Lifeboat Foundation

People typically think of food as calories, energy and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level.

This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics. This is a discipline still in its infancy, and many questions remain cloaked in mystery. Yet already, we researchers have learned a great deal about how food components affect the genome.

I am a molecular biologist who researches the interactions among food, genes and brains in the effort to better understand how food messages affect our biology. The efforts of scientists to decipher this transmission of information could one day result in healthier and happier lives for all of us. But until then, has unmasked at least one important fact: Our relationship with food is far more intimate than we ever imagined.

A lightweight structure made of rubber and metal layers can provide an object with underwater acoustic stealth over a broad frequency range.

An acoustic “cloak” could hide an underwater object from detection by sonar devices or by echolocating marine animals. Much like camouflage clothing allows figures to fade into a background, acoustic camouflage can make an object indistinguishable from the surrounding water. Underwater acoustic cloaks have previously been demonstrated, but they typically work over a narrow range of frequencies or are too bulky to be practical. Now Hao-Wen Dong at the Beijing Institute of Technology and colleagues demonstrate a lightweight, broadband cloak made of a thin shell of layered material. The cloak achieves acoustic stealth by both blocking the reflection of sonar pings off the surface and preventing the escape of sound generated from within the cloaked object [1].

Dong and colleagues designed a 4-cm-thick structure—combining an outer rubber layer and a “metamaterial” made of porous aluminum—which covered a steel plate. Using a genetic algorithm, they optimized the metamaterial’s elastic properties to tailor the interaction with underwater sound waves. Specifically, the metamaterial converts impinging longitudinal sound waves, which can travel long distances underwater, to transverse sound waves, which cannot propagate through water. These transverse waves get trapped in the rubber layer, where they get absorbed, eliminating reflected and transmitted waves simultaneously. The researchers built and tested a prototype cloak, confirming that it behaved as predicted. In particular, it absorbed 80% of the energy of incoming sound waves while offering 100-fold attenuation of acoustic noise produced on the side of the steel plate.

Over the past 100 million years, mammals have adapted to nearly every environment on Earth. Scientists with the Zoonomia Project have been cataloging the diversity in mammalian genomes by comparing DNA sequences from 240 species that exist today, from the aardvark and the African savanna elephant to the yellow-spotted rock hyrax and the zebu.

This week, in several papers in a special issue of Science, the Zoonomia team has demonstrated how comparative genomics can not only shed light on how certain species achieve extraordinary feats, but also help scientists better understand the parts of our genome that are functional and how they might influence health and disease.

In the new studies, the researchers identified regions of the genomes, sometimes just single letters of DNA, that are most conserved, or unchanged, across mammalian species and millions of years of evolution—regions that are likely biologically important. They also found part of the genetic basis for uncommon mammalian traits such as the ability to hibernate or sniff out faint scents from miles away. And they pinpointed species that may be particularly susceptible to extinction, as well as genetic variants that are more likely to play causal roles in rare and common human diseases.

Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Princeton University have discovered a novel genetic disorder associated with neurodevelopmental differences. The discovery identified the disorder in 21 families from all over the world. The study “Abrogation of MAP4K4 protein function causes congenital anomalies in humans and zebrafish” is published in Science Advances today, April 26.

The as-yet unnamed disorder is the result of a series of rare variants in the MAP4K4 gene, which is involved in many signaling pathways, including the RAS pathway that normal cell growth, and is being investigated as druggable target for multiple disorders.

The researchers had documented several patients with craniofacial and neurodevelopmental issues that indicated a then-unknown genetic cause. They put out an international call for patients who seemed to fit these specific criteria. Ultimately, they were able to identify patients from 36 countries to determine whether there was a genetic variant linking them to their clinical issues.

Genetic conditions like Dravet syndrome are hard to tackle with traditional gene therapy. But new approaches are in the works.

Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have discovered that being exposed to a mixture of synthetic chemicals commonly present in the environment affects multiple crucial biological processes in both children and young adults. These processes include the metabolism of fats and amino acids.

<div class=””> <div class=””><br />Amino acids are a set of organic compounds used to build proteins. There are about 500 naturally occurring known amino acids, though only 20 appear in the genetic code. Proteins consist of one or more chains of amino acids called polypeptides. The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active. The amino acid sequences of proteins are encoded in the genes. Nine proteinogenic amino acids are called “essential” for humans because they cannot be produced from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food.<br /></div> </div>

Summary: Researchers shed new light on the molecular and genetic basis of long-term memory formation in the brain. A new study reveals a single stimulation to the synapses of hippocampal neurons triggered numerous cycles where the memory-coding Arc gene produced mRNA molecules that were then translated into synapse-strengthening Arc proteins. From the findings, researchers determined a novel feedback loop that helps explain how short-lived mRNA and proteins create long-term memories in the brain.

Source: albert einstein college of medicine.

Helping your mother make pancakes when you were three…riding your bike without training wheels…your first romantic kiss: How do we retain vivid memories of long-ago events?

Summary: An international team of scientists has identified a gene in the brain responsible for anxiety symptoms and found that modifying the gene can reduce anxiety levels, offering a novel drug target for anxiety disorders. The discovery highlights a new amygdala miR483-5p/Pgap2 pathway that regulates the brain’s response to stress and provides a potential therapeutic approach for anxiety disorders.

Source: University of Bristol.

A gene in the brain driving anxiety symptoms has been identified by an international team of scientists. Critically, modification of the gene is shown to reduce anxiety levels, offering an exciting novel drug target for anxiety disorders.

Misfolded proteins are toxic to cells. They disrupt normal functions and cause some age-related human degenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases. Cells work constantly to eliminate misfolded proteins, but these clearance mechanisms are still poorly understood.

In a new study published April 20 in Nature Cell Biology, researchers at Stanford University discovered a previously unknown cellular pathway for clearing misfolded proteins from the nucleus, the compartment where the cell stores, transcribes, and replicates its DNA. Keeping junk away from those processes is critical to normal cellular function. The new pathway could be a target for age-related disease therapies.

To find the new pathway, researchers in the lab of Judith Frydman, the Donald Kennedy Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences, integrated several genetic, imaging, and biochemical approaches to understand how yeast cells dealt with misfolded proteins. For the experiments, the team restricted misfolded proteins to either the nucleus or the cytoplasm—the area inside the cell but outside the nucleus. The team visually followed the fate of the misfolded proteins through live-cell imaging and super-resolution microscopy.