristics of both fabrics and displays.
The essence of this technology, the dip coating process, is to immerse and extract a three dimensional (3-D) board that looks like a thread in a solution.
Then, the regular levels of organic materials are formed as films on the board. The dip coating process allowed the layers of organic materials to be created easily on boards with a 3-D structure including a cylinder
which had been difficult in existing processes such as heat coating process. The coating thickness can also be adjustable to hundreds of thousands of nanometers through the control of withdrawal rate.
The researchers said that this technology would accelerate the commercialization of fiber based wearable displays
since it offers low-cost, mass production using roll-to-roll processing, a technology applied to create electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastics or metal foils.
Professor Choi said, "Our research will become a core technology in developing light emitting diodes on fibers,
which are fundamental elements of fabrics. Hopefully we can lower the barrier of wearable displays to enter the market."
"The first author of the published paper, Seon-Il Kwon, added, "This technology will eventually allow the production of wearable displays to be as easily as making clothes
#Reducing wear and tear: New patent on new hardening technique The metal components that make up industrial machines are subject to tremendous wear and tear.
But a newly patented technology could greatly extend the lifetime of mechanical parts. To protect machinery and increase longevity,
several methods of surface hardening have been developed including pack-boriding, which lays down a boride layer on metal pieces through the diffusion of boron.
Erdemir's work is a departure from this conventional boriding technique, which is both time-consuming and energy-intensive.
Instead, his team came up with a process for ultra-fast boriding a process that saves time, money and energy,
and even alleviates environmental concerns. In three years, Erdemir and his team took an abstract concept
and turned it into an industrial-scale furnace that can deposit a boride layer 100 micrometers thick in half an hour.
often for 10 hours or more--the ultra-fast method uses a battery-like design to channel reactive boron into metal surfaces.
Like a battery, the furnace relies on the attraction between positive and negative charges to get boron flowing swiftly toward its destination.
According to Erdemir, the heating process alone makes pack-boriding extremely energy-intensive. Ultra-fast boriding can do a better job
while using 80 to 90 percent less energy. And while the powder mix-based traditional boriding releases carbon dioxide and other hazardous emissions
Few people would look at a car, an airplane or a farming tool and appreciate the durable layers protecting its parts.
"This includes automobiles, with parts that bear the burden of heavy loads, erosion and corrosion.
Tools used in mining, farming and even oil and gas exploration are highly vulnerable to wear and tear,
#Cheaper, faster, more accurate test to identify gene defects in heart patients For the subset of heart patients whose illness isn't caused by a lifetime of cigarettes, trans fats or high glycemic foods,
a new genetic test developed at the Stanford university School of medicine may be able to accurately pinpoint the likely genetic causes of their conditions in just a couple of days.
In work that could advance precision health, Kitchener Wilson, MD, Phd, instructor of pathology, and Joseph Wu, MD, Phd, professor of cardiovascular medicine and of radiology, teamed up with a group of genome-sequencing specialists to develop the new technique:
a better way to test cardiac patients for any genes that might be causing their problems.
Wilson and Wu said that the gold standard of genome sequencing involves thousands of genes, costs $1,
it makes no sense to sequence the entire 22,000-gene genome, since fewer than 200 genes are known to affect the heart,
Moreover, whole-genome sequencing typically contains mistakes, so key mutations might be missed. To meet this challenge
Wilson and Wu's team designed a streamlined assay, or test, that looks at just the 88 genes known to carry mutations that cause heart problems.
Materials for the new test cost about $100, and results are back within three days.
This approach--surveying a small subgroup of relevant genes instead of the whole genome--is used already to test for other diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.
But cystic fibrosis involves only one gene albeit with hundreds of variants.""By comparison, the heart diseases are more challenging just
because there are so many genes to sequence, "said Wilson.""To do that accurately has been difficult and, until now,
older cardiac patient who comes in with chest pain, the result of a lifetime of poor diet and little exercise."
such as surgical interventions. But what if a 30-year-old woman comes in with chest pain and her doctors can't find any obvious reason why she should be having heart problems at such a young age?"
"said Wu, who is also the director of Stanford's Cardiovascular Institute. That could be the moment for doctors to break out the complementary long padlock probes for inherited heart disease.
Complementary long padlock probes, or clpps, were developed at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. These simple probes accurately target specific parts of the genome
and can be made in large batches at low cost. Because of their simplicity, they are customized easily to target different genes.
Wilson and Wu spearheaded the effort to put clpps to work diagnosing cardiac diseases. A preliminary test of the assay on blood samples and some skin samples from 29 participants from families with inherited heart disease validated the clpp approach
the researchers said. The heart disease clpp assay was cheaper, faster and more accurate than whole-genome assays.
The Stanford team next plans to test the technique on a group of 200-300 patients.
In the meantime, Wilson and Wu are offering the test free to any research lab that wants to try it."
"They can just email me,"said Wilson, "and we'll send them the assay, and then they can do it in their own lab
--as long as they have some experience with next-generation sequencing.""The assay will shorten the time it takes to diagnose difficult or unusual heart disease cases,
Wu said.""Suppose you have a 60-year-old patient who comes in with heart failure,
"he said.""We do the angiogram and we find he has no history of heart attack or other issues,
and yet the heart is not performing well. We also find that several of his family members have similar heart conditions.
and find the man's illness has a genetic cause, such as dilated cardiomyopathy, we now have both a cause and a diagnosis,
and we can initiate treatment right away.""Avoiding a'fishing expedition'"Not having that result delays diagnosis
and increases costs because you're going through a whole bunch of tests--sometimes it becomes a fishing expedition,
which can be frustrating to both the physician and the patient,"Wu added.""But perhaps the most important benefit is that you can give the patient accurate answers about his or her disease."
"Wilson and Wu said the genome technology group has been working on the clpp technique for a long time.""Our goal is to make genetic testing more accessible to more people,
"Wilson said.""We want to democratize it. For now, we're going to release it free of charge: Researchers can get samples of the assay
so they can run it themselves. We're also releasing all of the technical data for the probes
so researchers can recreate and modify the probes themselves. In some ways it's making genetic testing open source."
"The development of the new test is an example of Stanford Medicine's focus on precision health,
which aims to enable researchers and physicians to better predict individual risks for specific diseases,
develop approaches to early detection and prevention, and help clinicians make real-time decisions about the best way to care for patients s
An innovative method, proposed by a group of researchers led by Professor Ananikov, investigates the synthesis of valuable organic molecules directly from calcium carbide, without separation and storage of acetylene gas.
which acknowledges the ideas of safety, sustainability, and simplification n
#When it comes to body odor, ants are connoisseurs For any complex society to function properly,
which are detected via sensors in their antennae. Now researchers reporting August 13 in Cell Reports have discovered that
not only sensitively by specialized antennal sensors, but almost all of the hydrocarbon components are detected, "said Anandasankar Ray of the University of California, Riverside."
"Using this amazing high-definition ability to smell'ant body odor, 'the ants can recognize the various castes in the colony as well as intruders from another colony."
which allowed them to systematically test the response of individual neurons in the ant antennae to hydrocarbons found in the cuticles of worker ants and their queens.
"This is a remarkable evolutionary solution for'social networking'in large colonies, "Ray explained.""A more volatile body odor cue would be confusing to associate with an individual
"which individuals in a colony use to recognize other members within the nest and their status as workers or queens.
Perhaps ants are brainier than we've given them credit for, the researchers say. After all, their incredible talent for olfactory discrimination depends not only on sensitively attuned neurons
#New optical chip lights up the race for quantum computer The microprocessor inside a computer is a single multipurpose chip that has revolutionized people's life,
allowing them to use one machine to surf the web, check emails and keep track of finances.
Now, researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in Japan, have pulled off the same feat for light in the quantum world by developing an optical chip that can process photons in an infinite number
of ways. It's a major step forward in creating a quantum computer to solve problems such as designing new drugs
superfast database searches, and performing otherwise intractable mathematics that aren't possible for super computers.
Arraysince before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
"A whole field of research has essentially been put onto a single optical chip that is easily controlled.
The implications of the work go beyond the huge resource savings. Now anybody can run their own experiments with photons,
much like they operate any other piece of software on a computer. They no longer need to convince a physicist to devote many months of their life to painstakingly build
"The team demonstrated the chip's unique capabilities by reprogramming it to rapidly perform a number of different experiments, each
Bristol Phd student Jacques Carolan, one of the researchers, added:""Once we wrote the code for each circuit,
it took seconds to re-programme the chip, and milliseconds for the chip to switch to the new experiment.
We carried out a year's worth of experiments in a matter of hours. What we're really excited about is using these chips to discover new science that we haven't even thought of yet."
"The device was made possible because the world's leading quantum photonics group teamed up with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the world's leading telecommunications company.
Professor Jeremy O'brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics at Bristol University, explained:""Over the last decade, we have established an ecosystem for photonic quantum technologies,
allowing the best minds in quantum information science to hook up with established research and engineering expertise in the telecommunications industry.
It's a model that we need to encourage if we are to realise our vision for a quantum computer
#Better way to engineer therapeutic proteins into antibodies Some proteins exist so fleetingly in the bloodstream that they can't be given effectively as therapies.
such as antibodies, can make them persist long enough to be useful. Now a team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has devised an improved method for accomplishing this protein-engineering feat.
and its antibody host, selecting the rare ones that allow the inserted protein to fold
and diagnostic compounds that would not have been possible otherwise--including powerful hormone-based therapies.""Unlike prior approaches to this design problem,
"said senior investigator Richard A. Lerner, the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry at TSRI.
The study, a collaboration between Lerner's laboratory at TSRI, the laboratory of Jeffrey M. Friedman at Rockefeller University and the TSRI groups of Ian A. Wilson and Patrick R. Griffin, was reported on August 13 in the journal
Chemistry & Biology. Making Leptin Last Longer Lerner's laboratory helped pioneer techniques for generating billions of different antibodies
and screening these large"antibody libraries"to find those that perform a desired function. The new work is an extension of that technology.
In one proof-of-principle demonstration the team edited the genetic code of a standard human antibody to replace one of its target-grappling elements--a structure that normally would bind to a virus, for example--with the protein leptin.
First identified by Friedman in 1994 as a satiety hormone that switches off hunger, leptin initially failed as an obesity therapy,
as obese people tend to be insensitive to leptin rather than leptin-deficient. However, the hormone has drawn renewed interest in recent years as a possible basis for treating obesity--in conjunction with leptin-sensitizing compounds--and also diabetes.
Leptin on its own and in an unmodified state isn't ideal as a therapy because it doesn't last long in the bloodstream."
"The kidneys and other organs clear it very rapidly, "said Yingjie Peng, a staff scientist in the Lerner laboratory who was first author of the study with Wenwen Zeng of Friedman's lab at Rockefeller."
"But it could last much longer if it were part of a larger structure such as an antibody."
"The major challenge for Lerner, Peng and their colleagues was to design leptin into an antibody in such a way that it would fold up into a functional structure
despite being bound to its host protein at either end. Designing simple, highly flexible"junction"segments to join leptin to an antibody could work--a recent paper by a group including TSRI's Peter Schultz,
Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry, described such a feat. But Lerner's team reasoned that a selection-based design of these junctions would be a more general approach to making useful protein-in-protein molecules.
The Power of Large Numbers Using their established techniques for generating large libraries of variant antibodies
the team made nearly 30 million versions of the leptin-in-antibody protein, each version having a different amino-acid sequence for its junction segments.
To find the rare versions that enabled leptin to fold up and function properly, the researchers used a selection system that they had developed previously for finding therapeutic antibodies in large antibody libraries.
First they employed viral vectors to insert the leptin-in-antibody DNA into test cells that contain leptin receptors.
When one of the resulting leptin-in-antibody proteins successfully activated a leptin receptor in its test cell,
the event was signaled by a highly sensitive set of fluorescent beacons. The cells whose beacon signals rose above a certain threshold were analyzed for the leptin-in-antibody DNA they contained,
and this DNA was inserted then into new test cells--and so on, for round after round of selection,
until the process yielded the leptin-in-antibody protein that did best at activating the leptin receptor.
This selected protein turned out to be several times more potent than leptin in terms of its ability to activate the leptin receptor in cultured cells.
As is often the case for antibodies the leptin-in-antibody protein effectively could not cross from the bloodstream into the brain
and thus could not hit all of leptin's neuronal targets --and so its effects at reducing eating
But, in principle, antibodies can be modified to enable them to cross the blood-brain barrier more easily, and the team is working on that now.
the researchers also used it to"selection-design"an antibody that incorporates the growth and reproductive hormone FSH
The resulting FSH-in-antibody protein showed activity against the FSH receptor that was virtually the same as the natural hormone's The team is now working to improve their FSH-and leptin-in-antibody proteins,
and to design entirely new protein-in-antibody molecules s
#Engineers'sandwich'atomic layers to make new materials for energy storage The scientists whose job it is to test the limits of what nature--specifically chemistry--will allow to exist, just set up shop on some new real estate on the Periodic table.
Drexel University researchers are testing an array of new combinations that may vastly expand the options available to create faster, smaller, more efficient energy storage, advanced electronics and wear-resistant materials.
Phd, a team from Drexel's Department of Materials science and engineering created the material-making method, that can sandwich 2-D sheets of elements that otherwise couldn't be combined in a stable way.
"By'sandwiching'one or two atomic layers of a transition metal like titanium, between monoatomic layers of another metal, such as molybdenum,
is significant because it represents a new way of combining elemental materials to form the building blocks of energy storage technology--such as batteries, capacitors and supercapacitors,
as well as superstrong composites--like the ones used in phone cases and body armor. Each new combination of atom-thick layers presents new properties
it is safe to say that this discovery enables the field of materials science and nanotechnology to move into an uncharted territory,
"Anasori said. Mastering Materials Combining two-dimensional sheets of elements in an organized way to produce new materials has been the goal of Drexel nanomaterials researchers for more than a decade.
Imposing this sort of organization at the atomic level is no easy task.""Due to their structure and electric charge, certain elements just don t'like'to be combined,
"Anasori said.""It's like trying to stack magnets with the poles facing the same direction--you're not going to be very successful
which was discovered by Distinguished Professor Michel W. Barsoum, Phd, head of the MAX/MXENE Research Group, more than two decades ago.
That order was imposed by Michel W. Barsoum, Phd and Yury Gogotsi, Phd, Distinguished University and Trustee Chair professor in the College of Engineering and head of the Drexel Nanomaterials Group
was the first two-dimensional material to be touted for its potential energy storage capabilities. But, as it was made up of only one element, carbon,
The new MXENES have surfaces that can store more energy. An Elemental Impasse Four years later, the researchers have worked their way through the section of the Periodic table with elements called"transition metals"
producing MAX phases and etching them into MXENES of various compositions all the while testing their energy storage properties.
it can use this method to make as many as 25 new materials with combinations of transition metals, such as molybdenum and titanium,
"Anasori plans to make more materials by replacing titanium with other metals, such as vanadium, niobium,
"We see possible applications in thermoelectrics, batteries, catalysis, solar cells, electronic devices, structural composites and many other fields, enabling a new level of engineering on the atomic scale
#Company eliminates pests from stored grain with ozone and reduce costs The process replaces the chemical tablets phosphine and methyl bromide,
which are toxic and carcinogenic, used in traditional spraying methods. With this process the loss of 18 percent of product damaged by the existence of pathogenic organisms is avoided.
The Mexican company Scientific Advice in Water Studies (ACEA) developed an engineering process for the elimination of pests,
the leading producer of white maize in the country but the hot and humid climate favors the proliferation of all kinds of pests.
director of the company, involves injecting ozone to the industrial silos obtained from ambient oxygen through an electric shock.
The produced ozone is distributed efficiently within the silo using a mobile system, which allows to move from one container to another
and serve a greater number of silos with the same ozonation system providing great versatility in removing pathogens from stored grain.
or leaving toxic residues, eliminating odors, fungi and sanitizing grains such as corn, beans, wheat, sorghum and rice,"says researcher Llanes Ocaña.
which are toxic and carcinogenic. The physicochemical expert explains that the common spraying method is used in doses of four tablets of phosphine per ton of grain."
"If 22 million tons of maize are produced in Mexico, we are talking about 88 million pills;
an ecological damage is avoided with the new process.""He says that on average about 10 to 18 percent of grain stored is lost because of pests,
The study began in a laboratory of the University of Sinaloa, then moved to an industrial level with the acquiring of the patent.
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