Lifeboat Foundation

A new study has found that a novel T cell genetically engineered by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers is able to target and attack pathogenic T cells that cause Type 1 diabetes, which could lead to new immunotherapy treatments.

The immune system fights bacteria, viruses and other pathogens by utilizing several types of T cells, all of which have receptors that are specific to particular antigens. On killer T cells, the receptor works in concert with three signaling modules and a coreceptor to destroy the infected cell. Michael Kuhns, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UArizona College of Medicine—Tucson Department of Immunobiology, copied the evolutionary design to engineer a five-module chimeric antigen receptor, or 5MCAR, T cell.

“The 5MCAR was an attempt to figure out if we could build something by biomimicry, using some of evolution’s natural pieces, and redirect T cells to do what we want them to do. We engineered a 5MCAR that would direct killer T cells to target autoimmune T cells that mediate Type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Kuhns, who is member of the UArizona Cancer Center, BIO5 Institute and Arizona Center on Aging. “So now, a killer T cell will actually recognize another T cell. We flipped T cell-mediated immunity on its head.”

Mice, fruit flies and dogs are common creatures of laboratories across the country, valuable to researchers for their genetic proximity to humans. But what about lampreys?

A new Yale School of Public Health study has enlisted this unlikely and slimy ally in the fight against cancer.

By carefully tracing the evolution of a select number of cancer-causing genes in a variety of species, the researchers evaluated which animals are—and are not—effective in gauging how an analog of those genes in humans can lead to cancer. What they found is surprising: jawless fish such as lampreys share significant similarities in these certain genes compared to humans, while fruit flies do not. Their findings, published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, will help molecular biologists and other scientists as they work to find potential cures to certain cancers, such as lymphoma.

Summary: A new method identified a large set of gene regulatory regions in the brain, selected throughout human evolution.

Source: Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain.

Dogs are cool!

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Continue reading “Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs” »

Circa 2009

Present ultrafast laser optics is at the frontier between atto- and zeptosecond photon pulses, giving rise to unprecedented applications. We show that high-energetic photon pulses down to the yoctosecond time scale can be produced in heavy-ion collisions. We focus on photons produced during the initial phase of the expanding quark-gluon plasma. We study how the time evolution and properties of the plasma may influence the duration and shape of the photon pulse. Prospects for achieving double-peak structures suitable for pump-probe experiments at the yoctosecond time scale are discussed.

Scientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost. The results can contribute to explaining the evolution of sub species, as well as how the mammoth steppe transformed into tundra, forest and steppe biomes at the end of the last Ice Age.

In 2018, a well-preserved frozen bird was found in the ground in the Belaya Gora area of north-eastern Siberia. Researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a new research center at Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, haves studied the bird and the results are now published in the scientific journal Communications Biology. The analyses reveals that the bird is a 46,000-year-old female horned lark.

“Not only can we identify the bird as a horned lark. The genetic analysis also suggests that the bird belonged to a population that was a joint ancestor of two sub species of horned lark living today, one in Siberia, and one in the steppe in Mongolia. This helps us understand how the diversity of sub species evolves,” says Nicolas Dussex, researcher at the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University.

The fossil was a male Paranthropus robustus, a species that existed alongside our early human ancestors as a ‘cousin species’.

Academics from La Trobe University’s Archaeology Department in Melbourne, Australia led the excavation and reconstruction of the large-toothed rare skull from the Drimolen Main Quarry north of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Researchers described the fossil — that was found in 2018 on South African Father’s Day (June 20) — as exciting.

Hell, our own evolution on Earth was pure luck.

In newly published research from Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, scientists study the likelihood of key times for evolution of life on Earth and conclude that it would be virtually impossible for that life to evolve the same way somewhere else.

Continue reading “Intelligent Life Really Can’t Exist Anywhere Else” »