Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

'The predictions from the hydrophobicity hypothesis largely hold true. Genes encoding hydrophobic proteins are constrained to be expressed in mitochondria unless hydrophobicity is naturally or artificially reduced. The hydrophobicity hypothesis fails to explain why relatively hydrophilic proteins are retained in mitogenomes.'

https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-024-01824-1

"The idea that misfolded beta-amyloid might be a prion-like disease has also been around for a long time, because it makes a lot of sense. Indeed, histopathology of patients who died from transmitted CJD has already shown (in several studies) the presence of aggregated beta-amyloid protein, with the implication that this could have been transmitted as well. There have been also reports for over ten years that injection of human Alzheimer's brain proteins into mice leads to AD-like pathology in mouse brains. In 2018, the same authors of this new paper showed that archived samples of toxic cadaveric growth hormone did indeed contain substantial amounts of soluble beta-amyloid, and that injected thse into mice caused such pathology as well. Putting these and other lines of evidence together, this newest paper fits a puzzle piece right where you'd expect one to go. It shows that some of the growth-hormone-treated patients did indeed go on to develop #Alzheimer's, as feared."

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/infectious-amyloid-infectious-alzheimer-s

"More than 207,000 cases were diagnosed in 2022, the last year for which data are available. That represents an 80 percent increase since 2018, and 17 percent over the previous year’s tally, according to a new C.D.C. report." #syphilis
#publichealth #infectiousdisease

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/health/syphilis-cdc.html?smid=threads-nytimes

"I’m excited to announce that we have now opened applications for the second round of Development’s Pathway to Indpendence Programme. This programme is aimed at supporting postdocs who will be going on the job market next year – providing mentorship, training and networking opportunities."

https://thenode.biologists.com/sharing-is-caring-developments-pathway-to-independence-programme/news/

'Miller’s attention turned toward investigating how best to mimic the apoptotic cells, overriding the expression of dendritic cells. He partnered with polymer chemist Lonnie D. Shea, PhD, who was at the McCormick School of Engineering, to develop a nanoparticle that interacts effectively with dendritic cells.'
#Immunology #autoimmunity #autoimmunedisease

https://www.genengnews.com/topics/drug-discovery/light-my-fire-cour-raises-105m-series-a-to-advance-tolerogenic-nanoparticles-for-autoimmunity/

'The flurry of retractions and corrections follows a major project in 2021 which found that researchers could reproduce results from only half of the top pre-clinical cancer studies they looked at. In many cases, when the experiments were repeated, any positive outcomes were far smaller than originally claimed. “Maybe part of that is because the work being done isn’t high quality,” David said. “It all eventually filters through to a lack of replicability.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/29/sholto-david-biologist-finds-flaws-in-scientific-papers

'The results indicate parallels between the evolution of Alzheimer’s and CJD, potentially boosting research into diagnostics and therapies to combat all forms of dementia.

The study examined eight people who had received the hormone as children but did not develop CJD. The scientists found that five of these patients showed symptoms consistent with early-onset Alzheimer’s.'

https://www.ft.com/content/745aa1e2-54fb-483b-9527-4c132f9a6aef

'I see reviewers regularly mistake complexity, difficulty, and technicality for novelty. In science reviewing, novelty seems to imply these things. We might be better served by removing the word "novelty" from the review instructions and replacing it with beauty.'

https://perceiving-systems.blog/en/news/novelty-in-science

'In 2012 researchers modeled the effects that the different atmospheres, pressures, and temperatures on Venus, Mars, and Saturn’s moon Titan would have on the human voice and other sounds. Setting aside the detail that on Venus a human being would be crushed and burned up almost instantaneously, the pitch of your voice would become much deeper as the vocal cords vibrated more slowly in the gassy soup of its atmosphere. However, because the speed of sound is much faster than it is on Earth, our brain would judge the speaker to be farther away. Humans on Venus, the researchers concluded, would sound like bass Smurfs.'

https://nautil.us/what-can-we-hear-in-space-498737/