DARPA teams up with Arteriocyte to create ominous-sounding blood pharming machine for the military

DARPA’s been running a blood pharming program for quite awhile now, but it’s gotten a real kick start this week with the announcement of a partnership with Cleveland-based biotech company Arteriocyte. Arteriocyte, it seems, has developed a Nanofiber Based System, or NANEX, a technology that enables the production of red blood cells without a donor. The two companies hope research will eventually lead to an “in theatre” blood-making machine for the military. So, if there’s no donor, where do the progenitor cells come from? Well, that’s a little hazy at this point, though Arteriocyte developed the NANEX using “blood of the umbilical cord” (stem cells), but we don’t know what will fuel the final product. Personally, we hope they can squeak out a way to do it using the less controversial “blood of the dragon.”

A Big Birdlike Dinosaur

Writing in the journal Nature in June, Chinese scientists reported the discovery of the skeleton of an enormous, birdlike dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago. The paleontologists, working in Inner Mongolia, said the 3,000-lb. dinosaur's surprisingly avian qualities — such as longer and more slender limbs — challenged the widely accepted assumption that carnivorous dinosaurs got smaller as they got more birdlike. But its size aside — having died as a young adult, it probably could have grown even larger — Gigantoraptor erlianensis doesn't refute the theory that two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs are the ancient ancestors of modern birds.

Living computers within your body

Project leaders Maung Nyan Win and Christina Smolke have revealed that, so far, they have tested the living computer on a living yeast cell.

The researchers believe that future models of the computer, made from the DNA-like molecule RNA, may be helpful in running calculations inside human cells to release drugs, or prime the immune system, at the first hint of illness.

They have revealed that the RNA device processes input signals in the form of natural cell proteins and produces an output in the form of green fluorescent protein (GFP).

At the computers heart is a ribozyme, a short RNA molecule able to catalyse changes to other molecules, which is attached to an RNA sequence that the cell can translate into GFP, and a third RNA molecule that acts like a trigger for the ribozyme.

The team say that the trigger can be designed to bind to specific molecules inside the cell like proteins or antibiotics.

When it does, the catalytic ribozyme destroys the GFP sequence, and prevents the cell from making any more glowing protein.

The presence of an input protein stops the production of GFP. Using two trigger sections produces a NAND gate, the output of which depends on the presence or absence of two input proteins.

Computing With RNA

Scientists in California have created molecular computers that are able to self-assemble out of strips of RNA within living cells. Eventually, such computers could be programmed to manipulate biological functions within the cell, executing different tasks under different conditions. One application could be smart drug delivery systems, says Christina Smolke, who carried out the research with Maung Nyan Win and whose results are published in the latest issue of Science.

The use of biomolecules to perform computations was first demonstrated by the University of Southern California’s Leonard Adleman in 1994, and the approach was later developed by Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. But according to Shapiro, “What this new work shows for the first time is the ability to detect the presence or absence of molecules within the cell.”

That opens up the possibility of computing devices that can respond to specific conditions within the cell, he says. For example, it may be possible to develop drug delivery systems that target cancer cells from within by sensing genes used to regulate cell growth and death. “You can program it to release the drug when the conditions are just right, at the right time and in the right place,” Shapiro says.

Building a Human Heart Valve

The World Heath Organization estimates that some 600,000 people around the world will need replacement heart valves within the next three years. British scientists delivered those patients some hopeful news: A team of researchers led by Dr. Magdi Yacoub of the Imperial College of London saw 10 years of work come to fruition this spring, when they grew bone marrow stem cells into functioning human heart-valve tissue. Yacoub hopes that the tissue can be grown into the shape of a heart valve using a special collagen scaffolding. Yacoub's advancements build on the ongoing efforts of scientists around the world to grow new heart valves and other body parts. If Yacoub's tissue holds up in animal trials, he estimates it could be used in human heart-valve transplant patients within 3 to 5 years.

RAD7 Electronic Radon Monitor/Sniffer

Description

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Women Smokers Lose 14.5 Years Off Life Span

November is lung cancer awareness month, and doctors urge everyone to kick the habit

THURSDAY, Nov. 27 (HealthDay news) -- During Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November, female smokers should take advantage of available resources, pick a quit day, and start taking steps toward kicking the habit, urges The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Even though smoking takes an average of 14.5 years off women's lives, almost one in five American women age 18 and older smokes.

"The damaging effects of smoking on women are extensive, well-documented, and can be observed from the cradle to the premature grave," Dr. Sharon Phelan said in an organization news release. She helped develop ACOG's smoking cessation materials for health care providers.

"Smoking is a harmful habit that negatively affects nearly every organ in the body. There's just no good reason not to quit," she said.

Here's a list of the dangers:

• Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in women. Since 1950, lung cancer deaths among women have increased more than 600 percent, according to ACOG.
• Smoking also significantly increases the risk of many other cancers in women, including breast, oral, pharynx, larynx, esophageal, pancreatic, kidney, bladder, uterine, and cervical cancers.
• Women who smoke are twice as likely to develop coronary heart disease and 10 times more likely to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than nonsmokers.
• Smoking increases the risk of emphysema, bronchitis, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, cataracts, lower bone density after menopause, and hip fracture. It can also contribute to early menopause, gum disease, tooth loss, and premature skin aging.
• Reproductive-age women who smoke may have trouble conceiving, and pregnant women who smoke are at high risk of delivering preterm or low birth

Antibacterial implants could prevent infections, save patients' lives

University of Washington researchers have developed a method of crafting medical implants from an antibacterial polymer that could prevent thousands of patients from dying of hospital-acquired infections each year.

The polymer slowly releases an antibiotic to keep bacteria from establishing a foothold. It could be used to prevent infections around such commonly used devices as catheters as well as more permanent implants, such as pacemakers, according to Buddy Ratner, UW professor of bioengineering and director of the University of Washington Engineered Biomaterials (UWEB) program.

A two-article series on the technique appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Controlled Release.

Infections linked to devices that are inserted into patients are a serious hospital problem, according to Ratner.

"People don't realize that even commonly used devices like catheters account for about 50,000 hospital deaths in the United States each year, many of them because of infection," Ratner said.

Catheters, which are used on patients who require a long regimen of intravenous drugs, are initially sterile, but they can become gathering spots for dangerous microorganisms.

"Once the bacteria get on the device, they are extremely difficult to remove and very resistant to treatment," Ratner said. "It can take 100 times the concentration of an antibiotic to kill the bacteria when they are attached as it takes to kill them when they're free."

The reason may be a protective biofilm that bacteria produce after they become established. When that happens, often the only way to treat the infection is to remove the device from the patient.

The key to stopping infections, then, lies in killing bacteria that come near the device before they form an attachment, Ratner said.

"We found a way to put the antibiotic just on the surface of the device where it interfaces with the body's fluids," he said. "What we've developed is a slowly released micro-aur

Keeping chromosomes from cuddling up

If chromosomes snuggle up too closely at the wrong times, the results can be genetic disaster.

Now researchers have found the molecular machines in fruit flies that yank chromosomes, the DNA-carrying structures, apart when necessary.

The machines, proteins called condensin II, separate chromosomes by twisting them into supercoils that kink up and therefore can no longer touch.

Scientists had known of condensin II but did not know how it functioned inside cells.

Keeping specific parts of chromosomes from touching can change how the instructions carried in the DNA are read, said research team leader Giovanni Bosco of The University of Arizona in Tucson.

"It's like picking up your favorite book and, depending on what chair you chose to sit in, it turned into a different story -- even though the printed words in the book never changed," Bosco, a UA assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology, wrote in an e-mail.

"This now changes the way we think about genetic information. Taking a literal reading of it is not what actually happens," he wrote. "Instead, context matters."

The team also found that condensin II plays a key role in making sure that fruit fly sperm cells each receive the proper number of chromosomes -- not too many, not too few.

Bosco suspects that condensin II plays the same role in the formation of human sperm and eggs.

Having too many or too few chromosomes in egg or sperm cells is the source of several important genetic disorders, including Down syndrome.

Abnormalities in chromosome number is also the cause of some miscarriages of early-term fetuses in humans.