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The Neanderthal With the World’s Oldest Tumor

A benign bone tumor that afflicts modern-day humans has now been found in one of our ancestors: a Neanderthal more than 120,000 years old.

The discovery of a fibrous dysplasia in a Neanderthal rib is the earliest known bone tumor on record, predating other tumors by more than 100,000 years. The rib, recovered from a site in Krapina, Croatia, indicates that Neanderthals were susceptible to the same types of tumors modern-day humans get, despite living in a remarkably different environment.

“They didn’t have pesticides, but they probably were sleeping in caves with burning fires,” says David Frayer, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas and the co-author of a new paper about the discovery. “They were probably inhaling a lot of smoke from the caves. So the air was not completely free of pollutants—but certainly, these Neanderthals weren’t smoking cigarettes.”

The tumor’s journey from inside a bone over 120,000 years old to the pages of the journal PLOS ONE was a long one. It started in 1899, when a paleontologist named Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger was digging by a cave near the Croatian village of Krapina. After coming upon a single human molar, a pile of animal bones, and a small stone tool, Gorjanovic-Kramberger and colleagues began an excavation at the site.

They soon realized they had stumbled upon the world’s largest collection of Neanderthal artifacts.

Among the findings: animal bones, stone tools, and almost 900 fossilized Neanderthal remains dating back more than 120,000 years. In 1918, Gorjanovic-Kramberger described the bones:

“It is perfectly logical to assume that these Neanderthal men, who spent day and night in the open, eating a simple diet, had to be healthy and less prone to illnesses we have today. Accidents were therefore far more common in their struggle to survive and caused injury or even mutilation to the body.”

But the Neanderthals also suffered from illness: conditions like severe arthritis, periodontitis, and tuberculosis, whose tell-tale signs have remained on the bones for more than 100,000 years.

(Source: National Geographic)

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Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access

The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. 

There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity—jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month’s income. 

Solving these problems isn’t simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we’re unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access. 

(Source: googleblog.blogspot.com)

7 Takeaways From Supreme Court’s Gene Patent Decision

What does the decision mean for patients and the biotech industry? We talked to experts about some of the big takeaways:

1. Naturally occurring genes are no longer patentable.

The Court on Thursday sided with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and threw out patents held by Utah-based Myriad Genetics used in a popular but expensive breast and ovarian cancer test that detects mutations in the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.

The test gained national attention after actress Angelina Jolie revealed that herdecision to undergo a double mastectomy was the result of testing positive for one of the mutations.

This week’s ruling, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, states that naturally occurring DNA segments are not patentable.

“I think the major takeaway is that human genes as they exist in [cells] are unpatentable subject matters going forward,” said Jacob Sherkow, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences.

The ruling applies not only to BRCA1 and 2, but also to thousands of other patented genes associated with various diseases such as colon cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and muscular dystrophy.

2. Synthetic DNA is still fair game.

The Court tried to strike a balance in its ruling by banning some types of gene patents but not others.

While companies can no longer patent genes with the same sequences found in cells, the decision allows edited forms of genes not found in nature—known as complementary DNA, or cDNA—to be patented.

cDNA is not useful for diagnostic tests, but it is crucial for producing protein-based drugs, explained Robert Cook-Deegan, a professor of genome ethics, law, and policy at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.

“Those are the billion-dollar molecule patents,” Cook-Deegan said. “Biotech companies care a great deal about cDNA patents, and it should be reassuring to them that those patents are still fine.”

Hank Greely, a bioethicist and law professor at Stanford University, predicts

cDNA patents will become even more valuable as scientists move beyond merely exploiting naturally occurring proteins.

“In the longer run, as we move into an era of synthetic biology, where we start trying to improve upon nature, then I think [cDNA patents] will be important,” Greely said.

3. Prices for testing genetic diseases are already falling.

Hours after the ruling was announced, other biotech companies announced competing tests for the BRCA1 and 2 genes. One company, DNATraits, said it will offer the test for $995—about one-third the cost of Myriad’s test.

Cook-Deegan said he was surprised at how fast companies reacted to the Court ruling.

“At least one company thinks they can safely enter the market,” he said, referring to DNATraits. “They think they can’t get sued, and I think they’re probably right.”

4. It could get easier to sequence whole genomes.

The high court’s ruling could help clear the way for companies that are developing whole genome sequencing technologies that determine an organism’s entire DNA sequence at once, rather than one gene at a time.

“Because Myriad and other companies had patents directed to pieces of isolated genomic DNA, it was at least an open question whether whole genome sequencing would have infringed on those patents,” Sherkow said.

“I don’t think it resolves the issue definitively, but the Court’s ruling opens the door for whole genome sequencing to proceed without the fear of being sued for patent infringement.”

5. There are implications beyond human genes.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University, says the ruling will extend beyond companies that focus on human genes because it “applies to not just human genes, but also patents over plant, animal, and microbial genes.

“So I think there’s going to be some upheaval in parts of the biotech world beyond just human [gene] companies.”

6. Whether Myriad’s secret patient database will be opened is unclear.

Cook-Deegan of Duke University called the Court’s ruling “really sensible,” but thinks that Myriad should be forced to publicize its database of results from women who have taken its tests over the years.

“Myriad has eight years of data that they have not shared publicly. I want to know what’s going to happen to that data,” Cook-Deegan said. “As far as I’m concerned, everyone who’s done the tests anywhere in the world should have the rights to access that data because they were acquired under an illegal monopoly.”

But Stanford’s Sherkow thinks that’s unlikely to happen. “The Court’s decision does not implicate Myriad’s database of clinical outcomes,” he said. “Myriad can continue to keep those as trade secrets, and they don’t have to disclose that information.”

7. The ruling might not actually matter that much.

While the ACLU hailed the Court’s decision as a major victory for “civil liberties, scientific freedom, patients, and the future of personalized medicine,” Stanford’s Greely argued that the ruling is relatively unimportant.

One reason is that the gene patents held by many companies were set to expire soon anyway—in the case of Myriad, in 2016. “They were going to disappear as a problem,” Greely said.

Furthermore, the old gene patents don’t affect many current tests that only look at small bits of a gene, as opposed to the entire gene.

“The new technologies for sequencing would probably not even infringe on the Myriad patents anyway because of the way the patents were written and how the new technologies actually do the testing,” Greely said.

The Court’s ruling also leaves other legal questions unanswered. For example, can naturally occurring proteins or molecules be patented?

The answer to that question would ultimately have a more significant impact on the biotech industry, Greely says, because many modern drugs start out as naturally occurring molecules.

Early bird beat Archaeopteryx to worm by 10m years

A prehistoric beast the size of a pheasant has become a contender for the title of oldest bird to stalk the Earth.

The small, feathered “Dawn” bird lived around 160m years ago, about 10m years before Archaeopteryx, which holds the official title of the earliest bird known to science.

The new species, which scientists have named Aurornis xui, had claws and a long tail, with front and hind legs similar to those of Archaeopteryx, but some features of its bones were more primitive. It measured 50cm from its beak to the tip of its tail.

Encased in sedimentary rock, the fossil preserved traces of downy feathers along the animal’s tail, neck and chest, but the absence of larger feathers suggests it was not able to fly.

When scientists reconstructed the evolutionary tree of similar beasts using measurements from their skeletons, A xui appeared on the bird lineage, but closer to the base of the tree than Archaeopteryx.

“It’s an important fossil,” said Gareth Dyke, a senior palaeontologist involved in the study at Southampton University. “Aurornis pushes Archaeopteryx off its perch as the oldest member of the bird lineage.”

Archaeopteryx holds a prized position in evolutionary history. The fossil, discovered in Germany in 1861, proved that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs, and was the first fossil to support Darwin’s theory of evolution, which had been published only two years earlier.

(Source: Guardian)

Quantum gravity takes singularity out of black holes

Falling into a black hole may not be as final as it seems. Apply a quantum theory of gravity to these bizarre objects and the all-crushing singularity at their core disappears.

In its place is something that looks a lot like an entry point to another universe. Most immediately, that could help resolve the nagging information loss paradox that dogs black holes.

Though no human is likely to fall into a black hole anytime soon, imagining what would happen if they did is a great way to probe some of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Most recently this has led to something known as the black hole firewall paradox – but black holes have long been a source of cosmic puzzles.

According to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, if a black hole swallows you, your chances of survival are nil. You’ll first be torn apart by the black hole’s tidal forces, a process whimsically named spaghettification.

Eventually, you’ll reach the singularity, where the gravitational field is infinitely strong. At that point, you’ll be crushed to an infinite density. Unfortunately, general relativity provides no basis for working out what happens next. “When you reach the singularity in general relativity, physics just stops, the equations break down,” says Abhay Ashtekar of Pennsylvania State University.

The same problem crops up when trying to explain the big bang, which is thought to have started with a singularity. So in 2006, Ashtekar and colleagues applied loop quantum gravity to the birth of the universe. LQG combines general relativity with quantum mechanics and defines space-time as a web of indivisible chunks of about 10-35 metres in size. The team found that as they rewound time in an LQG universe, they reached the big bang, but no singularity – instead they crossed a “quantum bridge” into another older universe. This is the basis for the “big bounce” theory of our universe’s origins.

Now Jorge Pullin at Louisiana State University and Rodolfo Gambini at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay, have applied LQG on a much smaller scale – to an individual black hole – in the hope of removing that singularity too. To simplify things, the pair applied the equations of LQG to a model of a spherically symmetrical, non-rotating “Schwarzschild” black hole.

In this new model, the gravitational field still increases as you near the black hole’s core. But unlike previous models, this doesn’t end in a singularity. Instead gravity eventually reduces, as if you’ve come out the other end of the black hole and landed either in another region of our universe, or another universe altogether. Despite only holding for a simple model of a black hole, the researchers – and Ashtekar – believe the theory may banish singularities from real black holes too.

That would mean that black holes can serve as portals to other universes. While other theories, not to mention some works of science fiction, have suggested this, the trouble was that nothing could pass through the portal because of the singularity. The removal of the singularity is unlikely to be of immediate practical use, but it could help with at least one of the paradoxes surrounding black holes, the information loss problem.

A black hole soaks up information along with the matter it swallows, but black holes are also supposed to evaporate over time. That would cause the information to disappear forever, defying quantum theory. But if a black hole has no singularity, then the information needn’t be lost – it may just tunnel its way through to another universe. “Information doesn’t disappear, it leaks out,” says Pullin.

(Source: newscientist.com)

Scientists develop CO2 sequestration technique that produces ‘supergreen’ hydrogen fuel

Lawrence Livermore scientists have discovered and demonstrated a new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide while generating carbon-negative hydrogen and producing alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification.

The team demonstrated, at a laboratory scale, a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution while producing hydrogen fuel and other gases. The resulting electrolyte solution was shown to be significantly elevated in hydroxide concentration that in turn proved strongly absorptive and retentive of atmospheric CO2.

Further, the researchers suggest that the carbonate and bicarbonate produced in the process could be used to mitigate ongoing ocean acidification, similar to how an Alka Seltzer neutralizes excess acid in the stomach.

“We not only found a way to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while producing valuable H2, we also suggest that we can help save marine ecosystems with this new technique,” said Greg Rau, an LLNL visiting scientist, senior scientist at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of a paper appearing this week (May 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(Source: phys.org)

HIV weak spot found in Scripps-led study

A weak spot on the surface of HIV-1, the most prevalent AIDS virus, is far larger than originally thought, according to a study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute.

This “supersite of immune vulnerability” may be helpful in developing an AIDS vaccine, said the study published Sunday in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Its first author is Leopold Kong and senior author is Ian A. Wilson, both of Scripps.

Much of HIV’s surface mutates rapidly, escaping the body’s immune system and also vaccines. But certain regions of the surface required for infection can’t mutate much. These areas can be targeted by antibodies that neutralize a broad range of HIV strains.

Wilson and colleagues have searched for years for these broadly neutralizing antibodies, which they plan to use as a template for a vaccine. The newly discovered weak region provides a good target for producing even more of the broadly neutralizing antibodies, the paper said.

The paper “tracks a course for the next critical step in vaccine design,” said infectious disease researcher Robert C. Liddington of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, who was not involved in the study. Liddington’s research includes broadly neutralizing antibodies, for HIV and influenza, another highly mutable virus.

Producing a so-called universal flu vaccine that protects against the great majority of strains requires some of the same technology needed for an HIV vaccine. Wilson and his colleagues are researching a universal flu vaccine in a partnership with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

The vulnerable region occurs on a part of the HIV shell called gp120, used by the virus to attach to cells it infects. Because it performs an essential function, mutations on gp120 are constrained. That appears to make the region an ideal vaccine target.

(Source: utsandiego.com)

Quantum Magnetism Observed For First Time, Physicists Say

Using super-chilled atoms, physicists have for the first time observed a weird phenomenon called quantum magnetism, which describes the behavior of single atoms as they act like tiny bar magnets.

Quantum magnetism is a bit different from classical magnetism, the kind you see when you stick a magnet to a fridge, because individual atoms have a quality called spin, which is quantized, or in discrete states (usually called up or down). Seeing the behavior of individual atoms has been hard to do, though, because it required cooling atoms to extremely cold temperatures and finding a way to “trap” them.

The new finding, detailed in the May 24 issue of the journal Science, also opens the door to better understanding physical phenomena, such as superconductivity, which seems to be connected to the collective quantum properties of some materials. 

(Source: The Huffington Post)

Accidental find shows Vitamin C kills tuberculosis

Scientists said Tuesday they had managed to kill lab-grown tuberculosis (TB) bacteria with good old Vitamin C — an “unexpected” discovery they hope will lead to better, cheaper drugs.

A team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the accidental find while researching how TB bacteria become resistant to the TB drug isoniazid.

The researchers added isoniazid and a “reducing agent” known as cysteine to the TB in a test tube, expecting the bacteria to develop drug resistance.

Instead, the team “ended up killing off the culture”, according to the study’s senior author William Jacobs, who said the result was “totally unexpected”.

Reducing agents chemically reduce other substances.

The team then replaced the cysteine in the experiment with another reducing agent — Vitamin C.

It, too, killed the bacteria.

“I was in disbelief,” said Jacobs of the outcome published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Even more surprisingly… when we left out the TB drug isoniazid and just had Vitamin C alone, we discovered that Vitamin C kills tuberculosis.”

(Source: google.com)