Rice chemists skew the odds to prevent cancer

A new paper by a Rice University lab shows how to increase the odds of identifying cancer-causing mutations before tumors take hold. Authors are, from left, Cade Spaulding, Anatoly Kolomeisky and Hamid Teimouri.
Credit: Rice University

The path to cancer prevention is long and arduous for legions of researchers, but new work by Rice University scientists shows that there may be shortcuts.

Rice chemist Anatoly Kolomeisky, lead author and postdoctoral researcher Hamid Teimouri and research assistant Cade Spaulding are developing a theoretical framework to explain how cancers caused by more than one genetic mutation can be more easily identified and perhaps stopped.

Essentially, it does so by identifying and ignoring transition pathways that don’t contribute much to the fixation of mutations in a cell that goes on to establish a tumor.

A study in the Biophysical Journal describes their analysis of the effective energy landscapes of cellular transformation pathways implicated in a variety of cancers. The ability to limit the number of pathways to the few most likely to kick-start cancer could help to find ways to halt the process before it ever really starts.

“In some sense, cancer is a bad-luck story,” said Kolomeisky, a professor of chemistry and of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “We think we can decrease the probability of this bad luck by looking for low-probability collections of mutations that typically lead to cancer. Depending on the type of cancer, this can range between two mutations and 10.”

Technology allows amputees to control a robotic arm with their mind

University of Minnesota Department of Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Zhi Yang shakes hands with research participant Cameron Slavens, who tested out the researchers' robotic arm system. With the help of industry collaborators, the researchers have developed a way to tap into a patient’s brain signals through a neural chip implanted in the arm, effectively reading the patient’s mind and opening the door for less invasive alternatives to brain surgeries.
Credit: Neuroelectronics Lab, University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed a more accurate, less invasive technology that allows amputees to move a robotic arm using their brain signals instead of their muscles.

Many current commercial prosthetic limbs use a cable and harness system that is controlled by the shoulders or chest, and more advanced limbs use sensors to pick up on subtle muscle movements in a patient’s existing limb above the device. But both options can be cumbersome, unintuitive, and take months of practice for amputees to learn how to move them.

Researchers in the University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, with the help of industry collaborators, have created a small, implantable device that attaches to the peripheral nerve in a person’s arm. When combined with an artificial intelligence computer and a robotic arm, the device can read and interpret brain signals, allowing upper limb amputees to control the arm using only their thoughts.

Scent dogs detect coronavirus reliably from skin swabs

Scent dog Silja at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport.
Credit: Egil Björkman

The rapid and accurate identification and isolation of patients with coronavirus infection is an important part of global pandemic management. The current diagnosis of coronavirus infection is based on a PCR test that accurately and sensitively identifies coronavirus from other pathogens. However, PCR tests are ill-suited for screening large masses of people because of, among other things, their slow results and high cost.

Researchers from the Faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Medicine at the University of Helsinki and from Helsinki University Hospital jointly designed a triple-blind, randomized, controlled study set-up to test the accuracy of trained scent detection dogs where none of the trio – dog, dog handler or researcher – knew which of the sniffed skin swab samples were positive and which negative. The study also analyzed factors potentially interfering with the ability of the dogs to recognize a positive sample.

The three-faceted study has now been published in the journal BMJ Global Health. The study provides valuable information on the use of scent dogs in pandemic control.

Scientists Nail Down 'Destination' for Protein That Delivers Zinc

Brookhaven Lab biologist Crysten Blaby and postdoctoral fellow Nicolas Grosjean and colleagues ran genetic experiments, biochemical assays, and computational modeling studies that identified ZNG1 as a zinc chaperone protein.
Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Most people don’t think much about zinc. But all living things need zinc for survival. This trace element helps many proteins fold into the right shapes to do their jobs. And in proteins known as enzymes, zinc helps catalyze chemical reactions—including many important for providing energy to cells. If zinc is absent, people, pets, and plants don’t thrive.

That’s one reason biologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are so interested in this element.

“We're looking for ways to grow bioenergy plants—either plants that produce biofuels or whose biomass can be converted into fuel—and doing it on land that is not suitable for growing food crops,” said Brookhaven Lab biologist Crysten Blaby, who also holds an adjunct appointment at Stony Brook University. “So, we’re interested in strategies nature uses to survive when zinc and other micronutrients are lacking.”

In a paper just published in the journal Cell Reports, Blaby and her colleagues describe one such strategy: a so-called “chaperone” protein that delivers zinc to where it’s needed, which could be especially important when access to zinc is limited. Though scientists, including Blaby, have long suspected the existence of a zinc chaperone, the new research provides the first definitive evidence by identifying a “destination” for its deliveries.

A new mathematical model of cellular movement

A new mathematical model describes how cells change their shape during movement and suggests that the movement is mainly driven by the contraction of the skeletal proteins, called “myosin.” The image shows the shape of cells at various speeds as predicted by the model. Non-moving cells are circular but become asymmetric as they begin to move. The colors indicate the concentration of myosin in the cell with red indicating a higher concentration.
Credit: C. Alex Safsten, Penn State

A mathematical model that describes how cells change their shape during movement suggests that the movement is mainly driven by the contraction of the skeletal proteins, called “myosin.” The new model developed at Penn State can help researchers to better understand the various biological processes where cellular movement plays a key role and also could inform the development of artificial systems that mimic biological processes.

“The focus of this work is on the development of minimal mathematical models that are simple enough to be amenable to rigorous analysis but still capture key biological phenomena,” said Leonid Berlyand, professor of mathematics at Penn State and the leader of this research team. “The point of our model is to capture the onset of cell motion driven by myosin contraction with focus on analyzing the stability of this motion observed in experiments.”

For large bone injuries, it’s Sonic hedgehog to the rescue

After surgical rib resection (top), a cartilage and bone bridge form (second from top) and then resolve (third from top) and remodel to regenerate the missing tissue in the gap (bottom). Blue shows cartilage matrix; red shows mineralized matrix.
Images by Stephanie Kuwahara and Max Serowoky/ Mariani Lab

A USC Stem Cell study in NPJ Regenerative Medicine presents intriguing evidence that large bone injuries might trigger a repair strategy in adults that recapitulates elements of skeletal formation in utero. Key to this repair strategy is a gene with a fittingly heroic name: Sonic hedgehog.

In the study, first author Maxwell Serowoky, a PhD student in the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Francesca Mariani, and his colleagues took a close look at how mice are able to regrow large sections of missing rib—an ability they share with humans, and one of the most impressive examples of bone regeneration in mammals.

To their surprise, the scientists observed an increase in the activity of Sonic hedgehog (Shh), which plays an important role in skeletal formation in embryos, but hasn’t previously been linked to injury repair in adults.

In their experiments, Shh appeared to play a necessary role in healing the central region of large sections of missing ribs, but not in closing small-scale fractures.

New Approach Allows for Faster Ransomware Detection

Photo credit: Michael Geiger

Engineering researchers have developed a new approach for implementing ransomware detection techniques, allowing them to detect a broad range of ransomware far more quickly than previous systems.

Ransomware is a type of malware. When a system is infiltrated by ransomware, the ransomware encrypts that system’s data – making the data inaccessible to users. The people responsible for the ransomware then extort the affected system’s operators, demanding money from the users in exchange for granting them access to their own data.

Ransomware extortion is hugely expensive, and instances of ransomware extortion are on the rise. The FBI reports receiving 3,729 ransomware complaints in 2021, with costs of more than $49 million. What’s more, 649 of those complaints were from organizations classified as critical infrastructure.

Extraterrestrial stone brings first supernova clues to Earth

A 3-gram sample of the Hypatia stone. Researchers found a consistent pattern of 15 elements in the Hypatia stone. The pattern is completely unlike anything in our solar system or our solar neighborhood, in the Milky Way.
Credit: Romano Serra 

New chemistry ‘forensics’ indicate that the stone named Hypatia from the Egyptian desert could be the first tangible evidence found on Earth of a supernova type Ia explosion. These rare supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the universe.

This is the conclusion from a new study published in the journal Icarus, by Jan Kramers, Georgy Belyanin and Hartmut Winkler of the University of Johannesburg, and others.

Since 2013, Belyanin and Kramers have discovered a series of highly unusual chemistry clues in a small fragment of the Hypatia Stone.

In new research, they eliminated 'cosmic suspects' for the origin of the stone in a painstaking process. They have pieced together a timeline stretching back to the early stages of the formation of Earth, our Sun and the other planets in our solar system.

Cutting air pollution emissions would save 50,000 U.S. lives, $600 billion each year

Image by Ralf Vetterle from Pixabay

Eliminating air pollution emissions from energy-related activities in the United States would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths each year and provide more than $600 billion in benefits each year from avoided illness and death, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers.

Published today in the journal GeoHealth, the study reports the health benefits of removing dangerous fine particulates released into the air by electricity generation, transportation, industrial activities and building functions like heating and cooking — also major sources of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, since they predominantly rely on burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.

“Our work provides a sense of the scale of the air quality health benefits that could accompany deep decarbonization of the U.S. energy system,” says Nick Mailloux, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in UW–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefit for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term.”

Validation brings new predictive capability to global megafire smoke impacts

Recent megafires in Australia and British Columbia have injected unprecedented amounts of smoke into the stratosphere. Modeling led by Los Alamos National Laboratory will help predict the effects of similar future events.
Credit: David Peterson, FIREX-AQ

New research modeling smoke from two recent megafires sets the stage for better forecasting of how emissions from these global-scale events will behave and impact temperatures. As huge wildfires become more common under climate change, increased attention has focused on the intensity and duration of their emissions, which rival those of some volcano eruptions.

Megafires in British Columbia in 2017 and Australia in 2019-2020 injected massive amounts of smoke into the stratosphere, allowing first-ever detailed satellite- and ground-based measurements of such cataclysms. Using that data for validation, a Los Alamos National Laboratory–led team modeled the behavior and impacts of the smoke as it rose from the lower atmosphere into the high-riding stratosphere, then circulated the globe. The research appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.