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Thread: Interesting Medical News (Non-WCG Related Projects) |
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Drugs and Money - Money and Drugs
----------------------------------------Bad Pharma  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm...money-undermining-science  |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The best indication of yourrisk for heart disease is the ratio of small, dense LDL particle of cholesterol to the fluffier less dense particles that still fall within the same family.
----------------------------------------New Cholesterol Testing A study presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology indicates that a test which analyses the bad cholesterol more closely may more reliably predict who is going to have a heart attack. The current test measures total cholesterol and the breakdown of good HDL and bad LDL cholesterol. The new test instead measures the ratio of bad LDL cholesterol particles to good HDL cholesterol particles. The smaller bad particles are called apolipoprotein B molecules and the good ones are called apolipoprotein A1 molecules. A ration of 1 to 2 is considered low risk, while a ratio approaching 1 to 1 would be considered high risk. Anything over that, where the small LDL particles dominate, would be very high risk. LDL is made up primarily of small particles which are dense and are the building blocks of plaque. The big ones are more easily carried away by the flow of blood. The study of 29,000 people in 52 countries compared 15,000 who had suffered a first heart attack with someone of the same age, sex and location who had not had a heart attack. It showed that the standard cholesterol test did not correlate well with heart attacks, but that the new method was a better indicator. A high ratio of small LDL molecules to good cholesterol was shown to be the most important factor linked to heart attack risk, even greater than smoking. Patients with the worst test results were about 4 times more likely to have heart attacks than those with the best scores. According to researchers at McMaster University in Canada, 50 percent of the risk of a heart attack is predicted by the LDL/HDL ratio. Here is a list of the lab tests involved. And this article goes into more depth.   |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Not searched, but certainly the first time I've read of an actual applied human organ regrow [A nose is to me that too], which is in third phase on the forearm, then transplanted into the right place later on. http://sciencefocus.com/news/how-grow-nose . At a final stages they even plan to graft smell and mucous cells into the regrown nose. Really awesome the medical research and application has progressed from growing human ears on mouses, with cartilage and all.
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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New approach to flu vaccines - mRNA
----------------------------------------That stands for micro-RNA [edit - sorry, messenger RNA - micro RNA is abbreviated mi-RNA which might be similar to the abbr for micro interfering RNA. Oh well]. Normally, DNA is translated into RNA [edit, this would be mRNA] which is then read by organelles in the cell (basically tiny factories) to create proteins. mRNA's are just very short pieces [edit: miRNA's are, mRNA's tend not to be] of RNA and there is a whole branch of research involving how they interfere with the translation process - sometimes by design, sometimes by mistake. Viruses use mRNA to build the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase units that coat their shell. These are the 'H' and 'N' in the designations like H1N1. Normal vaccines target these H and N units but they tend to mutate quickly. The new vaccine targets the mRNA used to build them. The advantage is that while normal vaccines take many months to produce, mRNA can made very quickly as can be used to stimulate and even better and longer lasting immune response. Now, scientists at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute (Germany's Federal Research Institute for Animal Health), and biotech company CureVac in Tübingen have developed a new approach. They designed a piece of mRNA encoding the hemagglutinin of the influenza strain H1N1. Cells use mRNA to shuttle the information contained in the genome from the nucleus into the periphery of the cell, where it is translated into a protein. By injecting synthetic mRNA into the skin of mice, the researchers coaxed the animals' cells into producing the virus protein themselves. This elicited an immune response that later protected the animals from infection with otherwise lethal doses of influenza virus, the researchers reported online on 25 November in Nature Biotechnology. [Edit 2 times, last edit by twilyth at Feb 4, 2013 6:43:08 AM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Vegetable oils may play a role in overeating.
----------------------------------------So. You switched to non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. You check the labels on everything you buy. You thought you were safe - right? BWAHAHAHAHA!!! It turns out that a major component of most vegetable oils is linoleic acid and you body uses that to make endocannabinoids. If the cannabinoid part looks familiar, it should. It refers to marijuana. The prefix 'endo-' just means endogenous, or naturally occurring. You see they didn't discover these substance in the human body until after they had been identified in marijuana, hence the name. Anyway . . . the endocannabinoids thus produced can stimulate appetite. The brain’s faulty anticipation of energy needs, as well as other forms of neural confusion, may be fostering an unconscious urge to overeat. Chewing the fat Piomelli can attest to that. Last year, his team showed that diets high in vegetable oils messed with allostasis. These oils triggered overeating in animals by turning on production of hunger-promoting endocannabinoids (SN Online: 7/8/11). In an upcoming issue of Obesity, Hibbeln’s team now blames this trickery on the linoleic acid found in that oil. The central role of endocannabinoids in the nervous system’s regulation of food intake has been known for at least a decade, Hibbeln says. When endocannabinoids bind to cellular structures known as receptors, brain tissues release dopamine, a messenger molecule that elicits a pleasant feeling. Until this reward system turns off, an urge to eat persists (SN: 6/19/10, p. 16). When a person downs too much linoleic acid, it is as if the reward-seeking switch in the brain gets stuck in the “on” position. The impact — at least in Hibbeln’s mouse study — is visible to the naked eye. Some of the animals in the study chowed down on a diet that derived 1 percent of its calories from linoleic acid, a proportion consistent with what Americans typically ate around 1900. Animals in a second group ate food in which linoleic acid supplied 8 percent of all calories, an amount in line with what’s found in a more modern U.S. diet. Even though both groups received the same proportion of their calories from fat and carbs, mice getting more linoleic acid gained substantially more weight. Those mice not only ate more, but they also gained more fat for every calorie eaten, Hibbeln explains. “You and I would rather eat more and gain less weight — and that would be what we saw with rats getting 1 percent linoleic acid.” Much, much more at the link including ways to protect yourself. [Edit 2 times, last edit by twilyth at Feb 9, 2013 12:41:09 AM] |
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yojimbo197
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jun 30, 2012 Post Count: 83 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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mRNA's are primarily read and translated into the primary protein sequence by ribosomes in the Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum(RER). The nascent proteins are then shuttled through the ER and Golgi Apparatus, where they get modified by various enzymes depending on their primary sequence and then get vectorally transported to the appropriate part of the cell through vesicles that bud off of the trans-Golgi.
----------------------------------------mRNA's are usually the length of the coding sequence present in the DNA plus additional sequences and chemical modifications upstream(5') and downstream (3') of the coding sequence. So they are not usually "short". In fact they can be kilobases in length. miRNA's are short sequences(20-22 nucleotides in length) that bind to complementary mRNA sequences and trigger a default degradation pathway. miRNA's can be important for regulating the level of proteins that if expressed at high levels would lead to oncogenesis(cancer). However miRNA's can also regulate other processes including erythropoesis, hematopoeisis, and signal transduction pathways. New approach to flu vaccines - mRNA That stands for micro-RNA [edit - sorry, messenger RNA - micro RNA is abbreviated mi-RNA which might be similar to the abbr for micro interfering RNA. Oh well]. Normally, DNA is translated into RNA [edit, this would be mRNA] which is then read by organelles in the cell (basically tiny factories) to create proteins. mRNA's are just very short pieces [edit: miRNA's are, mRNA's tend not to be] of RNA and there is a whole branch of research involving how they interfere with the translation process - sometimes by design, sometimes by mistake. Viruses use mRNA to build the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase units that coat their shell. These are the 'H' and 'N' in the designations like H1N1. Normal vaccines target these H and N units but they tend to mutate quickly. The new vaccine targets the mRNA used to build them. The advantage is that while normal vaccines take many months to produce, mRNA can made very quickly as can be used to stimulate and even better and longer lasting immune response. Now, scientists at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute (Germany's Federal Research Institute for Animal Health), and biotech company CureVac in Tübingen have developed a new approach. They designed a piece of mRNA encoding the hemagglutinin of the influenza strain H1N1. Cells use mRNA to shuttle the information contained in the genome from the nucleus into the periphery of the cell, where it is translated into a protein. By injecting synthetic mRNA into the skin of mice, the researchers coaxed the animals' cells into producing the virus protein themselves. This elicited an immune response that later protected the animals from infection with otherwise lethal doses of influenza virus, the researchers reported online on 25 November in Nature Biotechnology.  [Edit 2 times, last edit by yojimbo197 at Feb 9, 2013 3:35:22 AM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Thanks. I did correct my mistakes in the edit though.
----------------------------------------Just out of curiosity, since so many genes aren't coded sequentially, where does the splicing occur? Some segments can be quite distant from one another, so do you have multiple mRNA strands that then get edited or are there different methods the cell uses? |
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yojimbo197
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jun 30, 2012 Post Count: 83 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Yes, you did though you weren't specific enough as to where the proteins were made. The rough ER is one specific organelle who's proximity to the nucleus is an important factor for shuttling mRNA's from the nucleus to the ribosomes present on the ER. To my knowledge, there is very little translation of mRNA species outside of the ER. I believe I have read about translation of RNA in the nucleus but its not a common thing.
----------------------------------------Also I added a mechanism of action and specific functions for the miRNA and tried to distinguish between mRNA(usually 100's to 1000's of base pairs in length) vs. miRNA(20-22nucleotides in length). So I wasn't trying to be snarky, but more informative and claritive. mammalian pre-mRNA or hnRNA contains regulatory sequences (5'UTR and 3'UTR sequences), exons(coding sequences) and introns(non-coding sequences). There are specific sequences that delineate the border between each exon and intron that are recognized by splicing proteins. The splicing proteins remove the introns and join the exons together. Depending on how many introns are present in the pre-mRNA and the probes used, you can detect multiple forms/lengths of of RNA for a specific gene, ranging from unspliced, partially spliced, to completely spliced(mRNA). [Edit 3 times, last edit by yojimbo197 at Feb 9, 2013 8:02:36 AM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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mammalian pre-mRNA or hnRNA contains regulatory sequences (5'UTR and 3'UTR sequences), exons(coding sequences) and introns(non-coding sequences). There are specific sequences that delineate the border between each exon and intron that are recognized by splicing proteins. The splicing proteins remove the introns and join the exons together. Right. So the final mRNA has the proper edited sequence? Or does that happen in the cytoplasm, because I thought that's where interfering RNA's were active. |
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yojimbo197
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jun 30, 2012 Post Count: 83 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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mRNA is the fully spliced mature form of RNA containing 5' and 3' untranslated regions, a chemically modified 5' end, and the coding sequence.
----------------------------------------miRNA's can be detected in the cytoplasm and the nucleus. |
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