Scientists discover ‘Toolkit’ to Fix DNA Breaks Associated with Aging, Cancer and Motor Neuron Disease

Experts discover toolkit to repair DNA breaks associated with aging, cancer and motor neuron disease
TEX264 acts at replication forks. Credit: Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15000-w

A new “toolkit” to repair damaged DNA that can lead to aging, cancer and motor neuron disease (MND) has been discovered by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that a protein called TEX264, together with other enzymes, is able to recognize and “eat” toxic proteins that can stick to DNA and cause it to become damaged. An accumulation of broken, damaged DNA can cause cellular aging, cancer and neurological diseases such as MND.

Until now, ways of repairing this sort of DNA damage have been poorly understood, but scientists hope to exploit this novel repair toolkit of proteins to protect us from aging, can...

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Introducing ‘UFO’ Galaxies—the Milky Way’s Dustier Cousins

Introducing 'UFO' galaxies—the Milky Way's dustier cousins
Images of the same regions of space as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This bright-red UFO galaxy, circled, was almost entirely invisible in the Hubble observations. Credit: Gibson et al, 2024, The Astrophysical Journal
Images of the same region of space as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This bright-red UFO galaxy, circled, was almost entirely invisible in the Hubble observations. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

In a new study, a team of astrophysicists led by CU Boulder has set out to unravel the mysteries of UFOs—not the alien spacecraft, but a class of unusually large and red galaxies that researchers have nicknamed Ultra-red Flattened Objects, or UFOs for short...

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Probiotic Delivers Anti-cancer Drug to the Gut

illustration of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Researchers at WashU Medicine shrink gastrointestinal tumors in mice using a yeast probiotic to deliver immunotherapy to the gut, offering a potentially novel strategy to target hard-to-reach gut cancers.

Oral immunotherapy shrinks gastrointestinal tumors in mouse study

Immunotherapy is a promising treatment that recruits the immune system to help fight cancer, but it has had limited success in gastrointestinal cancers. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have engineered a probiotic that delivers immunotherapy directly to the gut to shrink tumors in mice, offering a potentially promising oral drug for hard-to-reach cancers.

The probiotic cancer treatment, described Nov...

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Innovative Device could Power Electronics using Body Movements

Charge your phone just by moving your body
The new generator contains materials that are flexible, energy-efficient and relatively less expensive. Credit: University of Waterloo

A new technology that can generate electricity from vibrations or even small body movements means you could charge your laptop by typing or power your smartphone’s battery on your morning run.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a tiny, wearable generator in response to the urgent need for sustainable, clean energy. It is also scalable for larger machines. Their paper, “Breaking Dielectric Dilemma: Polymer Functionalized Perovskite Piezocomposite with Large Current Density Output,” is published in the November edition of Nature Communications.

“This is a real game changer,” said Dr...

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