How a Small Protein Plays a Large Role in Mitochondrial Function

Rebecca Voorhees
Credit: Caltech

Caltech researchers have discovered an unexpected role for a protein in human cells, solving a longstanding mystery about how the composition of mitochondrial membranes is regulated.

Multiple studies have previously shown that mutations in the protein MTCH2 are associated with a wide range of disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and leukemia, but it has been unclear what exactly MTCH2 was doing to have such a major effect on the cell's function. This new work shows that MTCH2 is critical for the construction of a cell's mitochondria, specifically for carefully inserting proteins into the mitochondrial outer membrane.

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Rebecca Voorhees, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, and was a close collaboration with the laboratory of Jonathan Weissman at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. A paper describing the study appears in the journal Science on October 21.

Wildfires drive L.A.’s mountain lions to take deadly risks

  A National Park Service researcher displays the scorched paws of the adult male mountain lion known as P-64. While an NPS tracking collar showed that P-64 survived the Woolsey Fire, he died several weeks later of starvation.
Credit: Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

When the Woolsey Fire roared through the Santa Monica Mountains in fall 2018, it torched half of the available habitat for the area’s mountain lions — a population already hemmed in by freeways and an ocean.

Most survived the blaze, but in a study published today in Current Biology, scientists from UCLA and the National Park Service found that the animals, no longer able to utilize burned areas, engaged in risky behaviors that increased the likelihood of dangerous encounters with human-built infrastructure and rival mountain lions.

Conflicts with other cougars, particularly males, can be deadly, said lead study author Rachel Blakey, a researcher with UCLA’s La Kretz Center for California Conservation Biology. So can crossing busy roads and freeways, something the researchers found occurred with greater frequency in the 15 months after the fire, jumping from about three crossings a month to five.

“The mountain lions we live alongside in L.A. are already taking their chances with roads and other mountain lions,” Blakey said. “The Woolsey Fire, by further limiting the space they have, really intensified those risks.”

A 10,000-Year-Old Infant Burial Provides Insights Into the Use of Baby Carriers and Family Heirlooms in Prehistory

 Team of researchers including Claudine Gravel-Miguel from Arizona State University, Jamie Hodgkins from the University of Colorado Denver work at the excavation of Arma Veirana.
Credit: University of Colorado Denver

If you’ve taken care of an infant, you know how important it is to find ways to multitask. And, when time is short and your to-do list is long, humans find ways to be resourceful—something caregivers have apparently been doing for a very, very long time.

The authors of a new article published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory argue that they have found evidence of the use of baby carriers 10,000 years ago at the Arma Veirana site in Liguria, Italy. The research, led by Arizona State University’s Claudine Gravel-Miguel, PhD, also includes the University of Colorado Denver’s Jamie Hodgkins, PhD, an Associate Professor of Anthropology, and a co-principal investigator on the excavation of Arma Veirana.

Because material used to make the first baby carriers is not preserved well in the archaeological record and because prehistoric baby burials are very uncommon, evidence for prehistoric baby carriers is extremely rare. The site—which includes the oldest documented burial of a female infant in Europe, a 40- to 50-days-old baby, nicknamed Neve—has both. Researchers used innovative analytical methods to extract hard-to-obtain information about perforated shell beads found at the site.

Reprogrammable materials selectively self-assemble

With just a random disturbance that energizes the cubes, they selectively self-assemble into a larger block. 

Credit: MIT CSAIL

While automated manufacturing is ubiquitous today, it was once a nascent field birthed by inventors such as Oliver Evans, who is credited with creating the first fully automated industrial process, in flour mill he built and gradually automated in the late 1700s. The processes for creating automated structures or machines are still very top-down, requiring humans, factories, or robots to do the assembling and making.

However, the way nature does assembly is ubiquitously bottom-up; animals and plants are self-assembled at a cellular level, relying on proteins to self-fold into target geometries that encode all the different functions that keep us ticking. For a more bio-inspired, bottom-up approach to assembly, then, human-architected materials need to do better on their own. Making them scalable, selective, and reprogrammable in a way that could mimic nature’s versatility means some teething problems, though.

Now, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have attempted to get over these growing pains with a new method: introducing magnetically reprogrammable materials that they coat different parts with — like robotic cubes — to let them self-assemble. Key to their process is a way to make these magnetic programs highly selective about what they connect with, enabling robust self-assembly into specific shapes and chosen configurations.

Genes that influence dyslexia

A large-scale gene study identifies series of DNA variants linked to dyslexia

An international team of scientists, including researchers at the University of Edinburgh and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (Netherlands), has for the first time pinpointed a large number of genes that are reliably associated with dyslexia. Around a third of the 42 genetic variants identified have been previously linked to general cognitive abilities and educational attainment. The researchers say their findings may aid our understanding of the biology behind why some children struggle to read or spell.

Dyslexia is known to run in families – partly because of genetic factors – but, until now, little was known about the identities of the genes involved. The new study, led by the University of Edinburgh and published in the journal Nature Genetics, represents the largest molecular genetic investigation of dyslexia to date. Previous studies linking dyslexia to individual genes have been carried out with much smaller numbers of families and the evidence was unclear, the research team says.

The team analyzed DNA from more than 50,000 adults who have been diagnosed with dyslexia and more than one million adults who have not, identified via collaboration with the US company, 23andMe, Inc. “Over several decades of earlier research, more limited genetic investigations of dyslexia gave us tantalizing first clues to how DNA may be involved.” notes Simon Fisher, director of the Language and Genetics department at the Max Planck Institute. “Now, largescale genomic studies of this kind promise to transform understanding of how our genes help us learn to read and write.”

Alligators Exposed to PFAS Show Autoimmune Effects

Photo Credit: Jack Kelly

A recent study of alligators in the Cape Fear River found the animals had elevated levels of 14 different per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemicals in their blood serum, as well as clinical and genetic indicators of immune system effects. The work adds to the body of evidence connecting PFAS exposure with adverse immune system effects.

The research team, led by Scott Belcher, associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University, took blood samples and did health evaluations on 49 alligators living along the Cape Fear River between 2018 and 2019. They compared these results to a reference population of 26 alligators from Lake Waccamaw, located in the adjoining Lumber River basin.

“We looked at 23 different PFAS and saw clear differences between both types and levels of PFAS in the two populations,” Belcher says. “We detected an average of 10 different PFAS in the Cape Fear River samples, compared to an average of five different PFAS in the Lake Waccamaw population.

“Additionally, blood concentrations of fluoroethers such as Nafion byproduct 2 were present at higher concentrations in alligators from the Cape Fear River basin, whereas these levels were much lower – or not detected – in alligators from Lake Waccamaw. Our data showed that as we moved downstream from Wilmington to Bald Head Island, overall PFAS concentrations decreased.”

A pandemic ‘baby bump’ is happening in the U.S.

The birth rate increase in 2021 was driven largely by women having their first births and women with a college education who may have been more likely to benefit from working from home.
Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures

Do you have a friend, coworker or family member who recently welcomed a new baby? If so, they’re part of a nationwide trend. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has experienced a subtle “baby bump,” according to a new paper published in the journal National Bureau of Economic Research; co-authored by Northwestern University economist Hannes Schwandt.

Schwandt and his coauthors — Martha Bailey of UCLA and Janet Currie of Princeton University — recently analyzed demographic data covering all U.S. births from 2015 through 2021 and all births in California from 2015 through August 2022. They found that birthrates in the U.S. declined slightly as lockdowns began in early 2020, but rose again in 2021 to create a net increase of 46,000 births above the pre-pandemic trend across the two years combined.

The decrease when lockdowns began in 2020 — nine months too early to represent a fertility response to the pandemic — were mostly due to fewer foreign-born women entering the United States as immigrants and having children here, according to the study.

Our brains use quantum computation

Scientists from Trinity believe our brains could use quantum computation after adapting an idea developed to prove the existence of quantum gravity to explore the human brain and its workings. The discovery may shed light on consciousness, the workings of which remain scientifically difficult to understand and explain. Quantum brain processes could also explain why we can still outperform supercomputers when it comes to unforeseen circumstances, decision making, or learning something new

Scientists from Trinity believe our brains could use quantum computation after adapting an idea developed to prove the existence of quantum gravity to explore the human brain and its workings.

The brain functions measured were also correlated to short-term memory performance and conscious awareness, suggesting quantum processes are also part of cognitive and conscious brain functions.

If the team’s results can be confirmed – likely requiring advanced multidisciplinary approaches –they would enhance our general understanding of how the brain works and potentially how it can be maintained or even healed. They may also help find innovative technologies and build even more advanced quantum computers.

New Chemosensors Can Detect Heavy Metals in the Body and Environment

According to Grigory Zyryanov, industrial partners, including foreign ones, are interested in the developments.
Photo credit: Anna Marinovich

Ural scientists are developing chemosensors for the diagnosis and therapy of various diseases. These are compounds that change their luminescent properties upon external exposure or contact with organic cells. They can be used to find and suppress cancer cells, diagnose cardiovascular diseases, and determine the level of sugar or drugs in the blood. One of the new developments of scientists from the UrFU is chemosensors for controlling the content of metals in the blood, since an overdose of metals can be dangerous for the body. Grigory Zyryanov, professor at the Department of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry at Ural Federal University, spoke about this on the air of Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

"One of our activities is the creation of chemosensors for the detection of zinc cations in biological fluids, including blood. Zinc is involved in many physiological processes in the body; it is necessary for normal growth and stabilization of cell membranes. In some cases, such as colds, taking zinc supplements can help boost the body's immune response and speed recovery. However, it is necessary to control zinc levels, since zinc overdose is toxic for the body," explains Grigory Zyryanov.

Thinnest ferroelectric material ever paves the way for new energy-efficient devices

A representation of a two-dimensional ferroelectric material.
Image credit: UC Berkeley/Suraj Cheema.

As electronic devices become smaller and smaller, the materials that power them need to become thinner and thinner. Because of this, one of the key challenges scientists face in developing next-generation energy-efficient electronics is discovering materials that can maintain special electronic properties at an ultrathin size.

Advanced materials known as ferroelectrics present a promising solution to help lower the power consumed by the ultrasmall electronic devices found in cell phones and computers. Ferroelectrics — the electrical analog to ferromagnets — are a class of materials in which some of the atoms are arranged off-center, leading to a spontaneous internal electric charge or polarization. This internal polarization can reverse its direction when scientists expose the material to an external voltage. This offers great promise for ultralow-power microelectronics.

Unfortunately, conventional ferroelectric materials lose their internal polarization below around a few nanometers in thickness. This means they are not compatible with current-day silicon technology. This issue has previously prevented the integration of ferroelectrics into microelectronics.

But now a team of researchers from the University of California at Berkeley performing experiments at the U.S.