#Bacterium capable of aquifer decontamination characterized, cultivated for first time in Europe UAB researchers have identified in the Besòs river estuary (Barcelona, Spain) a bacterium of the genus Dehalogenimonas,
which has the capacity to transform toxic organochlorine compounds into others that are harmless. These experts have succeeded in characterising
and cultivating these bacteria for the first time in Europe, which opens the door to their production and application to contaminated aquifers.
This bacterial genus was described first not long ago--in 2009--and only two strains had previously been isolated, in chloroalkane-contaminated aquifers in Louisiana
USA. This is the first description of the characterisation and culturing of Dehalogenimonas in Europe, though sequences of its genome have been identified in various locations,
such as the Arctic ocean, the Baltic sea, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Taiwan and the USA. These bacteria can only use organochlorine compounds as an energy source during their respiration process,
transforming them into products that are chlorinated less, more biodegradable and, in some cases, harmless. From River Besòs sediments, after three years'research, the researchers have obtained a stable bacterial culture
and subsequent application in contaminated aquifers, using the strategy of bioaugmentation, which involves adding bacteria with specific catabolic capacities
and that bioaugmentation is a low-cost, efficient technique, compatible with other remediation techniques, these bacteria could even be applied eventually at source,
and reach subterranean waters by accident or as a result of improper waste disposal. Once in the aquifers, they can build up for years because of their low biodegradability,
posing a threat due to their high toxicity. According to data from the Waste Agency of Catalonia, 8%of contaminated soils recorded in 2014 contained organochlorine compounds,
of which 77 surpassed the maximum benchmark concentrations. This study led by Dr Ernest Marco-Urrea and published in Environmental science
& Technology, was conducted at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Department of Chemical engineering and Department of Genetics and Microbiology) in collaboration with the University of Barcelona (Research Group in Applied Mineralogy and Fluid Geochemistry) and the Helmholtz Centre
for Environmental Research--UFZ (ISOBIO Department) in Leipzig, Germany m
#To infinity and beyond: Light goes infinitely fast with new on-chip material Electrons are so 20th century.
In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly,
will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there's a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers:
researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) have done just that,
designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.
This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics AT SEAS,
and is described in the journal Nature Photonics.""Light doesn't typically like to be squeezed or manipulated but this metamaterial permits you to manipulate light from one chip to another, to squeeze,
bend, twist and reduce diameter of a beam from the macroscale to the nanoscale, "said Mazur."
"It's a remarkable new way to manipulate light.""Although this infinitely high velocity sounds like it breaks the rule of relativity,
it doesn't. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light carrying information--Einstein is still right about that.
or squished, twisted or turned, without losing energy. A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, especially in the world of quantum computing."
"Integrated photonic circuits are hampered by weak and inefficient optical energy confinement in standard silicon waveguides,
"said Yang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Mazur Group and first author on the paper."
"This zero-index metamaterial offers a solution for the confinement of electromagnetic energy in different waveguide configurations
"The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film.
It can couple to silicon waveguides to interface with standard integrated photonic components and chips."
or waveguide to emit photons which are always in phase with one another, "said Philip Munoz,
a graduate student in the Mazur lab and co-author on the paper.""It could also improve entanglement between quantum bits,
""This on-chip metamaterial opens the door to exploring the physics of zero index and its applications in integrated optics,"said Mazur r
Scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical center designed a new delivery system for these drugs that,
when coupled with a drug developed at the University of Rochester School of medicine and Dentistry, rid immune cells of HIV and kept the virus in check for long periods.
The results appear in the journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine. While current HIV treatments involve pills that are taken daily,
the new regimens'long-lasting effects suggest that HIV treatment could be administered perhaps once or twice per year.
and makes it into a crystal, like an ice cube does to water. Next, the crystal drug is placed into a fat and protein coat, similar to
thereby prolonging its therapeutic effect.""The chemical marriage between URMC-099 and antiretroviral drug nanoformulations could increase drug longevity,
improve patient compliance, and reduce general toxicities, "said Gendelman, lead study author and professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at Nebraska,
who has collaborated with Gelbard for 24 years.""We are excited about pursing this research for the treatment and eradication of HIV infections."
"The two therapies were tested together in laboratory experiments using human immune cells and in mice that were engineered to have a human immune system.
Gendelman and Gelbard believe that the nanoformulation technology helps keep the protease inhibitor in white blood cells longer
and that URMC-099 extends its lifespan even more. Gelbard, director of UR's Center for Neural development and Disease, developed URMC-099 to treat HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders or HAND,
the memory loss and overall mental fog that affects half of all patients living with HIV.
as any patient prescribed URMC-099 would also be taking antiretroviral therapy. The goal was to determine
"Our ultimate hope is that we're able to create a therapy that could be given much less frequently than the daily therapy that is required today,
reduce side effects and help people manage the disease, because they won't have to think about taking medication every day
the result is a potentially fatal arrhythmia. Now, a team of researchers from Oxford and Stony Brook universities has found a way to precisely control these waves--using light.
Their results are published in the journal Nature Photonics on 19 october. Both cardiac cells in the heart and neurons in the brain communicate by electrical signals,
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
borrowing tools from the developing field of optogenetics, which so far has been used mainly in brain science.
'When there is scar tissue in the heart or fibrosis, this can cause part of the wave to slow down.
'Optogenetics uses genetic modification to alter cells so that they can be activated by light. Until now, it has mainly been used to activate individual cells
'A protein called channelrhodopsin was delivered to heart cells using gene therapy techniques so that they could be controlled by light.
Then, using a computer-controlled light projector, the team was able to control the speed of the cardiac waves,
In the short term, the ability to provide fine control means that researchers are able to carry out experiments at a level of detail previously only available using computer models.
potentially improving our understanding of how the heart works. The research can also be applied to the physics of such waves in other processes.
Dr Emilia Entcheva, from Stony Brook University, said:''The level of precision is reminiscent of what one can do in a computer model,
except here it was done in real heart cells, in real time.''Precise control of the direction, speed
This ideal therapy has remained in the realm of science fiction until now.''The team stresses that there are significant hurdles before this could offer new treatments--a key issue is being able to alter the heart to be light-sensitised
However, as gene therapy moves into the clinic and with miniaturization of optical devices, use of this all-optical technology may become possible.
The findings, published in JAMA Neurology, identify structural damage between the thalamus and primary motor cortex as the obstacle between covert awareness and intentional movement.
will pave the way for the development of restorative therapies for thousands of patients. Dr Davinia Fernández-Espejo
from the University of Birmingham, explained, "A number of patients who appear to be in a vegetative state are actually aware of themselves and their surroundings,
""However, before we take the crucial step of developing targeted therapies to help these patients,
was observed in a case study at the imaging centre at the Brain and Mind Institute, at Western University, Canada.
and 15 healthy control volunteers were monitored also using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) and fiber tractography. Participants were asked to respond to commands,
Dr Fernández-Espejo added,"The ultimate aim is to use this information in targeted therapies that can drastically improve the quality of life of patients.
if we can help a patient to regain even limited movement in one finger it opens up so many possibilities for communication and control of their environment."
"Though it may be a number of years before an effective therapy is developed, the team believe that a significant milestone has been reached with the discovery e
#Biomarker finder adjusts on the fly A Rice university laboratory has developed a continuously tunable method to find and quantify DNA and RNA biomarkers.
Rice bioengineer David Zhang and his colleagues have developed a unique way to adjust their nucleic acid probe reagents on the fly
and take a reliable count of target sequences. The work is detailed in an open-access paper this week in Nature Methods.
The ability to identify DNA or RNA sequences, especially mutations, has become critically important for the detection of diseases
and design of therapies to treat them. But finding a specific biomarker in a massive amount of genetic code is hard.
Zhang and his team at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative have become specialists in finding such needles in haystacks.
In previous work, the lab designed probes that find single-nucleotide mutations in DNA while using"competing"probes to bind to healthy sequences
and effectively get them out of the way. This time the lab is developing synthetic DNA"protectors"that mimic the target sequence
and compete with the target in binding to the probes. By altering the stoichiometry, or the proportion of substances in chemical reactions, of these protectors, researchers can control the balance of the reactions so the fluorescent probes'brightness can be adjusted.
there may be two biomarker sequences of interest, but the high expression of one would outshine the low expression of another.
Because the unit brightness of each biomarker can be adjusted, the researchers'new method allows the simultaneous and accurate observation of many biomarkers."
"In principle, we should be able to tune indefinitely, "he said.""But we'd be trading off time and labor and cost versus what people actually need.
"Zhang, lead authors Lucia Wu and J. Sherry Wang and their colleagues have written software to help researchers design their own probes.
The Web-based program allows researchers to cut and paste gene sequences and highlight areas of interest to generate probe designs.
/Probe design is complicated by the fact that researchers often look for many biomarkers at once, and that those biomarkers interact with each other,
Zhang said.""In an age of advancing science and big data, we want to look at hundreds or thousands or millions of different DNA biomarker signatures."
"Researchers have to decide in advance whether to measure how sensitive the target sequences are to their probes,
"In one of many successful tests, the lab designed molecules to detect mutation sequences in historic biopsy samples preserved in wax from cancer patients.
One of the researchers'goals is to design noninvasive cancer diagnostics that detect DNA biomarkers in blood samples for early screening and early recurrence detection.
faster and cheaper answers for researchers and clinicians who are looking at hundreds or thousands of different mutations,
and apply it to cancer detection n
#New approach toward a broad spectrum malaria vaccine Malaria affects millions of people worldwide. Plasmodium falciparum enolase participates in parasite invasion of host red blood cells and mosquito midgut epithelium.
Anti-enolase antibodies interfere with the invasion, inhibiting parasite growth and transmission. A pentapeptide insert of parasite enolase, conserved in all Plasmodia species,
but absent from host enolases, shows considerable protection against malaria when displayed on Archaeal gas vesicle nanoparticles.
A vaccine based on this motif could confer protection against all malaria parasites. In a recent breakthrough to combat malaria, a collaboration of Indian and American scientists have identified a malarial parasite protein that can be used to develop antibodies
when displayed on novel nanoparticles. This approach has the potential to prevent the parasite from multiplying in the human host
and also inhibits transmission through mosquitoes. The finding points towards developing a powerful malaria vaccine in the hope of eradicating this debilitating and often fatal disease.
Malaria takes a heavy toll on human lives. About half a million people die every year and several hundred million suffer from this disease across the globe.
To add to the disease burden, the malaria parasite is increasingly becoming resistant to commonly used antimalarial drugs.
Development of an antimalarial vaccine is an integral part of an effort to counter the socioeconomic burden of malaria.
Researchers in the malaria labs at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR Mumbai, India, have identified now a five amino acid segment of a Plasmodium parasite protein that is normally involved in producing energy from glucose.
Work from Prof. Gotam Jarori's lab has shown earlier that this protein, enolase, is a protective antigen
and has several other functions that are essential for parasite growth and multiplication. Taking this a step further, in a recently published paper in the Malaria Journal,
they have shown that a small part of this protein, that is unique to parasite enolase and is absent in human enolases,
has protective antigenic properties.""As enolase was implicated in invasion of red blood cells of the host as well as the midgut of mosquitoes,
antibodies against this small fragment can potentially have a dual benefit by blocking the multiplication cycle of the parasite in humans,
as well as inhibiting transmission through mosquitoes,"says Prof. Jarori. The work was carried out in collaboration with Prof.
Shiladitya Dassarma's laboratory at the University of Maryland School of medicine, Baltimore, USA, who has developed Archaeal gas vesicle nanoparticles (GVNPS.
The small unique segment of enolase was fused genetically to a nanoparticle protein and this conjugated system was used to vaccinate mice.
Interestingly, a subsequent challenge with a lethal strain of mouse malaria parasite in these vaccinated animals showed considerable protection against malaria.
Says Prof. Dassarma, Phd, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the school,"GVNPS offer a designer platform for vaccines
and this work is a significant step forward towards a new malaria vaccine.""This study is a significant advance in the field,
since most other vaccine candidate molecules tested so far confer protection against only a single species of parasite, due to the species and strain specific nature of these molecules."
"The small segment of five amino acids that forms a protective epitope is present in all human malaria causing species of Plasmodium and hence,
antibodies directed against it are likely to protect against all species of the parasite, "says Sneha Dutta,
a graduate student at TIFR who conducted these experiments. Efforts are focused now at developing this into an effective vaccine against malaria a
#Turning up the heat: Holey metamaterials enhance thermal energy harvesting It's estimated that the U s. fails to use more than half of the energy it generates--mostly
because it escapes as waste heat. Scientists from the University of Colorado are developing a new type of system to efficiently capture some of that lost heat.
They have designed a surface that enhances low frequency thermal radiation, which is easier than higher frequencies to"harvest"directly out of the air
and turn into usable DC electricity. The researchers will describe the surface at the AVS 62nd International Symposium and Exhibition
held Oct 18-23 in San jose, Calif. Objects that heat up from wasted energy emit electromagnetic oscillations,
similar to the alternating current (AC) that powers homes and businesses, said Won Park, an electrical engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The difference is the frequency of the oscillation--the electricity from a wall socket in North america oscillates 60 times a second,
compared to the tens of trillions of oscillations per second for most thermal radiation from hot objects.
When you plug a device like a computer into the wall, electronic circuitry in the computer's power supply converts the AC oscillations into direct current (DC) that the device can use.
The AC to DC conversion is done by an electronic component called a rectifier. Similarly, electromagnetic oscillations in the air can be turned into DC current by a device called a rectenna,
which combines an antenna's function of receiving electromagnetic waves with a rectifier's function of outputting direct current.
Current rectenna designs work best at lower frequencies. Yet waste heat from hot objects can push into the 100 THZ (100 trillion cycles per second) range.
Park and his colleagues found a way to enhance thermal emission of hot bodies at the lower end of the spectrum (around 1 THZ) by manipulating the surface of the object.
Park's team uses software to analyze how the nanoscale topology of a surface--its bumps
holes or grooves--changes the way that electromagnetic radiation interacts with the surface. In some instances the geometry supports the formation of a wave of rippling electronic charges,
called a plasmon, that hugs the surface.""We design the surface to support a surface wave,
because the presence of the wave offers a new avenue for engineering thermal emission, "Park said.
The researchers also used computer modeling to design a bowtie-shaped antenna that would effectively capture the enhanced thermal emission.
Simulations predict that an antenna placed near the holey surface could capture 10,000 to 100,000 times more thermal energy than an antenna in open space.
Presentation EM+AS+SS-Mom6,"Metamaterial Enhanced Rectenna for Efficient Energy harvesting,"is at 10:00 a m. on Monday, Oct 19.
The research described in this story is funded in part by a grant from Redwave Energy Inc c
#Genome-edited plants, without DNA The public and scientists are at odds over the safety of genetically modified (GM) food.
Scientists at the IBS Center for Genome Engineering in South korea have created a way to genetically modify plants using CRISPR-Cas9 without the addition of DNA.
the resulting genome-edited plants could likely be exempt from current GMO regulations and given a warmer reception by the public.
What makes this work so groundbreaking is that these genetic modifications look just like genetic variations resulting from the selective breeding that farmers have been doing for millennia.
IBS Director of the Center for Genome Engineering Jin-Soo Kim explains that"the targeted sites contained germline-transmissible small insertions
or deletions that are indistinguishable from naturally occurring genetic variation.""CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat,
which refers to the unique repeated DNA sequences found in bacteria and archaea. CRISPR is used now widely for genome editing.
What's crucial in genetic engineering is for the gene editing tool to be accurate and precise,
which is where CRISPR-Cas9 excels. CRISPR-Cas9 uses a single GUIDE RNA (sgrna) to identify
resulting in site-specific DNA double-strand breaks (DSBS). When the cell repairs the DSB,
and no longer uses DNA, being unshackled from GMO regulations. To do this, purified Cas9 protein was mixed with sgrnas targeting specific genes from three plant species to form preassembled ribonucleoproteins (RNPS.
lettuce and rice to achieve targeted mutagenesis in protoplasts. To test the efficacy of this process,
and foundcas9 RNP-induced mutations 24 hours after transfection. These newly cloned lettuce cells showed no mosaicism
Finally, the team demonstrated that RGEN-induced mutations were maintained after regeneration. Using a Cas9 RNP
They grew full plants from the seeds of these genome edited and regenerated plants, which had the mutation from the previous generation.
They were able to definitively show that Cas9 RNPS can be used to genetically modify plants,
which Jin-Soo Kim points out,"paves the way for the widespread use of RNA-guided genome editing in plant biotechnology and agriculture."
"The IBS team's technique of genome editing without inserting DNA could be revolutionary for the future of the seed industry.
and more suited to climate change in order to feed Earth's increasing population. Currently European union GMO regulations don't allow for food with added DNA.
Since the Cas9 RNP technique does not use DNA, it may be able to avoid being in violation of these rules.
faster and more accurate to apply to plants than previous breeding techniques (like radiation-induced mutations).
Large agribusiness companies have been able to afford the time and money necessary to create seeds for genetically modified food,
but the Cas9 RNP technique could allow for a more decentralized gene-edited seed production industry.
and create heartier crops in foods like tomatoes and lettuce. The application of the Cas9 RNP gene editing technique could be the next step in ending food shortages s
#Powerful plastic microscope brings better diagnostic care for world's rural poor You can learn a lot about the state of someone's immune system just by examining their blood under the microscope.
An abnormally high or low white blood count, for instance, might indicate a bone marrow pathology or AIDS.
The rupturing of white blood cells might be the sign of an underlying microbial or viral infection.
Strangely shaped cells often indicate cancer. While this old, simple technique may seem a quaint throwback in the age of high-technology health care tools like genetic sequencing
flow cytometry and fluorescent tagging, the high cost and infrastructure requirements of these techniques largely limit them to laboratory settings--something point-of-care diagnostics aims to fix.
In a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative,
a research team from Rice university has developed recently a plastic, miniature digital fluorescence microscope that can quantify white blood cell levels in patients located in rural parts of the world that are removed far from the modern laboratory."
or sample preparation,"said Tomasz Tkaczyk, associate professor, Department of Bioengineering, Rice university, Houston, Texas."Many systems which work for point-of-care applications have quite expensive cartridges.
The goal of this research is to make it possible for those in impoverished areas to be able to get the testing they need at a manageable price point."
"Tkaczyk's co-authors on this research included Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Fellow of The Optical Society and a professor in Rice's Department of Bioengineering.
Her research involves translating molecular imaging research to point-of-care diagnostics--describes the fluorescence microscope system this week in a paper published in Biomedical Optics Express, from The Optical Society.
How the Microscope Works The researchers'device identifies and quantifies lymphocytes, monocytes, and granulocytes--three types of white blood cells--in a drop of blood mixed with the staining compound acridine orange.
which consisted of one polystyrene lens and two polymethyl methacrylate aspheric lenses, the researchers used a single-point diamond turning lathe.
The lenses were enclosed then in an all-plastic, 3d printed microscope housing and objective. Once constructed, the microscope provided a field of view of 1. 2 millimeters,
allowing for at least 130 cells to be present for statistical significance when quantifying white blood cells. Additionally
and image sensor, cost less than $3, 000 to construct. At production levels upwards of 10,000 units,
the researchers estimate that this price would fall to around $600 for each unit, with a per-test cost of a few cents.
Future work for Tkaczyk and his colleagues includes developing an automated algorithm for white blood cell identification,
The use of low cost components such as LEDS reflectors, and USB detectors, combined with the all-plastic housing and lenses will allow for future versions of the prototype to be mass-produced d
#Gene could hold key to treating Parkinson's disease Researchers at King's college London have identified a new gene linked to nerve function,
which could provide a treatment target for'switching off'the gene in people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's disease affects approximately 7-10 million people worldwide and is characterized by progressive loss of motor function, psychiatric symptoms and cognitive impairment.
Current treatments for Parkinson's only treat symptoms of the disease rather than its underlying causes,
so these new findings in fruit flies could lead to novel preventative treatments if replicated in humans.
Previous research suggests that defects in mitochondria which are tiny'batteries'in cells that provide energy,
play an important role in a number of diseases that affect the nervous system, including Parkinson's.
However, until now the neuronal processes underlying the development of these conditions were unknown. The study, published in PNAS,
nerve function in flies with Parkinson's disease was restored. By deactivating the HIFALPHA gene the early failure of nerve cells caused by mitochondrial damage was prevented.
An identical effect was observed in flies with Leigh syndrome, a rare neurological disorder caused by a severe mitochondrial defect,
Dr Joseph Bateman from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (Ioppn) at King's college London, said:'
'Like their human counterparts flies with Parkinson's disease progressively lose motor function, which includes a negative impact on their ability to climb.
'The biggest surprise from our work is damaged that mitochondria produce a signal that actively prevents nerve cells from working properly.
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