Ageing could be reversed by tweaking genes suggests study

Prof Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba led the study about the role glycine in ageing(Tsukuba University)

The process of ageing could possibly be reversed by regulating two genes, claims a Japanese study that suggests glycine, the simplest amino acid, could hold the key.

Led by Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba, scientists have shown reversal of age-related respiratory function by tweaking two genes involved with the production of glycine.

The Tsukuba team's earlier research has led them to propose that age-associated mitochondrial defects are not controlled by the accumulation of mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (as believed popularly) but by another form of genetic regulation.

The team had found that there was no difference in DNA damage in human fibroblast cells derived from young and old people.

This suggested another form of genetic regulation, epigenetic regulation, may be responsible for the age-associated effects seen in the mitochondria and not mutations.

Epigenetic regulation refers to changes in the expression of genes by turning them on or off.

Unlike mutations, these do not affect the DNA sequence itself but only how it is read.

To test the theory, the team reprogrammed the fibroblast lines from the young and elderly groups to take them back to the embryonic stem cell state and then allowed them to grow back.

On examining the cell lines, they found respiration rates comparable in both groups, implying the function was controlled by gene expression.

The search for the genes responsible landed them with CGAT and SHMT2, two genes that regulate glycine production in mitochondria.

This was further confirmed when glycine was added to the culture media of a 97-year-old fibroblast cell line and its respiratory function was restored.

The next step would be to see if glycine and the two genes can be regulated to reverse the ageing process per se.

Walmart settles with 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan over deadly truck accident

Tracy Morgan was seriously injured in the crash on the New Jersey Turnpike.REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Retail giant Walmart has reached a financial settlement with comedian Tracy Morgan and two others seriously injured in a deadly crash last year involving a company truck.

Comedian James McNair and Morgan, 46, were returning in a limousine with two others from a performance in June 2014 in Delaware when they were rear-ended by a Walmart tractor-trailer travelling 20mph over the speed limit on the New Jersey turnpike.

The six-car collision killed McNair. Morgan, former star of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, suffered a serious brain injury and broken bones. He spent months in hospital and rehabilitation.

Comedian Ardley Fuqua and Morgan's personal assistant Jeffrey Millea were also injured in the crash and were part of the lawsuit settlement. The company had settled earlier with McNair's family, reports CNN.

"Our thoughts continue to go out to everyone that was involved in the accident," said a statement from Greg Foran, Walmart US president and chief executive. "While we know there is nothing that can change what happened, Walmart has been committed to doing what's right to help ensure the well-being of all of those who were impacted by the accident. We are pleased to have reached an amicable settlement that ends this litigation. We are deeply sorry that one of our trucks was involved."

Morgan said: "Walmart did right by me and my family, and for my associates and their families. I am grateful that the case was resolved amicably."

Pentagon accidentally ships live anthrax to South Korea and 9 states

A biological technician wearing a protective suit stands next to a decontamination tent covering Smailholm village hall in southern Scotland in 2007. The technician is part of a team that decontaminated the village hall which was the scene of an Anthrax outbreak in July 2006 and which resulted in the death of a local man(Reuters)

The Pentagon accidentally shipped samples of live anthrax to laboratories in South Korea — and nine states.

There's no known danger to the general public, and so far there have been no cases of suspected anthrax among lab workers, authorities said.

Anthrax is an infectious bacterial disease spread by contact with infected animals(Reuters)

The US Department of Defence is investigating the disturbing mishap along with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports ABC News.

The Pentagon lab had intended to send dead anthrax or inactivated anthrax spores as part of an operation on how to develop field tests to identify biological threats in the environment. All anthrax shipments have now been suspended.

The samples originated at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and were sent to a military laboratory in Maryland.

From there they were shipped via a commercial shipper to eight companies with laboratories in California, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.

The Maryland private lab was the first to detect that the samples were live, and immediately contacted the CDC.

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects mostly animals. There are effective vaccines against anthrax and some forms of the disease respond to antibiotics.

Traditional Chinese medicine 'thunder god vine' causes massive weight loss in obese mice

Compound found in thunder god vine led to significant weight loss in obese mice(Eric Smith)

An extract from a plant commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine has been found to have a huge weight loss effect on obese mice.

Thunder god vine – or Tripterygium wilfordii – is used in traditional medicine as a treatment for fever, chills and edema. More recently, scientists have been investigating its potential as a treatment for disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, pancreatic cancer and a number of skin disorders.

It is also being looked at as a potential basis for a male oral contraceptive because of its apparent effects on fertility.

However, scientists at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School have now found it may be an effective treatment for obesity. The study, published in the journal Cell, found that an extract in thunder god vine called Celastrol enhances the action of leptin, an appetite suppressing hormone.

Leptin signals to the brain when the body has had enough fuel. Humans and mice that lack this hormone eat too much and become morbidly obese. In these individuals, leptin does not reduce hunger or food intake, suggesting insensitivity to the hormone could be the key cause of obesity.

Umut Ozcan, senior author of the study, said that over the past 20 years, there has been a huge effort to treat obesity by breaking down leptin resistance – but as of yet to no avail.

The plant has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for many years(Qwert1234)

Several years ago, Ozcan discovered that leptin resistance is associated with a stress response in the cell structure endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In the latest study, the researchers screened the whole-genome gene expression from human cells and found Celastrol was the most effective at producing an expression profile associated with leptin sensitivity and improved ER function.

After just a week of being treated with Celastrol, obese mice had reduced their food intake by 80% compared with a control group. After three weeks, they had lost 45% of their body weight almost exclusively by burning fat stores – results better than bariatric surgery.

It also led to decreased cholesterol levels, improved liver function and glucose metabolism.

However, the authors warned people should not start using thunder god vine as an obesity treatment – toxicology studies and clinical trials must be carried out to show it is safe for humans, they said.

Ozcan said: "Celastrol is found in the roots of the thunder god vine in small amounts, but the plant's roots and flowers have many other compounds. As a result, it could be dangerous for humans to consume thunder god vine extracts to lose weight.

"[But] the message from this study is that there is still hope for making leptin work, and there is still hope for treating obesity. If Celastrol works in humans as it does in mice, it could be a powerful way to treat obesity and improve the health of many patients suffering from obesity and associated complications, such as heart disease, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes."

Alzheimer's a fallout of increased intelligence as human brain evolved

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia, affecting almost 500,000 people in the UKREUTERS

Increasing intelligence conferred on the evolving human brain caused it to struggle with the related metabolic demands, leading to memory disorder.

Alzheimer's disease evolved alongside human intelligence, researchers conclude in a paper posted in May on BioRxi, based on a study of six key genes involved in brain development.

The study found that natural selection drove changes in the six genes which probably helped to increase the connectivity of neurons, making modern humans smarter than hominin ancestors.

But the increased intellectual capacity came at a cost as the same genes are implicated in Alzheimer's disease, reports Nature.

Kun Tang, a population geneticist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences in China, who led the research, searched modern human DNA for evidence of this ancient evolution.

They examined the genomes of 90 people with African, Asian or European ancestry, looking for patterns of variation driven by changes in population size and natural selection.

In a control process that was able to separate the two closely resembling effects, they could choose the DNA bits shaped by selection.

Looking back up to 500,000 years ago, from the dawn of modern humans around 200,000 years ago, they arrived at their conclusion.

Most previous methods have only been able to trace back to 30,000 years.

While further studies will confirm the finding, the genetic variation in Asians and Europeans was erased following the migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago. In comparison, the genomes of African people allow researchers to look much further back in time.

Humans are the only species known to develop Alzheimer's and the disease is absent even in closely related chimpanzees.

A neurodegenerative disease with progressive brain cell death, Alzheimer's results in brain size shrinking with time and having progressively fewer nerve cells and connections.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia, affecting almost 500,000 people in the UK.

Simple and cheap way of making valuable drug compounds discovered by Scripps

Scripps Research Institute Professor Phil Baran (right) and Research Associate Jinghan Gui are among the authors of the new study to synthesise valuable drug compounds.Scripps

In a simple, inexpensive method of mixing two compounds and adding a catalyst, chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have synthesised valuable molecules used in drug production.

The team used the reaction to synthesise more than 100 different amines, many of which are valuable drug compounds.

The reaction has already been picked up by industry.

The procedure requires a little more than the mixing of two abundant compounds, a nitroarene and an olefin, with an iron catalyst.

"It's as if we're taking dirt, and then adding a bit of rust, and putting it all in a blender and ending up with gold -- except that the amines we can make with this new method are often worth much more than their weight in gold," said Phil S Baran, the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry at TSRI who led the new study.

The findings are published in the 22 May, 2015 issue of the journal Science.

Amines are related to ammonia (NH3), but are much more complex. Amines with resistance to breakdown by enzymes in the body are especially tough to make.

Working with different nitroarenes and olefins, the team found the reaction worked smoothly under unusually mild conditions to generate a great variety of complex amine compounds.

"Some of the compounds we made contain sensitive functional groups that can't survive conventional amine synthesis reactions," said Jinghan Gui, a research associate in the Baran laboratory who was first author of the paper.

The main ingredients used, nitroarenes and olefins are cheap, abundantly available feedstock chemicals.

"Yet when they are merged together in this unique way, they turn out to make compounds that would be extraordinarily difficult to make in any other way," noted Baran.

Much of this work was conducted by chemists at Bristol-Myers Squibb, which has ongoing research collaboration with TSRI, and at the New Jersey-based contract research organisation Kemxtree.

"This reaction is conceptually novel, yet simple and practical to carry out -- just in the past two months we've used it for dozens of decagram-scale reactions in our lab," said Kemxtree chemist Swaminathan R Natarajan.

"While testing this new methodology, we were able to rapidly access targeted intermediate compounds for which other standard methods of preparation had failed," said Bristol-Myers Squibb discovery chemist Bill Pitts.

If you are easily distracted you might be a creative genius according to new research

What's that brain up to?(CC)

Contrary to a widely accepted perception, the most creative people are not necessarily able to block out distractions to follow their vision. In fact, researchers are finding that the focus of creative geniuses can be easily broken by distractions.

Such people tend to have "leaky" sensory filters and have a hard time blocking out the sound and sights of daily life, according to new research out of Northwestern University. In the study, people were subjected repeatedly to clicking sounds.

Those subjects who scored highest on "divergent thinking" — who can multitask on thinking chores — tended to be rattled by the first distraction, then settled down.

Those with real-world creative achievements, however, tended to pay as much attention to subsequent clicks as the first ones. That's no doubt annoying, but it may be just the thing that makes them gifted achievers, reports the Telegraph.

The study suggests that creative people with "leaky" sensory gating may have a propensity to deploy attention over a wider focus or a larger range of stimuli.

"If funnelled in the right direction, these sensitivities can make life more rich and meaningful, giving experiences more subtlety," said the lead author of the study, Darya Zabelina. "It's a double-edged sword. It might be the precise mechanism that helps people to come up with novel, interesting ideas."