How Saturated Fatty Acids Damage Cells

               In our increasingly health-conscious society, a new fad diet seems to pop up every few years. Atkins, Zone, Ketogenic, Vegetarian, Vegan, South Beach, Raw and with so many choices and scientific evidence to back each, it’s hard to know what’s healthy and what’s not. ‘Saturated Fats are Bad,’ nutrition’s and researchers at Columbia University have known for a long time that saturated fats contribute to some of the leading causes of death in the United States. They haven’t been able to determine how and why excess saturated fats, such as those that are released from toxic to cells and cause a wide variety of lipid-related diseases, while unsaturated fats from fish, and olive oil can be productive. Columbia researchers developed a new microscopy technique that allows for the direct tracking or fatty acids after they have been absorbed into living cells. The technique involves replacing hydrogen atoms on fatty acids with their isotope, deuterium, without changing their physicochemical properties and their behavior like traditional strategies do. By switching all molecules made from fatty acids can be observed inside living cells by an advanced imaging technique called SRS [Stimulated Raman Scattering] microscopy.          
       The cellular process of building the cell membrane from saturated fatty acids results in patches of hardened membrane in which molecules are frozen, under healthy conditions, this membrane should be flexible and the molecules fluidic. Also, researchers found that using this technique could have significant impact on both the understanding and treatment of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The stiff, straight, long chains of saturated fatty acids rigidify the lipid molecules and cause them to separate from the rest of the cell’s membrane. As more saturated fatty acids enter the cell, those “solid like clusters” grow larger, creating increasing inelasticity of the membrane and gradually damaging the entire cell. Lipid molecules made from unsaturated fatty acids on the other hand bear a kink in their chains,        
      Addition of unsaturated fatty acids could melt the membrane frozen clusters by saturated fatty acids, new mechanism related to this can partly explain the beneficial effect of unsaturated fatty acids and how unsaturated fats like those from fish oil can be protective in some lipid disorders. Later, it revealed an unknown toxic physical state of the saturated lipid accumulation inside the cellular membranes. The behavior of saturated fatty acids once they have entered cells contributes to major and often deadly diseases, visualizing how fatty acids are contributing to lipid metabolic disease gives us the direct physical information we need to begin looking for effective ways to treat them. We can find away to block the toxic lipid accumulation, the finding has the potential to really impact, public health, especially for lipid related diseases.   

     

Reference: 

Columbia University. (2017, December 1). How saturated fatty acids damage cells: Observations of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid behavior could impact public health. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 1, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171201181545.htm

Guenel, J. (2017, December 1 ). New Imaging Study Reveals How Saturated Fatty Acids Damage Cells. Retrieved December 01, 2017, from https://eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/157412.php

Gene Editing Tool Used in a Human For the First Time

A gene tool that may have extraordinary promise in curing myriad diseases has been used in a human for the first time.

According to Nature, scientists at West China Hospital in Chengdu injected cells edited by CRISPR-Cas9 into a patient with aggressive lung cancer on Oct. 28.

CRISPR is an acronym for "clustered, regularly inter-spaced, short palindromic repeats," which are patterns of DNA sequences that can be edited. Cas9 is a type of modified protein that works like a pair of scissors to snip out DNA sequences. CRISPR-Cas9 works by identifying problem sequences and modifying them, hopefully solving the problem they cause.

In the case of the Chinese patient, scientists edited a gene that hinders the cell's ability to launch an immune response, which also prevents it from attacking healthy cells. These modified cells will then, scientists hope, target the cancerous cells and destroy them.

The trial's main objective is to test the technique for safety. The Chinese team plans to treat 10 patients, and each will be monitored for six months for side effects.

"Everything is going as planned," Liao Zhilin, who handles the Chinese team's communications, told CNN.

However, there are also ethical questions surrounding gene-editing techniques. The ability to modify DNA, while it may eradicate thousands of diseases, also may allow researchers to explore morally gray areas of science, such as creating chimeras.

Meanwhile, the United States is also set to begin a human trial of CRISPR-Cas9 in early 2017, designed to treat several forms of cancer.

"I think this is going to trigger 'Sputnik 2.0', a biomedical duel on progress between China and the United States, which is important since competition usually improves the end product," Carl June, a scientific adviser to the U.S. trial and immunotherapy specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Nature.

Our closest wormy cousins: About 70% of our genes trace their ancestry back to the acorn worm

A team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has recently sequenced the genomes of two species of acorn worms and have found we humans share more genes with them that we do with many other animals, showing they are our distant cousins. Around 550 million years ago, a variety of animals were born into the world in an event called the Cambrian explosion. This event revealed several new animal body plans and introduced complex animals with specialized huts and behavioral features, including the deuterostome family. Through genome sequencing of several contemporary animals in this family we are capable of going back in time to unveil aspects of the long-lost ancestor of deuterostomes. One of the animals to come from this ancestor is the acorn worm, which is a marine creature that lives on the ocean floor and feeds by filtering a flow of sea water thought tiny slits in their gut region between their mouth and esophagus. These slits are distantly related to the gills of fish, and represent a critical development in evolution. Because acorn fish have such a critical evolutionary development the researchers sequenced two acorn worm species, including Ptychodera flava of Hawaii and the Saccoglossus kowalevskii found in the Atlantic Ocean. The team was interested in identifying ancient gene families that are present in the deuterostome ancestor, and thus compared the genomes of the two worms with the genomes of 32 diverse animals.

The study found that all deuterostomes share 8,600 families of genes, and that approximately 14,000 or about 70% of our genes trace their ancestry back to the original deuterostomes. By comparing the genomes of the acorn worm to other animals the group of researchers found the presence of these genes in the common ancestor of all the deuterostomes, which is a now extinct animal that live half a billion years ago. The study showed that the pharyngeal gene cluster, which forms the slit in the acorn worm, is a characteristic unique to the deuterostome family and could be linked to the development of the pharynx in the humans, which is the regions that links the mouth and nose to the esophagus.

The gene cluster was found to only exist in deuterostomes and is not found in non-deuterostomes. The gene cluster contains six genes ordered in a common pattern, that includes the genes for four proteins that are crucial transcription regulators that control the activation of numerous other genes. The DNA that codes for these genes, as well as some of the DNA pieces that are used as binding site for the transcriptions factors is shared and conserved among all deuterostomes.

I find this article extremely interesting because it shows how genetics and our genes can be used in the concept of evolution. The fact that we can trace our genes back billions of years and find common ancestors of modern day animals that are so different is extraordinary. It really shows the power of genetics and shows how our genetics can be so similar yet small changes can drastically change our development.

For a link to the original article click here
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To learn more about the acorn worm click here

A research team at Washington University in St. Louis, MO lead by Dr. C. Robert Cloninger investigated the genetic influence on schizophrenic disorders.  Approximately 1% of the general population have schizophrenia, but it occurs in around 10% of individuals who have a first-degree relative with this disorder.

Previous research like a study done at Cardiff University of Medicine focused on identifying new genes linked to Schizophrenia. However, in this study, Dr. Cloninger and his team choose to take a more collaborative approach by considering the interaction of several genes.  "[Genes] function in concert much like an orchestra, and to understand how they're working, you have to know not just who the members of the orchestra and how they interact."

In this study the genomes of 4,2000 people with schizophrenia and 3,800 without the disorder were analyzed. The team examined nearly 700,000 areas of the genome searching for  single nucleotidepolymorpism (SNP). SNP occurs when there is a variation within a single unit of DNA.

                                         WHATS THE IMPORTANCE? 

The study found that genes that are linked to schizophrenia individually have inconsistent associations with the disorder, however; when working together as clusters, they created a risk of 70-100% for the development of the disorder.

In identifying the genetic variations and symptoms they produce, it may be possible to select more efficient treatments for specific pathways that are responsible for the disorder. Dr. Cloninger and his research team's approach appears to be an efficient and innovative way to examine the source of this disease. Considering a larger scale, the application of this research can expand and be groundbreaking in regards to understanding other common complex health issues such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. 

Article: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282539.php 

Study suggests autism begins ‘long before birth’

A study was done on the brains of deceased children and it was evidenced that something before birth might cause autism. It was shown that clusters of disorganized brain cells were discovered in tissue samples from brain regions important for regulating social functioning, emotions and communication, which can all be troubling for children with autism. These abnormalities were actually found in 10 of 11 children with autism, but in only 1 of 11 children without the disease. The children’s brains were donated to science after death and causes of death included drowning, accidents, asthma and heart problems. The authors of the study said the clusters, detected with sophisticated lab tests, were probably defects that occurred during the second or third trimesters of pregnancy.

Scientists have been working for decades to find the cause of autism, and they always believe its origins begin before birth. This study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and scientists suggested that autism may be linked with abnormalities in the brain’s frontal region. The study follows Courchesne-led research suggesting that abnormal gene activity leads to an excessive number of brain cells in the brain’s pre-frontal cortex, located behind the forehead. The studies suggest that in children later diagnosed with autism, genetic networks that regulate prenatal brain cell growth are wrong. Larger studies are needed to determine how common the abnormalities are and what might be the cause.

Genetic Discovery Unlocks Biosynthesis of Medicinal Compound in Poppy

The discovery of a complex gene through a plant has been found in the latest issue of Science Daily. The pathway of noscapine has been looked into along with its ten genes which encode for five different enzyme classes. This is the most complex gene cluster found in plants and has been revealed to find a biochemical pathway for noscapine synthesis. This has also been found to accelerate the breeding of noscapine poppy varieties.

[caption id="attachment_5706" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Scientists at the University of York and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Australia have discovered a complex gene cluster responsible for the synthesis of the medicinal compound noscapine. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of York"][/caption]

Scientist discovered that the different varieties among the poppy produced noscapine that expressed a number of genes in a lot of offspring between crosses of noscapine and non noscapine varieties. A cluster was identified when looked at these genes all together which were inherited. By cloning and DNA sequencing the identity and arrangement of genes in the cluster was found. Noscapine has been used as a suppressant in cough mixtures for a long time now. It has been reported to have anti-cancer activity.

[caption id="attachment_5707" align="aligncenter" width="220" caption="Noscapine Structural Formula"][/caption]

 Industrial techniques have looked into large scale poppy harvesting and the extraction on other medicinal poppy alkaloid like “morphine” and the “baine”, to manufacture pain medicine. It has been said that the genes in fact are grouped in a cluster meaning that the plants breeding process becomes much faster and easier. Medicine has become a main part of our society now, and the different discoveries among plants can truly benefit people. The complex gene cluster found in the plant sounds a bit confusing, but I’m sure this pathway will strongly help scientists and pharmacologists introduce a new and improved cough suppressant in the near future.