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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,784

Proteostasis: How Misfolded Proteins Cause Age-related Diseases

Coming from a fusion of the words ‘protein’ (a molecule that a cell uses as a machine or scaffolding) and ‘stasis’ (meaning to keep the same), the term ‘proteostasis’ can essentially be simplified into “Each function reliant on proteins is running as it should. There are enough proteins to serve a function, and the concentrations of proteins are being maintained at healthy levels.”

Proteostasis is the process that cells perform in order to have all their proteins functioning properly; this, in turn, allows cells to work properly. Since cells are the building blocks of our bodies, when they work properly, we are healthy.

When proteostasis is not maintained, cells become dysfunctional and can die; this failure can lead to aging, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation, developmental defects, and other problems. The loss of proteostasis is thought to be a primary reason we age, and we discuss how this happens in more detail here.

Study Suggests Reaction Time Variability is an Aging Biomarker

There is a growing list of aging biomarkers available to researchers that help them measure how well someone is aging and assess how aging interventions are working in preclinical testing.

Some clinical biomarkers, such as DNA methylation and telomere length, are commonly used in labs. Other biomarkers, such as blood pressure, grip strength, heart rate variability, visual reaction time, and decision reaction time, are non-invasive and easy to test.

Currently, DNA methylation is generally regarded as the gold standard for aging biomarkers, although new techniques, such as cell functional age, are attempting to challenge that. The sensible choice, of course, would be to combine both methods to further improve the accuracy of results.

Comparing Reactions of different Groups to Nuclear Thermal Rocket enabled space colonization

Nextbigfuture wrote about the designs for an improved nuclear thermal rocket by John Bucknell. John has worked as a senior engineer on the SpaceX Raptor rocket. John provides high quality qualified work to his rocket designs and to his proposed space habitat.

Nextbigfuture comments had some technical observations about Project Timberwind and a comment from John himself that his design improves on flaws in the last major nuclear thermal rocket experiments. There were also comments and discussion about Star Trek and communism and O’Neill space stations.

Reddit futurology had two comments. One positive comment by the submitter and a negative comment complaining that the factual title was hype./a The title was trying to condense the concept that John’s habitat would have full Earth gravity and full radiation shielding. Colonies on the surface of Mars would have 38% of Earth gravity and colonies on the surface of the moon would have 16% of Earth gravity. Living in the current International space station is a microgravity environment with more radiation. It is well known that long term exposure to lower gravity is a problem. Muscles weaken bones thin out stress is placed on blood vessels Serious effort is needed to exercise while in low gravity to reduce effects and physiotherapy is needed to recover from the stays in orbit or on the Moon where there is low or no-gravity. Yet the title “Constructing full earth like conditions in Space with technology proven in the sixties” is claimed to be hype.

Researchers Accidentally Discover That Iron Nanoparticles Can Help Destroy Cancer Cells

Stanford researchers accidentally discovered that iron nanoparticles invented for anemia treatment have another use: triggering the immune system’s ability to destroy tumor cells. Iron can activate the immune system to attack , according to a study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The nanoparticles, which are commercially available as the injectable iron supplement ferumoxytol, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat .

The mouse study found that ferumoxytol prompts immune cells called tumor-associated macrophages to destroy cancer cells, suggesting that the nanoparticles could complement existing cancer treatments. The discovery, described in a paper published online Sept. 26 in Nature Nanotechnology, was made by accident while testing whether the nanoparticles could serve as Trojan horses by sneaking chemotherapy into tumors in mice.

The First Ever Blueprint for a Large Scale Quantum Computer has been Unveiled

An international team, led by a scientist from the University of Sussex, have today unveiled the first practical blueprint for how to build a quantum computer, the most powerful computer on Earth.

This huge leap forward towards creating a universal quantum computer is published today (1 February 2017) in the influential journal Science Advances. It has long been known that such a computer would revolutionise industry, science and commerce on a similar scale as the invention of ordinary computers. But this new work features the actual industrial blueprint to construct such a large-scale machine, more powerful in solving certain problems than any computer ever constructed before.

Once built, the computer’s capabilities mean it would have the potential to answer many questions in science; create new, lifesaving medicines; solve the most mind-boggling scientific problems; unravel the yet unknown mysteries of the furthest reaches of deepest space; and solve some problems that an ordinary computer would take billions of years to compute.

Restoring Youthful Plasticity in the Brains of Old Mice

As we age the brain loses its flexibility, this in turn affects our ability to learn, to remember things and adapt to new situations. The classic theme is of an older person who is stuck in a rut and unable to change how they think.

This is also a common concern people raise when any discussion of healthy longer lives are mentioned. The concern is that we would have a world of people living more decades and becoming so set in their ways that society would stagnate.

However, many proponents of rejuvenation biotechnology refute this and suggest that mental plasticity could be rejuvenated just the same as cells and tissues could be. The new study we will discuss today offers us a hint of what might be possible, although the focus here is specifically on the visual cortex[1].

Researchers develop technology to make aged cells younger

Aging. We all face it. Nobody’s immune and we’ve long tried to reverse it, stop it or just even slow it down. While advances have been made, true age-reversal at a cellular level remains difficult to achieve. By taking a different approach, however, researchers at Houston Methodist made a surprising discovery leading to the development of technology with the ability to rejuvenate human cells. And that couldn’t be more important for the small population of children who are aging too quickly — children with progeria.

John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D., department chair of cardiovascular sciences at Houston Methodist Research Institute, and his colleagues, describe their findings in a Research Letter titled “Telomerase mRNA Reverses Senescence in Progeria Cells,” appearing online July 31 and in print Aug. 8 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, a leading medical journal in the field of cardiovascular disease.

Cooke studied cells from children with , a rare condition marked by rapid aging that usually robs them of the chance to live beyond their early teens. They focused on progeria, because the condition tells them a lot about aging in general that’s ultimately relevant to all of us.