Researchers have learned how a synthetic molecule destroys complexes that induce allergic responses—a discovery that could lead to the development of highly potent, rapidly acting interventions for a host of acute allergic reactions. The study, published online Oct. 28 in Nature, was led by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Bern, Switzerland. The new inhibitor disarms IgE antibodies, pivotal players in acute allergies, by detaching the antibody from its partner in crime, a molecule called FcR. (Other mechanisms lead to slower-developing allergic reactions.) “It would be an incredible intervention if you could rapidly disconnect IgE antibodies in the midst of an acute allergic response,” said Ted Jardetzky, PhD, professor of structural biology and senior investigator for the study. It turns out the inhibitor used by the team does just that. A myriad of allergens, ranging from ragweed pollen to bee venom to peanuts, can set off IgE antibodies, resulting in allergic reactions within seconds.

October 28, 2012, ScienceDaily, Stanford University Medical Center

]]> http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/29/mechanism-found-for-destruction-of-key-allergy-inducing-complexes-researchers-say/feed/ 0 http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/26/assembly-of-nano-machines-mimics-human-muscle/ http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/26/assembly-of-nano-machines-mimics-human-muscle/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:46:04 +0000 Editor http://www.alcor.org/magazine/?p=1668 Read more »]]> [TECH NEWS]

For the first time, an assembly of thousands of nano-machines capable of producing a coordinated contraction movement extending up to around ten micrometers, like the movements of muscular fibers, has been synthesized by a CNRS team from the Institut Charles Sadron. This innovative work, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone, professor at the Université de Strasbourg, and involving researchers from the Laboratoire de Matière et Systèmes Complexes (CNRS/Université Paris Diderot), provides an experimental validation of a biomimetic approach that has been conceptualized for some years in the field of nanosciences. This discovery opens up perspectives for a multitude of applications in robotics, in nanotechnology for the storage of information, in the medical field for the synthesis of artificial muscles or in the design of other materials incorporating nano-machines (endowed with novel mechanical properties). The work has been published in the online version of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

 October 23, 2012, ScienceDaily / Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

]]> http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/26/assembly-of-nano-machines-mimics-human-muscle/feed/ 0 http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/25/revolutionary-dna-based-approach-to-map-wiring-of-whole-brain/ http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/25/revolutionary-dna-based-approach-to-map-wiring-of-whole-brain/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:54:17 +0000 Editor http://www.alcor.org/magazine/?p=1664 Read more »]]> [TECH NEWS]

A team of neuroscientists has proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of obtaining a neuronal connectivity map (the “connectome”) of the whole brain of the mouse. Details were set forth October 23 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The team, led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, aims to provide a comprehensive account of neural connectivity. At present the only method for obtaining this information with high precision relies on examining individual cell-to-cell contacts (synapses) in electron microscopes. But such methods are slow, expensive and labor-intensive. Zador and colleagues instead propose to exploit high-throughput DNA sequencing to probe the connectivity of neural circuits at the resolution of single neurons. “Our method renders the connectivity problem in a format in which the data are readable by currently available high-throughput genome sequencing machines,” says Zador. “We propose to do this via a process we’re now developing, called BOINC: the barcoding of individual neuronal connections.”

 October 23, 2012, ScienceDaily / Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

]]> http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/25/revolutionary-dna-based-approach-to-map-wiring-of-whole-brain/feed/ 0 http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/23/blood-transfusions-from-young-mice-to-old-improve-brain-function/ http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/23/blood-transfusions-from-young-mice-to-old-improve-brain-function/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:41:11 +0000 Editor http://www.alcor.org/magazine/?p=1629 Read more »]]> [TECH NEWS]

A research team from Stanford University has found that injecting the blood of young mice into older mice can cause new neural development and improved memory. Team leader Saul Villeda presented the group’s findings at this year’s Society for Neuroscience conference. The researchers were following up on work by another team also led by Villeda that last year found that when younger mice were given transfusions of blood from older mice, their mental faculties aged more quickly than non-transfused young mice. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team also noted that the reverse appeared to be true as well: the older mice derived a degree of mental benefit from the transfusions. In this new research, the team connected the bloodstreams of an older and a younger mouse, allowing their blood to comingle. Subsequent brain scans found that the number of neural stem cells in the brains of the older mice increased by 20 percent after just a few days, indicating that new neural connections were being made—a necessary occurrence for increased memory retention.

 October 19, Bob Yirka / medicalxpress.com

]]> http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/23/blood-transfusions-from-young-mice-to-old-improve-brain-function/feed/ 0 http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/18/study-may-lead-to-new-treatment-for-parkinsons/ http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/18/study-may-lead-to-new-treatment-for-parkinsons/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:25:57 +0000 Editor http://www.alcor.org/magazine/?p=1626 Read more »]]> [TECH NEWS]

For decades, patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have had the same experience. Their hands start to shake uncontrollably, their limbs become rigid and they lose their balance. Years before those movement problems set in, many begin struggling with fainting, incontinence, sexual dysfunction, anxiety and depression. Most patients are still treated with a 42-year-old drug called L-DOPA, which temporarily staves off symptoms but can itself cause heart arrhythmias, stomach bleeding and hallucinations. In this light, it’s best to tread carefully when talking about early study results that promise something better. That said, a team of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has identified a set of experimental drugs called LRRK2 inhibitors that may go beyond symptom relief to directly counter the inflammation and nerve cell death at the root of Parkinson’s. Andrew West, PhD, presented findings of the group at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.

October 15, 2012, University of Alabama at Birmingham

]]> http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/18/study-may-lead-to-new-treatment-for-parkinsons/feed/ 0 http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/17/prostate-cancer-curcumin-curbs-metastases-study-show/ http://www.alcor.org/magazine/2012/10/17/prostate-cancer-curcumin-curbs-metastases-study-show/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:09:45 +0000 Editor http://www.alcor.org/magazine/?p=1622 Read more »]]> [TECH NEWS]

Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies in the Western world, and is often diagnosed only after metastatic tumors have formed in other organs. In three percent of cases, these metastases are lethal. A research team led by PD Dr. Beatrice Bachmeier at LMU Munich has been studying the mode of action of a natural product that inhibits the formation of metastases. The compound is found in turmeric, a plant that has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, and is a major ingredient of curry. Bachmeier’s research centers on curcumin, the polyphenol responsible for the characteristic color of curry. Curcumin is well tolerated and is therefore, in principle, suitable both for prophylactic use (primary prevention) and also for the suppression of metastases in cases where an established tumor is already present (secondary prevention). In a previous study Bachmeier and her colleagues had demonstrated that the substance reduces statistically significantly the formation of lung metastases in an animal model of advanced breast cancer.

 October 12, 2012, ScienceDaily / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU)

Although tumor metastasis causes about 90 percent of cancer deaths, the exact mechanism that allows cancer cells to spread from one part of the body to another is not well understood. One key question is how tumor cells detach from the structural elements that normally hold tissues in place, then reattach themselves in a new site. A new study from MIT cancer researchers reveals some of the cellular adhesion molecules that are critical to this process. The findings, published Oct. 9 in Nature Communications, offer potential new cancer drug targets, says research team leader Sangeeta Bhatia. “As cancer cells become more metastatic, there can be a loss of adhesion to normal tissue structures. Then, as they become more aggressive, they gain the ability to stick to, and grow on, molecules that are not normally found in healthy tissues but are found in sites of tumor metastases. If we can prevent them from growing at these new sites, we may be able to interfere with metastatic disease.” Lead author of the paper is Nathan Reticker-Flynn, a PhD student in Bhatia’s lab.

 October 9, 2012, Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

This summer Google set a new landmark in the field of artificial intelligence with software that learned how to recognize cats, people, and other things simply by watching YouTube videos (see “Self-Taught Software“). That technology, modeled on how brain cells operate, is now being put to work making Google’s products smarter, with speech recognition being the first service to benefit, Technology Review reports. Google’s learning software is based on simulating groups of connected brain cells that communicate and influence one another. When such a neural network, as it’s called, is exposed to data, the relationships between different neurons can change. That causes the network to develop the ability to react in certain ways to incoming data of a particular kind — and the network is said to have learned something. Neural networks have been used for decades in areas where machine learning is applied, such as chess-playing software or face detection. Google’s engineers have found ways to put more computing power behind the approach than was previously possible.

October 5, 2012, Kurzweil AI

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS, Progeria), is a rare, fatal, “rapid-aging” childhood disease that is linked to the normal aging process. Results of the first-ever clinical drug trial for children with the disease demonstrate the efficacy of a treatment using a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), a drug originally developed to treat cancer. The clinical trial results, completed only six years after scientists identified the (genetic) cause of Progeria, included significant improvements in weight gain, bone structure and, most importantly, the cardiovascular system, according to The Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) and Boston Children’s Hospital. The study results were published Sep. 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Epub ahead of print). Researchers plan to continue studying the effect of FTIs, which may help scientists learn more about cardiovascular disease that affects millions, as well as the normal aging process.

September 24, 2012, Spectrum / Eurekalert (Progeria Research Foundation)

One of the greatest challenges in neuroscience is to identify the map of synaptic connections between neurons. Called the “connectome,” it is the holy grail that will explain how information flows in the brain. In a landmark paper, published the week of 17th of September in PNAS, the EPFL’s Blue Brain Project (BBP) has identified key principles that determine synapse-scale connectivity by virtually reconstructing a cortical microcircuit and comparing it to a mammalian sample. These principles now make it possible to predict the locations of synapses in the neocortex. “This is a major breakthrough, because it would otherwise take decades, if not centuries, to map the location of each synapse in the brain and it also makes it so much easier now to build accurate models,” says Henry Markram, head of the BBP. The findings strongly suggest that neurons grow as independently of each other as physically possible and mostly form synapses at the locations where they randomly bump into each other. A few exceptions were also discovered.

 September 17, 2012, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne / Eurekalert