By TheMicrobiology09 On Yt

New Hope in the Fight Against Cancer: Scientists Discover Nutrient that Cancer Cells Crave

Arginine is an essential nutrient for cancer cells. Starving them could render tumors more vulnerable to the body’s natural immune response.

Cancer is one of the prominent causes of death globally, and discovering new methods to prevent and cure it is important for public health. Understanding the particular nutrients that cancer cells require is one of the strategies researchers are investigating to fight the disease.

Arginine is one of the important amino acids produced by our bodies naturally, and it is also abundantly found in food sources such as fish, meat, and nuts. According to the research published in Science Advances, cancer cells also need arginine to survive. It is possible to make tumors more susceptible to the body’s natural immune system and improve the effectiveness of treatment by depriving them of this nutrient.

The lack of this amino acid, which the researchers discovered to exist in various types of human cancers, forces the cancer cells to adapt. Cancer cells alter specific proteins to improve their ability to absorb arginine and other amino acids when their levels of that amino acid fall. Amazingly, these cells also induce mutations that lessen their reliance on arginine in an effort to keep growing.

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I sometimes think about bacteria growing on (in?) an agar plate and how strange it must be from their perspective. To be taken from your (many times hostile) natural habitat and placed in (on?) an alien landscape made entirely of food that caters perfectly to your dietary needs. You live there, and your descendants thrive there for generations after, and then comes a Cataclysm. And they die in an inferno of steam and pressure, suddenly and unexpectedly.

And you never knew you were the fortunate ones. Your brethren lived their lives in other equally alien worlds, except theirs were tailored to kill them, torture them, or starve them of necessary nutrients. Their torment and your bliss serve a purpose ufathomable to you, a purpose of creatures so vast and unknowable, they might as well be Gods.

I think about bacteria sometimes.

"Microbial Rainbow" (detail), Tal Danino, 2018

source

Botox is made with botulinum toxin,, ok.

clostridium botulinum is anaerobic bacteria. form spores that release neurotoxin. cause paralysis

can be evident in honey. home canned foods. no oxygen

Broad's Scientist Introduce a Machine Learning Model to Identify Genetic Factors for Cardiovascular Diseases

A machine learning model has been introduced by Broad's Scientists to identify genetic factors associated with cardiovascular diseases.

Using the heart as an investigational model, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have designed an autoencoder-based machine-learning pipeline that can effectively predict a patient’s heart condition based on image data from ECGs and MRIs. The approach could also be used to detect markers related to cardiovascular diseases.

Nearly all areas of medical science have utilized artificial intelligence (AI) over the years. It has been effectively diagnosing diseases and predicting their transmission and prognosis. AI has been used to design therapeutic approaches effectively and has been helpful in the field of drug design. The use of AI in studying cardiovascular diseases has come a long way, especially machine learning-based systems. AI-based algorithms can be trained to predict cardiovascular disease outcomes using available diagnostic imaging technology.

Currently, the field of cardiology uses a variety of imaging technologies, such as ultrasound imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), etc. The Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a widely used test to monitor the heart’s rhythm. These technologies generate a lot of data that can be utilized to analyze the condition of a person’s heart. The availability of several diagnostic modalities has raised the need for standardized tools for analyzing imaging data effectively. A multi-modal framework built on machine learning techniques has been suggested by researchers from The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The proposed system can help doctors to understand the cardiovascular state of a person using data from MRIs and ECGs. In practice, clinicians can use data generated from the machine learning program to diagnose a patient appropriately.

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hi- quick question since I know you're someone who's written several papers- Do you know if you/other people who have written scientific papers are okay with emails about questions about those papers?

I'm someone who studies hyenas- amateurishly -and papers about extinct species of hyenas are really interesting to me but I can't exactly digest them very well because I don't understand the words being used. Like, what in heavens names is a 'metaconid' what does this mean!!!!!

In general authors are happy to receive such questions, but might not have enough time to give you the answer you are looking for. Still, always worth reaching out.

A metaconid is a part of a molar. But I understand this is just an example among of the general issue you are trying to illustrate. What I have learned from years of reading unfamiliar jargon, and listening to podcasts like The Tetrapod Zoology Podcast that use jargon with reckless abandon, is that in general either (a) the words that are encoded in jargon aren't *that* important to understand the grand themes of what is being discussed, or (b) their meaning can be deduced based on context cues. When I come across one that is key but really cannot be deduced, I will google it, and often Wiktionary or similar will have an answer.

The more you read, the more familiar you will get with the jargon, and the less you will need to google or ask. So, I encourage you to read broadly, and chase those interests!

These pictures show PAS (purple/pink) and GMS (brown/blue) staining of a lymph node biopsy from a canine patient with lymphadenopathy and weight loss. Histology was suggestive of likely a fungal organism (bright pink in the PAS stain and dark brown/black in the GMS stain), however a mixed infection with an algal species could not be definitively ruled out without microbiology.

Our microbiologist cultured an Aspergillus species from this dog, and is in the process of ruling out any other possibilities.

What's especially cool is in one of the PAS pictures, you can see an organism trapped within an actively dividing macrophage!

Scientists Use Electricity to Make Wounds Heal 3x Faster

Scientists have developed a specially engineered biochip that uses electricity to heal wounds up to three times faster than normal.

It’s well known that electric fields can guide the movements of skin cells, nudging them towards the site of an injury for instance. In fact, the human body generates an electric field that does this naturally. So researchers from the University of Freiburg in Germany set out to amplify the effect.

While it might not heal severe injuries with the speed of a Marvel superhero, it could radically reduce the time it takes for small tears and lacerations to recover.

For people with chronic wounds that take a long time to heal, such as in elderly folk, those with diabetes, or people with poor blood circulation, recovering quickly from frequent small, open cuts could be a literal lifesaver.

“Chronic wounds are a huge societal problem that we don’t hear a lot about,” says Maria Asplund, a bioelectronics scientist at the University of Freiburg and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

“Our discovery of a method that may heal wounds up to three times faster can be a game changer for diabetic and elderly people, among others, who often suffer greatly from wounds that won’t heal.”

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The SDGs and the UN itself have fallen in Gaza. This is a shame!!!!! & It appears that #SDGs can't be applicable equally in the different parts of the world !!!

Paleontologists Discover 52-Million-Year-Old Bat

The fossil represents the earliest-known species of the flying mammal

The fossil record is biased against bats. The flying mammals are small, making their fossilized remains very hard to find. And their light skeletons—ideal for flying around—mean it takes special circumstances for their bodies to be preserved. And yet, against these odds, paleontologists recently uncovered the exceptionally complete skeleton of what now stands as the earliest known bat.

To date, the most complete early bat fossils have come from an area paleontologists call Fossil Lake in Wyoming. The rock layers are world-famous for containing beautifully preserved fish, birds, mammals and other organisms that lived in the area about 52 million years ago. Among the stunning fossils recovered from these rocks, Naturalis Biodiversity Center paleontologist Tim Rietbergen and colleagues report Wednesday in PLOS One, are fossils of a new bat species the researchers have named Icaronycteris gunnelli. By comparing this new species with other early bats, paleontologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of how bats spread around the world in that period.

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