Goats Could Increase the Risk of a Rare Lung Cancer, Researchers Find 0

Exposure to goats could increase the risk of a certain type of lung cancer, according to French researchers.

The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, has linked a professional exposure to goats with a distinct subset of lung cancer, known as pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma (P-ADC).
This form of lung cancer has a weak association with tobacco smoking when compared with other types of the disease. In attempting to identify other triggers that may cause the disease, scientists have previously noticed similarities between P-ADC and a viral infection which causes growths in the lungs of sheep. Given these similarities, the researchers have investigated whether a viral agent found in sheep and goats could be easily transferred to people who work with the animals, leading to a partiality for P-ADC.
The current epidemiologic study involved 44 patients with P-ADC and 132 controls without the disease. All participants were given a questionnaire assessing a number of risk factors including their smoking status, their personal history of cancer and their exposure to goats.
The results showed that people who had experienced a professional exposure to goats during their lifetime were five times more likely to get P-ADC compared with other types of lung cancer.
The findings also showed that P-ADC was significantly associated with females, and people who had never smoked or had any personal history of cancer.
Dr Nicolas Girard, from the Louis Pradel Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon, said: "Scientists have noticed similarities between P-ADC and a contagious viral infection in sheep before. This led us to explore the possibility that professional exposure to cattle could make humans more susceptible to P-ADC. These findings demonstrate that exposure to goats could be a risk factor for this type of lung cancer, however further studies are needed to assess other potential risk factors for the disease."
via ScienceDaily

Black Death genome reconstructed 0

(Photo: Museum of London)

It's hard to comprehend the impact of the Black Death. The "Great Pestilence" is believed to have originated somewhere in Northern Asia in the 1330s before hitting Europe in 1347. It killed an estimated 75 million people worldwide - that's around 25 per cent of all humans in existence at the time. Now in an effort to better understand modern infectious diseases, scientist have sequenced the entire genome of the Black Death.
The research is based on analysis of skeletal remains from the East Smithfield "plague pits" in London using a previously developed methodology for extracting degraded DNA fragments of the bacteria that caused the plague - Yersinia pestis.

(LEFT IMAGE: Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre)

The international team, led by researchers from McMaster University and the University of Tubingen, say this is the first time a reconstructed genome of any ancient pathogen has been drafted.
So why is this relevant in the 21st Century?
Descendants of the specific variant of the Yersinia pestis found in the 14th Century remain exist today, killing an estimated 2,000 people a year. By drafting the reconstruction of the genome scientist are able to see changes in the pathogen's evolution - which in this case have been minor - and gain a better understanding of such deadly infections.
"The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide," says Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre. "Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague. With a better understanding of the evolution of this deadly pathogen, we are entering a new era of research into infectious disease."
There are still questions that remain unanswered about why the Black Death was so devastating however.
"We found that in 660 years of evolution as a human pathogen, there have been relatively few changes in the genome of the ancient organism, but those changes, however small, may or may not account for the noted increased virulence of the bug that ravaged Europe," says Poinar. "The next step is to determine why this was so deadly."

 Close-up of teeth from a plague victim (Photo: Museum of London)

In other words, the research may have knocked out one of the main contenders in establishing why the Black Death had such a deadly impact. The Paper states that because the Black Death may not have been due to bacterial phenotype, "factors other than microbial genetics, such as environment, vector dynamics and host susceptibility, should be at the forefront of epidemiological discussions regarding emerging Y. pestis infections."
It has also been shown that the variation of Yersinia pestis that caused the medieval plague originated sometime around the 12th Century, which means that it was not the cause of the Justinian plague that struck the Byzantine Empire around 540 CE was not caused by the same pathogen as once thought.
"Using the same methodology, it should now be possible to study the genomes of all sorts of historic pathogens," says Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen Krause. "This will provide us with direct insights into the evolution of human pathogens and historical pandemics."
The research is published online in the scientific journal Nature

Source: McMaster University

World's Deepest Known Animal: Worm That Lives Under Almost a Mile of Rock 0

Researchers dubbed it "Halicephalobus mephisto," from the Greek for “he who loves not the light.” Credit: G.Borgone/Ghent University, Belgium

When it comes to indestructible species, the cockroach is a kitten compared with the nematode. Nematode worms thrive in desert, mountain, and ocean environments. Nematodes aboard the space shuttle Columbia even survived after the spacecraft disintegrated during reentry in 2003. Now Belgian biologist Gaetan Borgonie has discovered a new species of nematode in a rock fracture nearly
a mile underground, where no other animal has ever been found.
Earth’s first few miles of bedrock teem with life, but scientists had long assumed that only simple, single-celled organisms could survive there. Borgonie teamed with Tullis Onstott of Princeton University to prove that assumption wrong. For a year they made intermittent descents to sample the Beatrix gold mine in South Africa, funded by their own savings. Finally, in late 2008, Borgonie looked into a microscope and saw a worm with a broken tail squirming across the slide. “I became an ICU nurse, looking every few hours to make sure she was still alive,” he says. “She laid 12 eggs before dying.”
Now they plan to expand their expedition to find other animals lurking in the depths.

Monkeys Use Minds to Control Computer 0

Being able to control objects by simply thinking about them has long been the realm of science fiction, but a few smart monkeys are inching it toward reality. For the first time, neurobiologists have successfully demonstrated two-way interaction between a primate brain and a machine interface.

A screenshot of a virtual monkey selecting among identical objects, controlled by the monkey's brain.

“We liberated the brain from the physical constraints of the body and allowed it to gain an extra virtual arm that can be used to explore a virtual world,” said Miguel Nicolelis, a medical doctor, Duke University neurobiology professor, and director of the Duke Center for Neuroengineering.
Their work, which was published in the current issue of Nature, could lead to a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton that could give a paralyzed person mobility.
For this study, devices containing hundreds of hair-like filaments were implanted in different regions of the monkeys’ brains. These implants both record brain activity and deliver neural stimulation simultaneously and in real time, an accomplishment that until now had not been done.
The experiments involved two trained monkeys that already knew how to move a cursor across a computer screen with a joystick. The researchers showed the monkeys several objects that looked identical on the screen, but were encoded with a special pattern that the monkeys couldn't see and could only sense through the brain implants.
The goal for the monkeys was to touch the one object that they sensed was different by moving a virtual arm across a computer screen using only their minds. When they virtually touched the correct object, they were rewarded with juice. After several initial attempts, the monkeys started consistently picking the correct object, behavior that was proven not to be random.
While the experiment was going on, the neuroengineers used the implants to record the monkeys' sensing and decision-making in real time. The ability to record and sense brain activity in real time is a necessary step in the development of brain-controlled prosthetics. In order to work effectively, these devices must mimic the natural feedback and response between the brain and the limbs that occurs in people who aren't paralyzed.
“This is a major step forward into the translation of this whole field into clinical applications,” Nicolelis said.
After completing the Nature paper, Nicolelis says his team finalized a wireless interface that picks up signals from a tiny brain implant without the need to attach cables. The implants are comparable to pacemakers in the sense that they are worth the simple neurosurgical procedure to put them in, especially for completely paralyzed patients who can’t move at all, Nicolelis added.
Next, the neuroengineers plan to work on a prototype for a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton with the international nonprofit the Walk Again Project, as well as specialists from neuroscience institutions in Brazil, Germany, and Switzerland. They want to debut a functional exoskeleton at the 2014 World Cup in Nicolelis’s native Brazil, giving an as-yet unknown paralysis patient the chance to walk onto the field.
“That would be a demonstration that this technology is becoming ready and can be very helpful to restore ability to patients,” Nicolelis said.
Philip Troyk is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology who researches neuroprosthesis and leads a Chicago-based company called Sigenics that makes the integrated circuits for implantable brain devices.
While we do know that the monkeys make choices based on sensing patterns, we still don’t know what their actual perception was, he said. In addition, neuroengineers will need to develop a permanent hardware system that could be implanted.
These challenges don’t diminish the importance of the study, though, Troyk said. “It allows us all to realize that if we can overcome some of the major technical problems of a chronic implant, then we may in fact be able to permanently have this communication with the brain.”
Todd Coleman is an associate bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, who works on brain-machine interfaces. Coleman wonders what kind of implications the study will have in the distant future for people with neurological disorders such as autism.
“These findings need not be limited to thinking about someone who has some type of motor deficit,” he said.
At the University of Chicago, Nicholas Hatsopoulos is an associate professor of organismal biology and anatomy with a focus on researching neural prosthetic systems. Robotic exoskeletons bring Iron Man’s powerful suit to mind.
“In the movie he gets into this suit, and he’s using arms and hands to control this thing,” he says. “But imagine controlling it with your brain.”
Hatsopoulos sees research into brain-machine interfaces heating up at the moment. “This paper is an important contribution to that whole endeavor,” he said of the Duke study. “What we still need to do is to really develop a system that we feel confident provides genuine sensory perception.”

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