and punches its way into cells Researchers have discovered how the deadly Ebola virus disease that many fear may be used for bioterrorismmashes its way into healthy cells and turns them into virus factories.
Published in the Journal of Virology, the new findings offers important insight into how the virus works its way into cells
and also identifies an important target to block the infection process. After Ebola is engulfed by the cell,
The ph level inside the vesicle triggers the surface glycoprotein on the virus to form a istthat lets the virus punch its way into the cell cytoplasm,
where it can effectively turn the cell into a factory for virus production. HAVOC IN CELLS f it stayed in the vesicle,
a researcher in in the molecular physiology and biological physics department at University of Virginia. ut then it escapes from that internal vesicle into the body of the cell,
Tamm collaborated with Judith M. White, a researcher in the cell biology department, who has developed virus-like particles that act like Ebola,
Peter M. Kasson of the molecular physiology and biological physics department then created a computer model of the process.
The result is a remarkable new understanding of Ebola infection. By understanding the process, researchers say they are significantly closer to being able to stop Eboland perhaps other viruses with similar structures as well. nce you have visualized the molecular shape changes that these structures undergo upon cell entry,
#LED scanner safely peeks inside your brain New brain-scanning technology that shines dozens of tiny LED LIGHTS on the head works as well as more traditional methods without radiation exposure and bulky magnets.
Researchers say the new optical approach is ideal for children and for patients with electronic implants, such as pacemakers, cochlear implants,
and deep brain stimulators that are used to treat Parkinson disease. The magnetic fields in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) often disrupt either the function or safety of implanted electrical devices.
Researchers have been developing the technology, called diffuse optical tomography (DOT), for more than 10 years, but the method had been limited to small regions of the brain.
The new DOT instrument covers two-thirds of the head and for the first time can image brain processes taking place in multiple regions
hen the neuronal activity of a region in the brain increases, highly oxygenated blood flows to the parts of the brain doing more work,
associate professor of radiology at Washington University in St louis. t roughly akin to spotting the rush of blood to someone cheeks
The technique works by detecting light transmitted through the head and capturing the dynamic changes in the colors of the brain tissue.
and monitor brain disease and therapy. Portable scans Another commonly used method for mapping brain function is positron emission tomography (PET),
which involves radiation exposure. Because DOT technology does not use radiation, multiple scans performed over time could be used to monitor the progress of patients treated for brain injuries, developmental disorders such as autism,
neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson, and other diseases. Unlike fmri and PET, DOT technology is designed to be portable,
so it could be used at a patient bedside or in the operating room. ith the new improvements in image quality, DOT is moving significantly closer to the resolution
and positional accuracy of fmri, says first author Adam T. Eggebrecht, a postdoctoral research fellow. hat means DOT can be used as a stronger surrogate in situations where fmri cannot be used.
including learning more about how deep brain stimulation helps Parkinson patients, imaging the brain during social interactions,
and when the heart is stopped temporarily during cardiac surgery. Better image quality For the current study, published online in Nature Photonics,
Data was collected using the same subjects, and the DOT and fmri images were aligned. They looked for Broca area,
The overlap between the brain region identified as Broca area by DOT data and by fmri scans was about 75 percent.
Researchersinterests in these networks have grown enormously over the past decade as the networks have been tied to many different aspects of brain health and sickness, such as schizophrenia, autism and Alzheimer disease.
In these studies, the DOT data also showed remarkable similarity to fmriicking out the same cluster of three regions in both hemispheres. ith the improved image quality of the new DOT system,
going forward, could make optical neuroimaging much more useful in research and the clinic. While DOT doesn let scientists peer very deeply into the brain,
researchers can get reliable data to a depth of about one centimeter of tissue. That centimeter contains some of the brain most important and interesting areas with many higher brain functions, such as memory, language and self-awareness, represented.
and sensors connected to cables. The full-scale DOT unit takes up an area slightly larger than an old-fashioned phone booth
They continue to work to make the technology more portable. Culver and Washington University have financial interests in Cephalogics LLC based on a license of related optical imaging technology by the university to Cephalogics LLC.
They are regulated in accordance with the university conflict-of-interest policies. The National institutes of health, Autism Speaks, a Fulbright Science and Technology Phd Award,
and a Mcdonnell Centre for Systems neuroscience grant funded the research s
#How an app might help screen kids for autism A new video analysis tool may help spot early signs of autism.
The software, which is currently under development as a tablet application, tracks and records infantsactivity during videotaped autism screening tests.
Results show the program is as effective at spotting behavioral markers of autism as experts giving the test themselves,
and the software performs better than non-expert medical clinicians and students in training. ee not trying to replace the experts,
says Jordan Hashemi, a graduate student in computer and electrical engineering at Duke university. ee trying to transfer the knowledge of the relatively few autism experts available into classrooms and homes across the country.
We want to give people tools they don currently have because research has shown that early intervention can greatly impact the severity of the symptoms common in autism spectrum disorders.
THREE TESTS The study focused on three behavioral tests that can help identify autism in very young children.
In one test, an infant attention is drawn to a toy being shaken on the left side
and then redirected to a toy being shaken on the right side. Clinicians count how long it takes for the child attention to shift in response to the changing stimulus. The second test passes a toy across the infant field of view
and looks for any delay in the child tracking its motion. In the last test
a clinician rolls a ball to a child and looks for eye contact afterward sign of the child engagement with their play partner.
In all of the tests, the person administering them isn just controlling the stimulus, he or she is also counting how long it takes for the child to reactn imprecise science at best.
GENERAL PRACTITIONERS he great benefit of the video and software is for general practitioners who do not have trained the eye to look for subtle early warning signs of autism
says Amy Esler, an assistant professor of pediatrics and autism researcher at the University of Minnesota,
which will appear online in the journal Autism Research and Treatment. he software has the potential to automatically analyze a child eye gaze, walking patterns,
or motor behaviors for signs that are distinct from typical development, Esler says. hese signs would signal to doctors that they need to refer a family to a specialist for a more detailed evaluation.
According to Hashemi and his adviser, Guillermo Sapiro, professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Duke
because the program is noninvasive, it could be useful immediately in homes and clinics. Neither, however, expects it to become widely usedot because clinicians, teachers,
and parents aren willing, but because the researchers are working on an even more practical solution. TABLET APP Later this year, the Duke team plans to test a new tablet application that could do away with the need for a person to administer any tests at all.
The program would watch for physical and facial responses to visual cues played on the screen,
analyze the data and automatically report any potential red flags. Any parent teacher, or clinician would simply need to download the app
and sit their child down in front of it for a few minutes. The efforts are part of the Information Initiative at Duke,
which connects researchers from disparate fields to experts in computer programming to help analyze large data sets. ee currently working with autism experts at Duke Medicine to determine what sorts of easy tests could be used on just a computer
or tablet screen to spot any potential concerns, says Sapiro. he goal is to mimic the same sorts of social interactions that the tests with the toys and balls measure,
but without the toys and balls. The research has shown that the earlier autism can be spotted,
the more beneficial intervention can be. And we want to provide everyone in the world with the ability to spot those signs as early as possible.
The National Science Foundation, Phd scholarships from Brazil and the US Department of defense, the Office of Naval Research, the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency, the Army Research Office,
and the Air force Office of Scientific research supported the research i
#Compound discovery may calm chronic pain When wee injured, a diverse mixture of chemicals is released,
and these chemicals cause pain by acting on an equally diverse group of receptors on the surface of pain-sensing neurons. big problem in our field is that it is impractical to block each of these receptors with a mixture of drugs,
associate professor of cell biology and physiology at UNC School of medicine. o we looked for commonalitieshe things that each of these receptors need
Brittany Wright, a graduate student in Zylka lab, found that the PIP5K1C kinase was expressed at the highest level in sensory neurons compared to other related kinases.
The researchers then used a mouse model to show that PIP5K1C was responsible for generating at least half of all PIP2 in these neurons.
they teamed up with Stephen Frye, director of the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Researchers used standard magnetic resonance imaging as part of a new method to measure stroke damage to the blood-brain barrier.
If there is too much barrier damage before intravenous medicine is administered to a stroke patient, that medicine could seep out of the bloodstream and into the brain, causing major damage.
The drug tpa is given now to patients only within 4. 5 hours of a stroke onset
A reliable tool to determine which patients can safely be treated beyond that window would allow more patients to be helped. f we are able to replicate our findings in more patients,
says study leader Richard Leigh, assistant professor of neurology and radiology at Johns hopkins university School of medicine. Described in the journal Stroke
the new method is a computer program that lets physicians see how much gadolinium, the contrast material injected into a patient vein during an MRI scan,
The blood-brain barrier limits the passage of molecules from the bloodstream into the brain. Without it
the brain is open to infection, inflammation, and hemorrhage. Ischemic stroke patients are at risk of bleeding into the brain
when there is damage to the barrier. TIMING IS EVERYTHING In an ischemic stroke, a blood clot is stuck in a vessel, cutting off blood flow to a portion of the brain,
When patients come to the hospital within a few hours of suffering an ischemic stroke, doctors quickly give intravenous tpa,
hoping it will dissolve the clot without causing additional damage. In roughly 30 percent of stroke patients
however, there is already too much damage to the blood-brain barrier and the drug causes bleeding in the brain, severe injury,
But doctors haven known with any precision which patients are likely to suffer a drug-related bleed.
Most stroke patients, Leigh notes, don get to a hospital within the window for optimal tpa use
such as pulling the clot out mechanically via a catheter threaded from the groin area or by directly injecting tpa into the brain.
MRI FOR EVERY STROKE PATIENT Typically, physicians do a CT SCAN of a stroke victim to see
if he or she has visible bleeding before administering tpa. Leigh says his computer program, working with an MRI scan, can detect subtle changes to the blood-brain barrier that are otherwise impossible to see.
If the findings hold up, Leigh says, e should probably be doing MRI scans in every stroke patient before we give tpa.
An MRI scan does take longer to conduct in most institutions than a CT SCAN, Leigh concedes.
doctors should consider changing their practice. f we could eliminate all intracranial hemorrhages, it would be worth it,
the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and the Seton Healthcare Family supported the research.
Other researchers from Johns Hopkins and from Emory University contributed to the study. Source: Johns Hopkins Universit
#Wireless pacemaker is much smaller than a penny Engineers have built an electronic pacemaker that smaller than a grain of rice
or recharged wirelessly by holding a power source about the size of a credit card above the device, outside the body.
The team tested the wireless charging system in a pig and used it to power a tiny pacemaker in a rabbit.
Theye preparing the system for testing in humans. Should such tests be approved and prove successful,
and efficacy requirements for using this wireless charging system in commercial medical devices. But it has the potential to eliminate bulky batteries
and clumsy recharging systems and lead to a type of medicine where physicians treat disease
and alleviate pain with electronics instead of drugs. e need to make these devices as small as possible to more easily implant them deep in the body
and create new ways to treat illness and alleviate pain, says Ada Poon, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford university.
The central discovery is an engineering breakthrough that creates a new type of wireless power transfersing roughly the same power as a cell phonehat can safely penetrate deep inside the body.
An independent laboratory that tests cell phones says that the system falls well below the danger exposure levels for human safety
Poon writes. MORE EFFECTIVE THAN DRUGS The discovery could spawn a new generation of programmable microimplantsensors to monitor vital functions deep inside the body;
electrostimulators to change neural signals in the brain; and drug delivery systems to apply medicines directly to affected areas,
Poon says. The work creates the potential to develop lectroceuticaltreatments as alternatives to drug therapies,
says William Newsome, professor of neurobiology and director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Newsome, who was involved not in Poon experiments
but is familiar with her work, says such treatments could be more effective than drugs for some disorders
because electroceutical approaches would use implantable devices to directly modulate activity in specific brain circuits.
when we broadcast signals from giant radio towers, cook in microwave ovens, or use an electric toothbrush that recharges wirelessly in a special cradle next to the bathroom sink.
Before Poon discovery, there was a clear divide between the two main types of electromagnetic waves in everyday use,
like those broadcast from radio towers, can travel over long distances. But when they encounter biological tissue,
they either reflect off the body harmlessly or get absorbed by the skin as heat.
Either way, far-field electromagnetic waves have been ignored as a potential wireless power source for medical devices. Near-field waves can be used safely in wireless power systems.
Some current medical devices like hearing implants use near-field technology. But their limitation is implied by the name:
They can transfer power only over short distances, limiting their usefulness deep inside the body.
or biological tissue. For instance, when you put your ear on a railroad track, you can hear the vibration of the wheels long before the train itself
and further through metal than they do through air. With this principle in mind Poon designed a power source that generated a special type of near-field wave.
In the experiment, Poon used her midfield transfer system to send power directly to tiny medical implants.
But it is possible to build tiny batteries into microimplants, and then recharge these batteries wirelessly using the midfield system.
This is not possible with today technologies. ith this method we can safely transmit power to tiny implants in organs like the heart or brain,
well beyond the range of current near-field systems, says graduate student John Ho. Source: Stanford Universit n
#App analyzes your voice for mood swings Researchers are testing a smartphone app that monitors your mood by listening for changes in your voice.
Theye hopeful it could be a tool to detect mood shifts in people with bipolar disordernd perhaps changes seen in conditions like PTSD and Parkinson disease.
While the app still needs much testing before widespread use, early results from a small group of patients show its potential to monitor moods while protecting privacy.
because they hope it will yield a biological marker to prioritize bipolar disorder care to those who need it most urgently to stabilize their moodsspecially in regions of the world with scarce mental health services.
Bipolar disorder affects tens of millions of people worldwide, and can have devastating effects, including suicide. hese pilot study results give us preliminary proof of the concept that we can detect mood states in regular phone calls by analyzing broad features and properties of speech,
says Zahi Karam, a postdoctoral fellow and specialist in machine learning and speech analysis at the University of Michigan.
HOW IT WORKS The app runs in the background on an ordinary smartphone, and automatically monitors the patientsvoice patterns during any calls made as well as during weekly conversations with a member of the patient care team.
The computer program analyzes many characteristics of the soundsnd silencesf each conversation. Only the patient side of everyday phone calls is recordednd the recordings themselves are encrypted
and kept off-limits to the research team. They can see only the results of computer analysis of the recordings,
which are stored in secure servers that comply with patient privacy laws. Eventually, it will include a feedback loop to the patient
and his or her care team and even a chosen family member. Standardized weekly mood assessments with a trained clinician provide a benchmark for the patient mood,
Because other mental health conditions also cause changes in a person voice the same technology framework developed for bipolar disorder could prove useful in everything from schizophrenia and posttraumatic stress disorder to Parkinson disease,
the researchers say. RESULTS SO FAR The first six patients all have a rapid-cycling form of Type 1 bipolar disorder
and a history of being prone to frequent depressive and manic episodes. The researchers showed that their analysis of voice characteristics from everyday conversations could detect elevated and depressed moods.
The detection of mood states will improve over time as the software gets trained based on more conversations and data from more patients.
The researchers study patients as they experience all aspects of bipolar disorder mood changes from mild depressions and hypomania (mild mania) to full-blown depressed and manic states.
Over time, they hope to develop software that will learn to detect the changes that precede the transitions to each of these states.
They also need to develop and explore strategies for notifying the app user and care providers about mood changes,
so that appropriate intervention can take place. The app currently runs on Android operating system phones, and complies with laws about recording conversations
because only one side of the conversation actually gets recorded. The University of Michigan has applied for patent protection for the intellectual property involved.
The researchers presented early results this month at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal processing in Italy,
and published details simultaneously in the conference proceedings. The National institute of mental health funded the study t
#Chip uses magnetism to sort living cells Researchers have developed a chip-like device that similar to a random access memory chip,
but it moves cells instead of electrons. Scaling up the device could mean sorting and storing hundreds of thousands of individual living cells in a matter of minutes.
an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke university Pratt School of engineering. hat like taking the eye color of everyone in a room
Moving cells with magnets Yellen and his collaborator, Cheol Gi Kim of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology in South korea, printed thin electromagnetic components like those found on microchips onto a slide.
transistors, and diodes that guide magnetic beads and single cells tagged with magnetic nanoparticles through a thin liquid film.
Like a series of small conveyer belts, localized rotating magnetic fields move the beads and cells along specific directions etched into a track,
while built-in switches direct traffic to storage sites on the chip. The result is an integrated circuit that controls small magnetic objects much like the way electrons are controlled on computer chips.
In the study, the engineers demonstrate a 3-by-3 grid of compartments that allow magnetic beads to enter but not leave.
By tagging cells with magnetic particles and directing them to different compartments, the cells can be separated,
Applications for HIV and cancer In a random access memory chip, similar logic circuits manipulate electrons on a nanometer scale, controlling billions of compartments in a square inch.
As an example, Yellen points to cells afflicted by HIV or cancer. In both diseases, most afflicted cells are active
and can be targeted by therapeutics. A few rare cells, however, remain dormant, biding their time and avoiding destruction before activating
and bringing the disease out of remission. With the new technology, the researchers hope to watch millions of individual cells,
pick out the few that become dormant, quickly retrieve them and analyze their genetic activity. aybe then we could find a way to target the dormant cells,
ur technology can offer new tools to improve our basic understanding of cancer metastasis at the single cell level,
Scaling up The researchers now plan to demonstrate a larger grid of 8-by-8 or 16-by-16 compartments with cells,
says Kim. ecause it is a system similar to electronics and is based on the same technology,
That makes the system relevant to commercialization. here another technique paper we need to do as a follow-up before we get to actual biological applications,
when new bone grows Bioengineers have created a hydrogel to help people regrow lost bone and tissue.
Long-term stability A problem with thermogelling polymers is that once they harden, they begin to collapse
a graduate student at Rice university who helped create the hydrogel. That process, known as syneresis, defeats the purpose of defining the space doctors hope to fill with new tissue. f the transition gellation temperature is one or two degrees below body temperature
these polymers slowly start to expel water and shrink down until theye one-half or one-third the size.
Then the defect-filling goal is accomplished no longer, he says. Watson and colleagues solved the problem by adding chemical cross-linkers to the gel molecules. t a secondary mechanism that,
The new material is described in a paper published in the journal Biomacromolecules. emi-smartmaterial came up with the idea a few years ago,
and a medical degree in a joint program with nearby Baylor College of Medicine. hese chemical crosslinks are attached by phosphate ester bonds,
alkaline phosphatasehat are produced naturally by bone tissue. he catalysts are naturally present in your body at all times, in low levels.
and may be suited better for a biotech company, he says. e focus more on the performance of the hydrogels and the underlying molecular mechanisms The National institutes of health,
the Keck Center Nanobiology Training program of the Gulf coast Consortia and the Baylor College of Medicine Medical scientist Training program supported the research.
#GPS for DNA pinpoints where your ancestors lived The new Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool works somewhat like a satellite navigation system.
The breakthrough of knowing where the gene pools that created your DNA were mixed last has massive implications for lifesaving personalized medicine
allowing GPS to trace their Scandinavian origins. f we think of our world as being made up of different colors of soupepresenting different populationst is easy to visualize how genetic admixture occurs,
says creator Eran Elhaik of the University of Sheffield animal and plant sciences department. f a population from the blue soup region mixes with a population from the red soup region their offsprings would appear as a purple soup. he more genetic admixture that takes place,
the more different colors of soup are introduced which makes it increasingly difficult to locate your DNA ancestry using traditional tools like Spatial Ancestry analysis (SPA)
Sardinia and Oceania To demonstrate how accurate GPS predictions are, Elhaik and his colleagues analyzed data from 10 villages in Sardinia and over 20 islands in Oceania.
Medical screening Elhaik coauthor Tatiana Tatarinova developed a website making GPS accessible to the public. o help people find their roots,
I developed a website that allows anyone who has had their DNA genotyped to upload their results
and use GPS to find their ancestral home, says Tatarinova, an associate professor of research pediatrics at the Keck School of medicine of the University of Southern California. e were surprised by the simplicity and precision of this method.
People in a given geographical area are more likely to have similar genetics. When they also have genetic traits typically found in other, distant regions,
the geographical origin of those traits is generally the closest location where those traits can be found.
this kind of screening has huge, important medical implications. The discovery of a certain genotype might indicate the potential for a genetic disease
and suggest that diagnostic testing be done. Also, as scientists learn more about personalized medicine, there is evidence that specific genotypes respond differently to medicationsaking this information potentially useful
when selecting the most effective therapy and appropriate dosage. The investigators are currently designing a study to correlate pharmacokineticshe time course of drug metabolismith genotype.
Additional researchers contributed to the study from Johns hopkins university University of Pennsylvania, University of Arizona, and other research institutions around the world.
Source: University of Sheffiel c
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