There are plenty of great scientific research stories out this week from a tool to delete gene products to the growth of whole muscles incorporated into a biohybrid robot. Here’s a look at just a few of them.
There are plenty of great scientific research stories out this week. Here’s a look at just a few of them.
New Research Tool to Delete Gene Products Could Lead to New Drugs
Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute published research in the Journal of the American Chemical Society describing a small-molecule-based tool that causes RNA to selectively delete specific gene products. “These studies, like much science, were about a decade in the making,” said chemist Matthew Disney, in a statement. “We are very excited to see how this initial application evolves. This research further shows that RNA is indeed a viable target to make medicines.”
The paper, titled, “Small Molecule Targeted Recruitment of a Nuclease to RNA,” indicates that, “The choreography between RNA synthesis and degradation is a key determinant in biology. Engineered systems such as CRISPR have been developed to rid a cell of RNAs. Here, we show that a small molecule can recruit a nuclease to a specific transcript, triggering its destruction.”
Japanese Scientists Develop Cyborgs Using Robots and Real Muscle
Scientists at The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science published work in the journal Science Robotics describing how they grew whole muscles from hydrogel sheets and incorporated the muscles into a biohybrid robot. The robot was then able to manipulate objects. Yeah, that’s not freaky at all.
The group first built a robot skeleton, which included a rotatable joint and anchors to attach the muscles to, and electrodes that would stimulate muscle contractions. “Once we had built the muscles, we successfully used them as antagonistic pairs in the robot, with one contracting and the other expanding, just like in the body,” Shoji Takeuchi, the study’s corresponding author, said in a statement. “The fact that they were exerting opposing forces on each other stopped them shrinking and deteriorating, like in previous studies.”
3 CRISPR Scientists Receive the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
Every other year the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Kavli Foundation awards researchers in the areas of Astrophysics, Neuroscience and Nanoscience. This year the award for nanoscience went to three CRISPR researchers, Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, and Virginijus Siksnys of Vilnius University in Lithuania. Charpentier and Doudna are widely accepted as the discovers of CRISPR, although there is some dispute over patents with Feng Zhang, a researcher at the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute, who filed the first patent for the technology. Siksnys did work on CRISPR separately. It was presented for publication to Cell before the publication of Doudna and Charpentier’s work, but published by PNAS a month after their research was published.
The winners of the Neuroscience award went to James Hudspeth of Rockefeller University, Robert Fettiplace of the University of Wisconsin, and Christine Petit of the College of France and the Pasteur Institute for their work on hearing. Ewine van Dishoeck of the University of Leiden won the Astrophysics award for her work on interstellar clouds.
Each category’s award is $1 million, which will be shared by the recipients in each category.
Researchers Identified Genetic Markers Associated with Cognition and Eyesight
Researchers with The University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology and a broad consortium of researchers worldwide published a massive study of 300,486 people to identify genetic loci that influence cognitive function in the journal Nature. The group utilized data from the UK Biobank and the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE), and the Cognitive Genomics Consortium (COGENT). There individuals studied were from 57 population-based cohorts ages 16 to 102, and were of European ancestry. A general phenotype for general cognitive function was applied and individuals were given a variety of tests and questionnaires.
The researchers identified 148 genome-wide significant loci for general cognitive function. Of them, 58 had been reported before. Another 42 were identified for reaction time, 40 of which had been previously reported. They also identified 291 gene-based associations for general cognitive function, 173 for reaction time, which had not been reported before. Some of the genes, such as GATAD2B and SLC39A1 have mutations linked to intellectual disability, and in the case of SLC39A1, has been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers Analyze Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico Fatalities, Find Multiple Higher Death Rates Than Official Numbers
Scientists affiliated with Harvard, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Carlos Albizu University and the Puerto Rico Science, Technology, and Research Trust, as well as the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and the University of Colorado School of Medicine published research in The New England Journal of Medicine evaluating the mortality rate in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The authors note that the “official” death count is 64. However, the researchers surveyed 3,299 randomly chosen households across Puerto Rico to develop an independent estimate of all-cause mortality after the hurricane. They were asked about displacement, infrastructure loss, and causes of death. They compared their post-hurricane mortality rate to official rates for the same period in 2016 to come up with their calculations.
Based on survey data, the researchers estimated a mortality rate of 14.3 deaths per 1,000 people from September 20 to December 31, 2018. That rate led to a total of 4,645 excess deaths during the period, which was equal to a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate compared to the same period the year before. The study states, “However, this number is likely to be an underestimate because of survivor bias. The mortality rate remained high through the end of December 2017, and one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care. Hurricane-related migration was substantial.”
