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    Category Biology/Biotechnology

    Probiotic company finds Links between Youthful Gut Microbiota and Potential Centenarians

    April 13, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Probiotic company finds links between youthful gut microbiota and potential centenarians
    Comparisons of microbial compositions between baseline and follow-up. (a) aPCoA of the Bray‒Curtis distance plot for baseline and follow-up after adjusting for hypertension, medication use, and alcohol and tea drinking. (b) α-Diversity differences between baseline and follow-up for stratified health statuses (HB, n = 21; HF, n = 15; LHB, n = 19; LHF, n = 27). (c) Composition of the gut microbiome at the phylum level between baseline and follow-up for stratified health statuses. (d) LEfSe between baseline and follow-up stratified by health status (two-sided Kruskal‒Wallis test between classes; P < 0.05, LDA > 2). Healthy baseline (HB, n = 21), healthy follow-up (HF, n = 15), less healthy baseline (LHB, n = 19) and less healthy follow-up (LHF, n = 27) samples were examined...
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    Novel Immunotherapy Agent Safe, shows promise against High-risk Prostate Cancers

    April 12, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Shenderov
    Prostate cancer nodule with dramatized anti-B7-H3 antibody therapy Credit: Adobe stock per investigator

    A new drug, a monoclonal antibody known as enoblituzumab, is safe in men with aggressive prostate cancer and may induce clinical activity against cancer throughout the body, according to a phase 2 study led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. If confirmed in additional studies, enoblituzumab could become the first promising antibody-based immunotherapy agent against prostate cancer.

    In a clinical trial, 32 men with high-risk or very high-risk prostate cancers who were scheduled for prostate cancer surgery were treated with six weekly infusions of enoblituzumab prior to surgery, and were followed fo...

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    AlphaFault: High schoolers give Fabled AI a Problem it Can’t Crack

    April 11, 2023, Categories  Physics, Biology/Biotechnology

    Poster of the project Playing With AlphaFold2 at the School of Molecular and Theoretical Biology held by Skoltech online in 2021. Credit: Dmitry Ivankov/Skoltech

    A bioinformatics boot camp for high schoolers at Skoltech turned into a venue for the latest chapter in the ongoing contest between humans and artificial intelligence in science. Having earlier resolved a key 50-year-old problem of structural bioinformatics, the breakthrough AI program AlphaFold proved inapplicable to another challenge researchers in this field are faced with.

    This finding is reported in a PLOS ONE study, whose authors refute the claims by some AlphaFold enthusiasts that DeepMind’s AI has mastered the ultimate protein physics and is the be-all and end-all of structural bioinformatics.

    Structural bioinfor...

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    Study shows how to Prevent a High-fat Diet from throwing Metabolism out of whack

    April 10, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Study shows how to prevent a high-fat diet from throwing metabolism out of whack
    SAPS3 brings the PP6 catalytic subunit to dephosphorylate AMPK. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36809-1

    Eating lots of fats increases the risk of metabolic disorders, but the mechanisms behind the problem have not been well understood. Now, University of California, Irvine biologists have made a key finding about how to ward off harmful effects caused by a high-fat diet. Their study appears in Nature Communications.

    The UC Irvine research centered on a protein complex called AMPK, which senses the body’s nutrition and takes action to keep it balanced. For example, if AMPK detects that glucose is low, it can boost lipid breakdown to produce energy in its place...

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