Human sperm swim

Human sperm swim faster by flapping their tails on just one side and rotating around. Researchers used a high-speed 3D camera to capture the gamete’s 20–30 swimming strokes per second. What looks like boring side-to-side wiggling when observed in a dish is actually more of a precessing corkscrew motion. (Science | 2 min read) Reference: ScienceAdvances paper (Polymaths-lab.com)

Lab-grown mini brains

A test tube containing brain organoids. Photo: Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Johns Hopkins University

What Miniature Lab-Grown Brains Reveal About the Effects of Covid-19 Organoids are helping scientists study the coronavirus Emily Mullin8 min read

Heartbeat

Your Heartbeat Can Give Away Your Identity, Like a Fingerprint Our heartbeats differ just enough to tell us apart, but they also give away potentially sensitive information Nathaniel Scharping6 min read

Synthectic Biology

How synthetic biology could wipe out humanity -- and how we can stop it

Rob Reid

individual atoms

‘It opens up a whole new universe’: Revolutionary microscopy technique sees or first time

Cryo-electron microscopy breaks a key barrier that will allow the workings of proteins to be probed in unprecedented detail.

Ewen Callaway

A game-changing technique for imaging molecules known as cryo-electron microscopy has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, discerned individual atoms in a protein.

By achieving atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), researchers will be able to understand, in unprecedented detail, the workings of proteins that cannot easily be examined by other imaging techniques, such as X-ray crystallography.

The breakthrough, reported by two laboratories late last month, cements cryo-EM’s position as the dominant tool for mapping the 3D shapes of proteins, say scientists. Ultimately, these structures will help researchers to understand how proteins work in health and disease, and lead to better drugs with fewer side effects.

Buckminsterfullerenes

First animal 'buckyballs' discovered in 80-million-year-old sea lillies

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 19 hours ago

This odd shape was previously only seen in nature at the molecular scale

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Reconstruction of the Cretaceous marine animal Marsupites testudinarius.

(Image: © J. Hoyal Cuthill)

Weird, multisided geometric shapes called buckyballs have been discovered in an unexpected place: marine animals that lived 80 million years ago. 

Microscopic forms of buckyballs have been found in molecules within cosmic dust, in gases and in some types of rocks. But researchers were surprised to find them at a much larger scale in fossils of two species of Cretaceous crinoids, which are relatives of modern starfish and sea urchins. The plates on the crinoids' bodies created multifaceted, hollow structures that the scientists identified as buckyballs.

Their discovery is the first evidence that the bizarre buckyball shape occurs naturally at such a large scale, the scientists reported in a new study.

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Brain Death

Understanding Brain Death

Robert D. Truog, MD, MA^1,2; Erin Talati Paquette, MD, JD, MBe^3,4; Robert C. Tasker, MA, MD, MBBS, DCH^2,5

Author Affiliations Article Information

JAMA. Published online May 1, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.3593

The concept of brain death, or the determination of death by neurological criteria, was first proposed by a Harvard committee in the United States in 1968,¹ and then adopted into the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) in 1981.² Although the UDDA was widely accepted and endorsed by medical professional organizations, in recent years the concept has come under greater scrutiny and is increasingly the focus of legal challenges. Most urgent is that the current diagnostic standards do not satisfy the wording of the law. The UDDA defines brain death as the “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain.” Yet, it is now widely acknowledged that some patients who meet the current diagnostic standards may retain brain functions that are not included in the required tests, including hypothalamic functioning.³ Until the UDDA is revised to be more specific about which functions must be lost to satisfy the definition (such as, for example, consciousness and the capacity to breathe), current medical practice will not be in alignment with the legal standard.

Sushi

Parasitic worm populations are skyrocketing in some fish species used in sushi Mar 31 2020 6:00 AM Fishes worldwide harbor 283 times the number of Anisakis worms as fishes in the 1970s. Whether that's a sign of environmental decline or recovery is unclear. READ

sex chromosomes

The weird history of the "sex chromosomes"

13:34 minutes · TED@NAS

The common thinking on biological sex goes like this: females have two X chromosomes in their cells, while males have one X and one Y. In this myth-busting talk, science writer and podcaster Molly Webster shows why the so-called "sex chromosomes" are more complicated than this simple definition -- and reveals why we should think about them differently.

Watch now »

to hear proteins

Amino Acid Rock Music Helps Build New Proteins Some scientists teach computers to “see” proteins. Markus Buehler is teaching them to hear the compounds instead

By Ron Cowen

Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs)

Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) have moved to the forefront of translational medicine given their potential therapeutic applications. With evidence suggesting that MSCs exert their therapeutic impact through the release of extracellular vesicles such as microvesicles and exosomes, MSC-derived exosomes have received substantial interest for their potential use as cell-free therapeutics. In this new wallchart produced by Wiley's Current Protocols in partnership with STEMCELL Technologies, titled “Mesenchymal Stromal Cell-Derived Exosomes: Biogenesis and Cargoes”, we have summarized pathways and processes involved in exosome biogenesis and cargo type and effect. View Wallchart

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Coronavirus Structure

Coronavirus 'spike' protein just mapped, leading way to vaccine

By Yasemin Saplakoglu - Staff Writer 3 hours ago

The coronavirus uses this protein to invade human cells.

 
 
 
 
 

This is the 3D atomic scale map or molecular structure of the SARS-2-CoV protein "spike" which the virus uses to invade human cells.

(Image: © Jason McLellan/Univ. of Texas at Austin)

Researchers worldwide are racing to develop potential vaccines and drugs to fight the new coronavirus, called SARS-Cov-2.  Now, a group of researchers has figured out the molecular structure of a key protein that the coronavirus uses to invade human cells, potentially opening the door to the development of a vaccine, according to new findings.

Dopamine Fasting

Everyone is Wrong About Dopamine Fasting

Avoiding pleasurable activities to reset the brain’s ‘reward chemical’ sounds great. Too bad that’s not how…

Dana G Smith in Elemental4 min read

Cell Growth and Stress

Stanley Cohen, Nobelist, Dies at 97; Made Breakthrough on Cell Growth He shared the prize with Rita Levi-Montalcini for research that opened the door to a clearer understanding of dementia, cancer and other maladies. By Vicki Glaser

Bruce McEwen, 81, Is Dead; Found Stress Can Alter the Brain A neuroscientist, he showed how an unrelenting barrage of stress hormones can break down the body, leading to disease, depression, obesity and more. By Randi Hutter Epstein

Lichens

How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology Ed Yong, The Atlantic Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.