Category Health/Medical

Highlights •Lack of neuronal IFN-β-IFNAR signaling causes brain Lewy body accumulation •IFN-β deficiency causes late-stage autophagy block and thereby α-synuclein aggregation •IFN-β promotes neuronal autophagy and α-synuclein clearance •Ifnb gene therapy prevents dopaminergic neuron loss in a familial PD model

Non-inheritable PD may be caused by functional changes in the immune regulating gene Interferon-beta. Treatment with Interferon-beta-gene therapy successfully prevented neuronal death and disease effects in an experimental model of PD.

7-10 million people worldwide are living with PD. More than half of PD patients develop progressive disease showing signs of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s disease...

This is a photo of nano-diamonds using an optical microscope. The purpose is to characterize the size of nano-diamonds. Credit: Photo by Ewa Rej, the University of Sydney

They reveal how a nanoscale, synthetic version of the precious gem can light up early-stage cancers in non-toxic, non-invasive MRI scans. “We knew nano diamonds were of interest for delivering drugs during chemotherapy because they are largely non-toxic and non-reactive,” says Professor Reilly.

“We thought we could build on these non-toxic properties realising that diamonds have magnetic characteristics enabling them to act as beacons in MRIs. We effectively turned a pharmaceutical problem into a physics problem.”

Professor Reilly’s team turned its attention to hyperpolarising nano-diamonds, a process of aligning atoms in...

This new technology used both a heating and then a cooling process to operate the robotic finger. Results from the study showed a more rapid flexing and extending motion of the finger as well as its ability to recover its trained shape more accurately and more completely, confirming the biomechanical basis of its trained shape. Credit: Florida Atlantic University

This robotic finger could be adapted for a prosthetic device, such as on a prosthetic hand. It uses a shape memory alloy, a 3D CAD model of a human finger, a 3D printer and a unique thermal training technique. “We have been able to thermomechanically train our robotic finger to mimic the motions of a human finger like flexion and extension,” said Engeberg...

A putative model attempting to depict different levels of genomic organization that may be associated with specific acquired spermatozoal defects. The sperm nucleus is broken down sequentially until the raw DNA. In human spermatozoa it is proposed that up to 15% of histone complexed DNA may remain after spermiogenesis while the remainder is all protamine complexed. For further information see Ward and Coffey (1991).

A dad’s food intake, drugs, exposure to toxic products and even stress can affect the development and health not only of his unborn children, but even of his grandchildren. They have discovered histones may play a crucial role in the process.

In the past, most epigenetics has focused on a process involving DNA and methyl groups that turn up or down the expression of specific ge...