Investigating Bacteria ’ s CRISPR Defense System to Improve Human Health
Credit: Adrian Sanchez Gonzales.
The earliest Andrew Santiago-Frangos, Ph.D., remembers being interested in science was when he was about 8 years old. He was home sick and became engrossed in a children’s book that explained how some bacteria and viruses cause illness. To this day, his curiosity about bacteria persists, and he’s making discoveries about CRISPR—a system that helps bacteria defend against viruses—as a postdoctoral researcher and NIGMS-funded Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) scholar at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman.
Becoming a Biologist...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - May 31, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Cells Bacteria Cellular Processes COVID-19 DNA Profiles Source Type: blogs
siRNA as a COVID-19 Treatment
Researchers at UMass Chan Medical School have developed a small interfering RNA (siRNA) technology that is stable enough for inhalation into the lungs, where it can potentially treat diseases as diverse as asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, and viral infections such as COVID-19. siRNA is not typically stable enough to survive for long in the lungs, but the researchers chemically modified the constituent nucleotides to stabilize the molecules and help them to evade immune destruction. The technology is designed to silence genes that are crucial in disease processes. In a demonstration of the potential of the technique, the researc...
Source: Medgadget - May 30, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Genetics Medicine UMass UMassChan Source Type: blogs
Laser-Based Breath Analysis Detects COVID-19 Infection
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser-based breathalyzer technology that can detect molecules in breath samples that indicate the presence of specific diseases, such as COVID-19. The device is called a frequency comb breathalyzer, and using it involves pumping a breath sample into the device where lasers irradiate it at many different frequencies, and mirrors bounce the light around to ensure that the sample is thoroughly investigated. Based on how the molecules in the sample absorb the light, a machine learning algorithm an...
Source: Medgadget - May 22, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Public Health CUBoulder NIST Source Type: blogs
Machine Learning Aids Rapid Design of Protein Therapeutics
Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have created a machine learning approach to scan millions of protein fragments and assess their structure and binding properties. Based on the surface chemistry and geometry of a protein, the developed software can determine a ‘fingerprint’ for each protein and predict how they might bind to various protein fragments. The researchers have now used their approach to design new protein ‘binders’ that have been created specifically to bind to proteins of therapeutic interest, such as the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The technique could allow ...
Source: Medgadget - May 17, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine EPFL machine learning Source Type: blogs
Accelerating Personalized Health With Healthcare Digital Twins
The following is a guest article by Steve Lazer, Global Healthcare & Life Sciences CTO at Dell Technologies.
One rapidly advancing trend in healthcare and life sciences is the shift from inefficient, expensive physical models to digital models tested in the virtual world. This is especially critical when time to value and cost are of the essence, as in the case of a global pandemic. One way to address this challenge, is to create a digital replica of a physical system or environment, accumulate data with sensors and collectors to monitor performance, and identify anomalies and trends to predict problems before they oc...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 4, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Artificial Intelligence Dell Technologies Digital Twin Consortium Digital Twins Healthcare AI Healthcare Digital Twins Source Type: blogs
CRISPR Combined with Glowing Proteins for Viral Detection
Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed a sensitive diagnostic test for viral pathogens that is suitable for use in low-resource regions. The test is based on CRISPR proteins that can detect viral genetic material but also incorporates luciferase proteins, which are bioluminescent proteins that are naturally found in fireflies and other creatures. Two CRISPR/Cas proteins are specific for different parts of the viral genome, and when they both bind to target nucleic acid sequences they join together, uniting two fragments of luciferase and initiating a bioluminescent signal. The r...
Source: Medgadget - March 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Genetics Medicine Public Health CRISPR TUeindhoven Source Type: blogs
Banking the Unbanked: The Policies That Get In the Way
Walter OlsonI ’ve written two previous posts summarizing observations of consumer finance blogger Patrick McKenzie on, respectively, why laws against lying to banksare drawn to serve the interests of prosecutors and why the culture of regulatory complianceis ingratiating in a literally cringey way. I ’ll finish the series with a few excerpts from his posts on a theme familiar to Cato readers: why the oft ‐discussed predicament of the unbanked — persons, often living at social margins, who lack bank accounts — is to an important extent driven by government policies themselves.As one example ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 21, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Thoughts on Unexpected Sequences Found In COVID mRNA Vaccines
Writing this piece is not easy, not only because the topic matter is completely in controversies around SARS-CoV-2 and the vaccines for it, but because the data was generated by someone whose outspoken opinions on any COVID-19 public health topic are nearly always ones I find myself in opposition to. Someone who periodically lobs my way personal attacks on my ethics. It doesn't help that these results will be certainly misused to attempt to undermine public confidence in the vaccines, or that this post will probably attract a lot of commentary that I don't wish to address because of the adage that generating m...
Source: Omics! Omics! - March 21, 2023 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
A big data COVID train wreck
BY ANISH KOKA
If there was any doubt the academic research enterprise is completely broken, we have an absolute train wreck of a study in one of the many specialty journals of the Journal of the American Medical Association — JAMA Health.
I had no idea the journal even existed until today, but I now know to approach the words printed in this journal to the words printed in supermarket tabloids. You should too!
The paper that was brought to my attention is one that purports to examine the deleterious health effects of Long COVID. A sizable group of intellectuals who are still socially distancing and wearing n95s ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 13, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Anish Koka Covid research COVID-19 Long Covid Source Type: blogs
Anti-covid, antiviral ensitrelvir
TL:DR – An antiviral drug called ensitrelvir could cut the time a person tests positive when they have COVID-19 by about a day. There is a controversial suggestion that it might also reduce the risk of developing long-covid.
An antiviral drug developed by Shionogi in partnership with Hokkaido University is an orally active 3C-like protease inhibitor, which can shorten the time between first testing positive after infection with SARS-CoV-2 and getting a negative test. Early signs are that it may well reduce the risk of developing long-covid, although that data is yet to be peer reviewed. There are some scientists sce...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 10, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: COVID-19 Pharma Source Type: blogs
Myocarditis update from Sweden
BY ANISH KOKA
The COVID19/vaccine myocarditis debate continues in large part because our public health institutions are grossly mischaracterizing the risks and benefits of vaccines to young people.
A snapshot of what the establishment says as it relates to the particular area of concern: college vaccine mandates:
Dr. Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC-Berkeley, notes that UC also requires immunizations for measles and chickenpox, and people still are dying from COVID at rates that exceed those for influenza. As of Feb. 1, there were more than 400 COVID deaths a day across the U.S.
“The arg...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka covid19 myocarditis Sweden Source Type: blogs
Meet GINA, Global INitiative for Asthma
TL:DR – Thanks to GINA I have not needed to use salbutamol to treat my asthma for three years at the time of writing.
It’s three years since my asthma nurse introduced me to GINA, the Global INitiative for Asthma. It was a phone consultation because the then new virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes what became known as COVID-19, was beginning to spread. At the time, I was very worried that it would be a killer for me given my asthma. Eventually, medical science learned that people with asthma were not necessarily at any greater risk of morbidity and mortality.
Anyway, it was nice to meet GINA. GINA contradicts some ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - February 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Asthma Health and Medicine Pharma Source Type: blogs
Electrostatic Face Mask Self-Charges with Breathing
Researchers at City University of Hong Kong have developed an electrostatically charged face mask that can replenish its charge through the wearer’s breathing action. The electrostatic charge helps the mask to adsorb tiny particles, such as SARS-CoV-2 viruses. However, such masks typically lose their charge and ability to bind particles over time, particularly in humid environments such as right in front of the mouth. To address this, these researchers have created a mask with two triboelectric nylon fabric layers that replenish the charge as the layers move back and forth during breathing. The masks can provide protecti...
Source: Medgadget - February 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Medicine Public Health CityUHongKong CUHK Source Type: blogs
NextGen COVID-19 Antibodies Destroy Spike Protein
Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia have developed a new generation of antibodies to treat COVID-19. So far, the antibodies have been shown to neutralize several of the viral variants behind COVID-19, and the researchers hope that they will form an effective treatment for at-risk patients. Previously developed antibody treatments for COVID-19 have been rendered largely useless as the virus has mutated. Such antibodies have focused on binding to the most obvious site on the viral spike protein, the ACE2 receptor binding site, but their efficacy in destroying the virus has waned with new vira...
Source: Medgadget - February 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs
TWiV 985: Bambi ’ s revenge
TWiV reviews an outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Equatorial Guinea, wild poliovirus type 3 shedding from a laboratory in the Netherlands, and white-tailed deer as a reservoir for previous SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Rich Condit Click arrow to playDownload TWiV 985 (66 MB .mp3, 109 min)Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become […] (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - February 19, 2023 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology coronavirus COVID-19 hemorrhagic fever IPV marburg virus pandemic poliovirus poliovirus essential facility SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern viral viruses white-tailed deer Source Type: blogs
