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Exploring Life and Inspiring Innovation Monthly News Letter of the School FEB/26/2017 26-Feb-17 nd Vol. 2 Monthly News Letter of the School of Life Sciences Life Sciences: Exploring Life and Inspiring Innovation 2 Monthly News Letter of the School of Life Sciences (UGC SAP & DST FIST Sponsored School) Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University (NAAC Accredited with A Grade), Nanded-431606, Maharashtra State, India. From the Director’s Desk Welcome to the February 2017 issue of Bioscope. February 9 th is the birthday of Yoshinori Ohsumi who was awarded Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2016. The Noble was awarded to Prof. Ohsumi for his work on Autophagy in the Yeast model. We will be celebrating his birthday by cutting a cake. We are planning to celebrate the birthdays of all the Nobel Prize winners in our school. Lets us create a new tradition of remembering and appreciating the great scientists. We solicit all Life Sciences students to actively participate. We need more students writing for Bioscope. Brief write ups are welcome (soft copies). Happy reading! Prof. S. Mohan Karuppayil Director of School Of Life Sciences Chief Patron: Prof. Pandit Vidya Sagar Chief Editor: Prof. S. Mohan Karuppayil Executive Editor: Prof. Anupama Pathak Dr.L.H.Kamble Student Editor: Pathan Kamran Khan First Real-Time Observation Of Reprogrammed Skin Cells Shrink Brain Transverse Division In Azooxanthellate Tumors In Mice Scleractinian Corals Imagine cells that The can move through evolutionary your brain, hunting history of down cancer and corals has destroying it before traits. they themselves Asexual disappear without a trace. Scientists have reproduction just achieved that in mice, creating is one of the personalized tumor-homing cells from adult most skin cells that can shrink brain tumors to 2% important to 5% of their original size. Although the traits. There are no real-time observations of strategy has yet to be fully tested in people, asexual reproduction in azooxanthellate the new method could one day give doctors solitary scleractinian corals reported to date. a quick way to develop a custom treatment Here, we understand the description for aggressive cancers like glioblastoma, available on previously unknown aspects of which kills most human patients in 12–15 asexual reproduction by using months. It only took 4 days to create the Truncatoflabellum spheniscus (Family tumor-homing cells for the mice. Flabellidae) based on observations of Source of the news: transverse division conducted over 1200 http://www.sciencemag.org days. The important findings revealed that (1) transverse division was caused by Gene Editing Has Saved The Lives Of Two decalcification; (2) compared to the Children With Leukemia anthocyathus, the soft parts of the In UK two children anthocaulus were severely damaged and treated with gene-edited injured during division; (3) these injuries cells to kill their cancers were repaired rapidly; and (4) the are both doing well more anthocaulus regrew and repeatedly produced than a year later. The anthocyathi by means of transverse division. treatment is a form of so- The findings provide important clues for called CAR-T cell unravelling why asexual reproduction therapy. This involves appeared frequently in free-living corals, using a virus to add a gene to immune cells and the extent to which those modes of that make them target specific cancers. reproduction has affected the adaptive and Dozens of CAR-T trials are already evolutionary success of scleractinian corals underway around the world, and some have throughout the Phanerozoic. produced dramatic results. Many groups Source of the news: Scientific Reports around the world hope to use gene-editing to News contributed by: Dr. Bhagwan N. improve immune therapies for cancer. Rekadwad (Postdoc) Cellectis used an older method called TALEN to target TCRαβ, but the revolutionary new CRISPR method has made it much easier and cheaper to create gene-editing tools. Two cancer trials involving CRISPR-edited cells are getting underway in China and the US. Source of the news: www.newscientist.com Scientists Discovered An Antibody The 12 Deadliest Drug-Resistant Bacteria Produced By An HIV-Positive Patient Have Officially Been Ranked That Neutralises 98 Percent Of All HIV In the face of rising antibiotic resistance, the Strains World Health Organisation (WHO) has Researchers from the US National Institutes published its first ever list of the deadliest of Health (NIH) found that the antibody, superbugs that threaten human health. This called NG, was able to maintain its ability to list encompasses 12 families of dangerous recognise the HIV virus, even as the virus bacteria that have developed resistance to morphed and broke away from it. It’s also the drugs. Antibiotic-resistance costs some up to 10 times more potent than VRC01 - an 700,000 lives each year, and if the antibody in the same class as N6, which has phenomenon can't be halted, experts predict progressed to phase II clinical trials in that the number could grow to 10 million human patients, after protecting monkeys deaths annually by 2050. against HIV for nearly six months. When the WHO priority pathogens list for R&D of researchers exposed N6 to 181 different new antibiotics strains of HIV, it managed to destroy 98 Priority 1: CRITICAL percent of them, including 16 of 20 strains 1. Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem- resistant to other antibodies of the same resistant class. it could form the basis of a new 2. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem- vaccine against the virus. resistant Source of the news: www.sciencealert.com 3. Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem- resistant, ESBL-producing New Species Of Marine Worm Priority 2: HIGH Discovered In Antarctica 1. Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin- A team of resistant Japanese scientists 2. Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin- has discovered a resistant, vancomycin-intermediate and new species of resistant polychaete, a type 3. Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin- of marine annelid resistant worm, 9-meters 4. Campylobacter spp., fluoroquinolone- deep underwater resistant near Japan's 5. Salmonellae, fluoroquinolone-resistant Syowa Station in Antarctica, providing a 6. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin- good opportunity to study how animals resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant adapt to extreme environments. International Priority 3: MEDIUM efforts are currently underway in Antarctica 1. Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin- to build long-term monitoring systems for non-susceptible land and coastal organisms from an 2. Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin- ecological conservation standpoint. The resistant worm found 9 meters deep turned out to be a 3. Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant new, unnamed polychaete a variety with a The full report is available on the WHO's thick, gel-like coat and conspicuous, long website. notochaeta.The team named the new species Source of the news: Flabegraviera fujiae, taking after the News contributed by: Dekhmukh Prasad icebreaker ship "Fuji" used in the expedition (IBT Vth year) in 1981. Source of the news: www.sciencedaily.com News contributed by: Kulkarni Trupti S. M.Sc Biotech IInd year) Biologists Unlock Code Regulating Most Seeing the Brain's Broken Cables Human Genes A new imaging Molecular biologists technique helps have unlocked the code researchers map the that initiates damage from transcription and traumatic brain regulates the activity of injury with more than half of all unprecedented human genes, an accuracy. Damage is achievement that should invisible on CT scans, which use X-rays to provide scientists with a better visualize blockages, bleeds, tumors and understanding of how human genes are skull fractures. MRI uses radio waves to turned on and off. Each tiny human cell create more detailed images, revealing contains about six feet of DNA, a double- bleeds, tumors and crude structural damage, helical molecular chain containing several but it cannot detect broken nerves. Even billion chemical nucleotides—adenosine functional MRI (fMRI), which measures (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and tyrosine brain activity by tracking blood flow, can’t (T)—arranged in a specific sequence, or detect the loss of neurons. The new method code, that when transcribed guide the cell called high definition fiber tracking (HDFT). into producing specific proteins. In these six To make the wiring diagram accessible, feet of DNA, there are tens of thousands of segmented and colored major pathways genes, which are segments of DNA that involved in various neural circuits in direct specific functions, such as the psychedelic hues. production of a hormone or an enzyme, It is Source of the news: essential for the cell to control the activity of http://discovermagazine.com/ each of its tens of thousands of genes, because the improper control of gene By 2050 There Will Be More Plastic In activity can lead to adverse outcomes such The Oceans Than Fish. as cell death or the formation of a cancer Plastic can be cell."That's where the human Initiator comes detected in the in. bodies of more Source of the news: https://m.phys.org/ than 50 percent of the world’s sea Five New Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes turtles. Current A global research estimates put the team has built five oceans’ total new synthetic yeast plastic load at 165 chromosomes million tons. Scientists estimate 90 percent namely synII, synV, of all seabirds have ingested plastic at some synVI, synX, and time in their lives. Although there is a huge synXII, meaning that amount of plastic trash that has accumulated 30 percent of a key organism's genetic on land, much of the world’s plastic resides material has now been swapped out for in the oceans, where it is deposited after engineered replacements. Like computer being whisked there by the wind from land, programmers, scientists add swaths of being dumped at sea or on the shore or being synthetic DNA to -- or remove stretches carried there in runoff from rivers and from -- human, plant, bacterial or yeast streams. Scientists predict that by 2050 there chromosomes in hopes of averting disease, will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
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