Category Archives: Biochemistry

Biochemistry

Surveying all the Proteins on a Neuron’s Surface – Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Scientists have found a new way to home in on the proteins covering a particular cells surface. The feat offers insight into how brain cells form intricate networks during development.

As if casting a tiny net, a new technique has rounded up all the proteins on the surface of neurons in the brains of fruit flies. The roundup uncovered 20 new molecules involved in wiring the developing brain.

The find furthers scientists understanding of how neurons in the brain form complex networks, researchers report January 16, 2020, in the journal Cell. And it demonstrates for the first time that this protein-finding method actually works in intact brain tissues not just cells grown in the lab, says study coauthor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Liqun Luo.

Thats important because the tissue environment is crucial for cells development, and lab cell cultures cant replicate it. Until now, scientists had no way to monitor all the proteins on cell surfaces in complex tissues like the brain. The new approach provides a way to survey this previously mysterious landscape.

What really blew me away was the biological follow-up, says biochemist Matthias Mann of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. Luos team was able to find a trove of proteins whose biological role was previously unknown, says Mann, who was not involved with the work.

Cell surfaces are incredibly dynamic places, especially for cellular communication, says Luo, a neurobiologist at Stanford University. In the nervous system, proteins on the surfaces of nerve cells help the cells find each other and link up. Luos team wanted a complete view of the proteins that direct connections in the developing fly brain. The researchers focused on proteins involved in forming olfactory networks, which control a flys sense of smell.

Luo, along with his doctoral student Jiefu Li and collaborators at Stanford and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, modified a method pioneered by study coauthor Alice Ting. In this method, called proximity labeling, researchers use an enzyme to add a molecular tag to a particular protein of interest, plus all the neighboring proteins. Researchers can then identify the tagged proteins using a chemical analysis called mass spectrometry.

Luos team added a new twist to the technique. They made the enzyme target proteins on fruit fly olfactory neurons at a particular point in brain development: when neurons are making decisions about which connections to form. The team compared the proteins present in adult cells with those present in the developing brain. The difference is actually very striking, Luo says.

The team identified 20 proteins that were more abundant on the surfaces of developing neurons and knocked them down one by one to see if their absence had an effect on brain wiring. Surprising even to the researchers, all 20 were involved in wiring the fly olfactory network. Whats more, many of the proteins they found hadnt even been known to play a role in neural development.

Luo and Li hope their approach will be useful for researchers in other fields as well. Li says it could be applied to immunology as well as to understanding how organs develop or modeling disease. For example, he adds, cell surface proteins are altered in cancer cells, so profiling those proteins could help scientists understand how cancer cells behave within tissues.

Id love to use [this technique], says Joshua Sanes, a neuroscientist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research. Like Luo, Sanes (who is a member of HHMIs Scientific Review Board) is interested in how neurons form the precise patterns of connections that lead to all the complex neural circuitry underlying behavior. But he studies the brains of mammals, not flies. So, first, Sanes says, the method will have to be optimized for mammalian cells a goal that has so far been elusive.

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Citation

Jiefu Li et al. Cell-Surface Proteomic Profiling in the Fly Brain Uncovers New Wiring Regulators. Cell. Published online January 16, 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.12.029

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Surveying all the Proteins on a Neuron's Surface - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Biochemistry

The CEO of Impossible Foods, the startup behind the wildly popular veggie burger backed by Serena Williams and Katy Perry, shares the biggest piece of…

captionImpossible Foods CEO Pat Brown holds up an Impossible Burger 2.0, the new and improved version of the companys plant-based vegan burger that tastes like real beef.sourceRobyn Beck/Getty Images

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown is on a mission to make meat obsolete, and it looks like hes off to a pretty promising start.

Impossible Foods wildly popular plant-based burger can now be found at thousands of restaurants across the United States, and the company is bringing a new faux-sausage breakfast sandwich to Burger King by the end of the month.

Plus, last spring, the company raised $300 million in a Series E round led by Temasek and Horizon Ventures, who were joined by more than a dozen superstar investors ranging from Serena Williams to pop icon Katy Perry and rapper Jay-Z, bringing its valuation to $2 billion.

Suffice it to say that Browns bleeding meatless burger has caught on. But Brown didnt necessarily have any of these milestones in mind before starting Impossible Foods. Rather, the key to starting a successful company has less to do with business-oriented goals like fundraising and retail partnerships and more to do with the problem youre aiming to solve, says Brown.

The main thing I would say to people who are entrepreneurial is, pick a problem that matters to the world, Brown, who is in his 60s, said to Business Insider when asked what advice he would give to his 20-year-old self. Really, that solves a big problem in the world, and dont talk yourself out of it.

Brown started Impossible Foods in 2011 when he was on sabbatical from his roles as a biochemistry professor at Stanford Universitys medical school and an HHMI investigator. But he says he wishes he had a better understanding of the meat industry earlier on in his career so that he could have started Impossible Foods sooner.

If I would have realized how catastrophic the use of animals in the food system was when I was in my 20s, instead of going into biomedical research, I would have gone right to working on this problem, he says.

Impossible Foods recently unveiled its first new foods since debuting the original Impossible Burger in 2016: Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage. The company is testing a new Burger King breakfast sandwich that includes the meatless sausage at 139 locations in the US, but it has not said when Impossible Pork will be launching.

Impossible Foods decided to go with pork for its next major product expansion for two reasons: its the most widely eaten meat in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and Impossible Foods hopes to cut back on the detrimental effects that pig farming can have on the environment.

Were not going to solve the problem by declaring war on the incumbent industry or telling people to change their diets, Brown said in a previous interview with Business Insider. The only way to do it is by making products that do a better job of delivering what consumers value from meat and these other foods.

All told, even if your company fails, youll at least know your efforts have gone toward a worthy cause if you choose to address a meaningful problem, Brown says.

If you think you have the capability of coming up with a useful solution to the problem, thats the big opportunity, he said. I feel like the world does not need more gadgets to collect data on everyone, Alexa-enabled toothbrushes or whatever. Do something actually useful.

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The CEO of Impossible Foods, the startup behind the wildly popular veggie burger backed by Serena Williams and Katy Perry, shares the biggest piece of...

Biochemistry

Curcumin Combined with Thalidomide Reduces Expression of STAT3 and Bcl | DDDT – Dove Medical Press

Mahnaz Mohammadi Kian, 1, 2 Mahdieh Salemi, 1, 2 Mohammad Bahadoran, 3 Atousa Haghi, 1, 4 Nasrin Dashti, 5 Saeed Mohammadi, 1, 2 Shahrbano Rostami, 1, 2 Bahram Chahardouli, 1, 2 Davood Babakhani, 1 Mohsen Nikbakht 1, 2

1Hematology Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 2Hematologic Malignancies Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 3Department of Biochemistry, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; 4Young Researchers & Elite Club Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran; 5Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, School of Allied Health Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Correspondence: Mohsen NikbakhtHematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IranTel +982184902639Fax +982188004140Email m-nikbakht@sina.tums.ac.irNasrin DashtiDepartment of Medical Laboratory Sciences, School of Allied Health Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IranTel +989123583690Email dashti@tums.ac.ir

Introduction: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of blood disorder that exhibits uncontrolled growth and reduced ability to undergo apoptosis. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is a family member of transcription factors which promotes carcinogenesis in most human cancers. This effect on AML is accomplished through deregulation of several critical genes, such as B cell lymphoma-extra-large (BCL-XL) which is anti-apoptotic protein. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of curcumin (CUR) and thalidomide (THAL) on apoptosis induction and also the alteration of the mRNA expression level of STAT3 and BCL-XL mRNA on AML cell line compounds.Methods: The growth inhibitory effects of CUR and THAL and their combination were measured by MTT assay in U937 and KG-1 cell lines. The rates of apoptosis induction and cell cycle analysis were measured by concurrent staining with Annexin V and PI. The mRNA expression level of STAT3 and BCL-XL was evaluated by Real-Time PCR.Results: CUR inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis in both KG-1 and U937 cells and this effect increased by combination with THAL. The expression level of STAT3 and BCL-XL was significantly down-regulated in KG-1 cells after treatment by CUR and THAL and their combination.Conclusion: Overall, our findings suggested that down-regulation of STAT3 and BCL-XL mRNA expression in response to CUR and THAL treatment lead to inhibition of cell growth and induction of apoptosis.

Keywords: acute myeloid leukemia, curcumin, thalidomide, STAT3, Bcl-xL

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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Curcumin Combined with Thalidomide Reduces Expression of STAT3 and Bcl | DDDT - Dove Medical Press

Biochemistry

The Future of Food – UC Davis

Food is more than the energy that fuels our bodies it is preventive medicine. Maybe not a cheesy chimichanga, but the type of food that is loaded with vitamins and proteins can maximize the benefits to the human body.

We need to look at the functional properties of food more closely so we can achieve the desired outcome, said Justin Siegel, associate professor of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular medicine, and faculty director for the Innovation Institute for Food and Health. Instead of focusing on the quantity of food which is a legitimate long-term concern globally lets hone in on creating quality food that possesses more active nutritional ingredients that deliver greater health benefits with every serving.

Siegel has a vision to transform the greater Sacramento region into the incubator pipeline for food science innovations. The initiative, dubbed Food Valley, would accelerate the commercialization of game-changing ideas across the food system by tapping into research, industry and policy. It would also prepare tomorrows food innovators and entrepreneurs through experiential learning programs.

Food Valley aims to patent its food innovations through developing technologies. These concepts can be grown into companies and potentially be a launchpad for Aggie entrepreneurs.

Siegel became interested in biotechnology as a kid. More recently, he thought about the possibilities of using biotech to disrupt the food systems industry. He co-founded PVP Biologics, a food biotech company, in 2016. PVP created a pill called KumaMax, which could help those who have celiac disease. KumaMax is currently in clinical trials, awaiting FDA approval.

Food Valley is about letting people experience freedom in what they are able to eat especially as it pertains to food allergies and restrictions, Siegel said. With modern technology we can both see the exact molecules that make up our food and manipulate those molecules to change how they interact with someones body.

No centralized hub for food innovations exists yet. Siegel said he believes UCDavis has the right ingredients to emerge as the leader.

Twenty years ago, this was science fiction, he said. Now we can do things we never thought possible. There is going to be a hub for food innovation, and UCDavis should be the place it happens.

This is one of several Big Ideas, forward-thinking, interdisciplinary programs and projects that will build upon the strengths of UCDavis to positively impact the world for generations to come. Learn more at bigideas.ucdavis.edu.

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The Future of Food - UC Davis

Biochemistry

Breakthrough gives insight into early complex life on Earth – The Guardian

For the first 2 billion years, life on Earth comprised two microbial kingdoms bacteria and archaea. They featured an innumerable and diverse variety of species, but, ultimately, life on Earth was not that exciting judged by todays standards.

Then, the theory goes, a rogue archaeon gobbled up a bacterium to create an entirely new type of cell that would go on to form the basis of all complex life on Earth, from plants to humans.

Now, for the first time, scientists have succeeded in culturing an elusive species of archaea believed to be similar to the ancestor that gave rise to the first sophisticated cells, known as eukaryotes. The work has been described as a monumental advance that sheds new light on this evolutionary milestone.

Nick Lane, professor of evolutionary biochemistry at UCL, described the work as magnificent, while a commentary by two other experts in the field said it marked a huge breakthrough for microbiology.

Like bacteria, archaea continue to thrive on Earth today. But despite the pivotal role they are thought to have played in the emergence of complex life there has been relatively little research on them. Many species are found in inhospitable environments and are incredibly difficult to grow in the lab.

The Japanese team behind the latest advance has dedicated 12 years to the effort, overcoming a series of setbacks along the way.

Their scientific odyssey began in 2006 with the collection of a sample of deep-sea mud, dredged up by a submersible from the 2.5km deep Omine Ridge off the coast of Japan. The mud was placed in a bioreactor and continuously fed with methane for more than five years.

Most organisms that have been cultured in the lab reproduce rapidly, can live in large numbers, and grow by themselves, said Masaru Nobu, of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. The organism we isolated reproduces 1,000 times slower than E. coli, only lives in small numbers, and depends on symbiotic partners to grow.

Nobu and colleagues then took smaller samples from the reactor and placed them in glass tubes, which sat in the lab for another year before showing any obvious signs of life. The researchers painstakingly coaxed them along, feeding them a blend of nutrients including powdered baby milk. The cells took two to four weeks to replicate and divide, meaning each stage of the study took months.

While the epic experiment was running, a fortuitous discovery was made by a Dutch team, also researching archaea. They sequenced microbial DNA extracted from mud from a hydrothermal vent off the coast of Greenland. One intriguing genome stood out: it was clearly a member of the archaea, but dotted through its DNA were genes similar to those seen in eukaryotic cells.

Scientists called it the Asgard archaea and suggested that the ancestors of this evolutionary branch could have bridged the gap between basic and complex life billions of years earlier.

When the Japanese team sequenced their samples, genetic analysis revealed they had managed to cultivate the same Asgard archaea. Until this point, scientists had found out the genetic code, but had no idea what the organism actually looked like.

The latest work reveals that the Asgard archaea are small simple cells, but feature long tentacle-like structures reaching out of the cells. Not everyone agrees that they represent the origins of complex life. But the theorys proponents suggest that one of these cells could have engulfed a bacteria, with the bacteria then going on to become structures known as mitochondria, which act as an internal power supply in all complex cells today. Bacteria and archaea lack this internal architecture.

The Japanese team suggest that Asgards newly revealed spaghetti-like tendrils could have engulfed a passing bacteria and formed a symbiotic relationship with it. After several evolutionary leaps, the two organisms could have become one, more complex, cell type a primitive eukaryote.

The scenario is still speculative and is likely to remain under active debate for the next decade. Either way, the advance is likely to trigger a resurgence of interest in these under-explored microbes.

The importance of this work its hard to describe, said Lane. You see these genome sequences and try and reconstruct what the cell might look like, but you cant do that with any real power. Finally you see what the cell looks like and its not what anyone expected.

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Breakthrough gives insight into early complex life on Earth - The Guardian

Biochemistry

Astrobiologist talks about the possibility of invisible aliens, suggests the existence of silicon-based life form – International Business Times,…

NASA intern who found unpredicted type of Northern Lights

It was around a few days back that Dr Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet Mir space station in May 1991, suggested the possibility of invisible alien forms that might be living among us on the earth. Now, Samantha Rolfe, a Lecturer in Astrobiology and Principal Technical Officer at Bayfordbury Observatory, University of Hertfordshire has talked about the possibility of alternate biochemistry, and the way in which this unknown biochemistry supports alien life.

Silicon-based alien life?

Rolfe made these comments in her recent article on The Conversation. In her article, Rolfe revealed that life may exist in a shadow biosphere, and due to limitations in modern technology, humans have not explored it.

"Life would exist in a "shadow biosphere". By that, I don't mean a ghost realm, but undiscovered creatures probably with different biochemistry. This means we can't study or even notice them because they are outside of our comprehension. Assuming it exists, such a shadow biosphere would probably be microscopic," wrote Rolfe.

As per Rolfe, silicon-based life could explain the existence of invisible alien life, as it is very similar to carbon, and has four electrons available for creating bonds with other atoms. "A popular suggestion for alternative biochemistry is one based on silicon rather than carbon. It makes sense, even from a geocentric point of view. Around 90% of the Earth is made up of silicon, iron, magnesium, and oxygen, which means there are lots to go around for building potential life," added Rolfe.

Rolfe believes that silicon-based aliens might be thriving on Saturn's moon Titan, or in other exoplanets. She also urged experts to think outside of the terrestrial biology box to detect such alien life forms.

Did advanced aliens visit earth?

However, Samantha Rolfe does not think advanced aliens that are technologically more advanced have visited the earth from the deep nooks of the universe. However, she made it clear that alien life forms might be harboring somewhere as carbon-based molecules were discovered on meteorites.

In the meantime, NASA chief scientist Dr Jim Green had recently predicted that alien life forms at least in its microbial form will be discovered on Mars within 2021. He also made it clear that humanity is not ready to accept the realities surrounding extraterrestrial existence.

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Astrobiologist talks about the possibility of invisible aliens, suggests the existence of silicon-based life form - International Business Times,...

Biochemistry

Bristol University uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to speed up smoking cessation drug discovery – ComputerWeekly.com

Scientists at the University of Bristol have published research showing how nicotine affects receptors in the brain as part of an effort to design drugs that will help smokers to quit.

They have done so using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure donated by the supplier and in collaboration with Achieve Life Sciences, a Seattle-based pharmaceutical company focused on the commercialisation of Cytisinicline, a plant-based alkaloid with a high binding affinity to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in the human brain.

According to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, the majority of smokers would like to stop smoking, and each year around half try to quit permanently. Yet, only about 6% of smokers are able to quit in any given year. Smoking is the second most common cause of death worldwide.

The paper that issued from the Bristol research, A general mechanism for signal propagation in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor family, was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in December 2019.

Two of the authors are from Oracles Cloud Development Centre in Bristol, Phil Bates and Gerardo Viedma Nunez.

Adrian Mulholland from the University of Bristols Centre for Computational Chemistry was co-lead author on the paper, along with Richard Sessions, senior research fellow at the School of Biochemistry at Bristol.

Mulholland told Computer Weekly: Our work shows how nicotine exerts its effects on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Understanding this should help us design better smoking cessation aids.

The study, led by led University of Bristol scientists but involving academics from other institutions, used Oracles cloud infrastructure. The researchers used new computational simulation methods to conduct 450 assessments of the biochemistry associated with the binding of nicotine to a subtype of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, a mechanism believed to be responsible for the highly addictive nature of the drug.

Each simulation takes eight hours to run on a single cloud node, said Mulholland. If we had used our own high-performance computing facility, it would have taken 90 days to do what we did in five.

We are lucky at Bristol to have pretty good HPC resources, but what the Oracle Cloud enabled us to do was to run a new class of simulation non-equilibrium simulations, of which there are hundreds that have to be done in parallel. The Oracle Cloud enabled us to run them in a matter of weeks, whereas it would otherwise have taken us a year.

To understand why nicotine is so addictive, and to develop molecules to help people quit smoking, we need to understand how nicotine affects the nervous system. By harnessing the power of cloud computing, we can quickly observe how nicotine exerts its effects at the molecular level. This information can inform future drug development of new treatments for companies like Achieve.

According to a press statement from Achieve Life Sciences, Oracle and Bristol, the university and the pharmaceutical firm have teamed up to formulate molecules and potential treatments to combat addiction and neurological disorders based on smoking cessation compound in development, cytisinicline.

Cytisinicline is, according to the statement, a plant-based alkaloid with a high binding affinity to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. It is believed to aid in smoking cessation by interacting with nicotine receptors in the brain by reducing the severity of nicotine withdrawal symptoms and by reducing the reward and satisfaction associated with smoking.

The drug has been approved in Central and Eastern Europe for more than two decades, and has been used by more than 20 million people, according to the press statement.

The paper is one output of research originally funded by the EPSRC in 2016, with 724,000.

Mulholland said the beauty of being able to use cloud computing for this sort of scientific research lies in its capacity to enable collaboration. Im a great believer in different sorts of scientists working together to get the best results. And thats not about computation in its own right, but as part of a product development programme, he said.

Its helping to inform what sort of molecules people might make to test as potential medicines. Being able to do the computational simulations fast enough so that scientists can design and adapt their experiments quickly should accelerate drug development. We couldnt have done this two years ago.

The work brought together computational chemists, biochemists and research software engineers, working together to deploy the simulations of nicotine receptors.

The computer simulations methodology used in this particular area of neuroscience could also, said Mulholland, be applied to the study of schizophrenia and Alzheimers.

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Bristol University uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to speed up smoking cessation drug discovery - ComputerWeekly.com

Biochemistry

Invisible Aliens May Be Living Among Us. How Could This Be Possible? – Newsweek

Life is pretty easy to recognise. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym "MRSGREN" to describe it. It stands for movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition.

But Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut and a chemist at Imperial College London, recently said that alien lifeforms that are impossible to spot may be living among us. How could that be possible?

While life may be easy to recognize, it's actually notoriously difficult to define and has had scientists and philosophers in debate for centuriesif not millennia. For example, a 3D printer can reproduce itself, but we wouldn't call it alive. On the other hand, a mule is famously sterile, but we would never say it doesn't live.

As nobody can agree, there are more than 100 definitions of what life is. An alternative (but imperfect) approach is describing life as "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution," which works for many cases we want to describe.

The lack of definition is a huge problem when it comes to searching for life in space. Not being able to define life other than "we'll know it when we see it" means we are truly limiting ourselves to geocentric, possibly even anthropocentric, ideas of what life looks like. When we think about aliens, we often picture a humanoid creature. But the intelligent life we are searching for doesn't have to be humanoid.

Sharman says she believes aliens exist and "there's no two ways about it." Furthermore, she wonders: "Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them."

Such life would exist in a "shadow biosphere." By that, I don't mean a ghost realm, but undiscovered creatures probably with a different biochemistry. This means we can't study or even notice them because they are outside of our comprehension. Assuming it exists, such a shadow biosphere would probably be microscopic.

So why haven't we found it? We have limited ways of studying the microscopic world as only a small percentage of microbes can be cultured in a lab. This may mean that there could indeed be many lifeforms we haven't yet spotted. We do now have the ability to sequence the DNA of unculturable strains of microbes, but this can only detect life as we know itthat contain DNA.

If we find such a biosphere, however, it is unclear whether we should call it alien. That depends on whether we mean "of extraterrestrial origin" or simply "unfamiliar."

A popular suggestion for an alternative biochemistry is one based on silicon rather than carbon. It makes sense, even from a geocentric point of view. Around 90 percent of the Earth is made up of silicon, iron, magnesium and oxygen, which means there's lots to go around for building potential life.

Silicon is similar to carbon, it has four electrons available for creating bonds with other atoms. But silicon is heavier, with 14 protons (protons make up the atomic nucleus with neutrons) compared to the six in the carbon nucleus. While carbon can create strong double and triple bonds to form long chains useful for many functions, such as building cell walls, it is much harder for silicon. It struggles to create strong bonds, so long-chain molecules are much less stable.

What's more, common silicon compounds, such as silicon dioxide (or silica,) are generally solid at terrestrial temperatures and insoluble in water. Compare this to highly soluble carbon dioxide, for example, and we see that carbon is more flexible and provides many more molecular possibilities.

Life on Earth is fundamentally different from the bulk composition of the Earth. Another argument against a silicon-based shadow biosphere is that too much silicon is locked up in rocks. In fact, the chemical composition of life on Earth has an approximate correlation with the chemical composition of the sun, with 98 percent of atoms in biology consisting of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. So if there were viable silicon lifeforms here, they may have evolved elsewhere.

That said, there are arguments in favour of silicon-based life on Earth. Nature is adaptable. A few years ago, scientists at Caltech managed to breed a bacterial protein that created bonds with siliconessentially bringing silicon to life. So even though silicon is inflexible compared with carbon, it could perhaps find ways to assemble into living organisms, potentially including carbon.

And when it comes to other places in space, such as Saturn's moon Titan or planets orbiting other stars, we certainly can't rule out the possibility of silicon-based life.

To find it, we have to somehow think outside of the terrestrial biology box and figure out ways of recognising lifeforms that are fundamentally different from the carbon-based form. There are plenty of experiments testing out these alternative biochemistries, such as the one from Caltech.

Regardless of the belief held by many that life exists elsewhere in the universe, we have no evidence for that. So it is important to consider all life as precious, no matter its size, quantity or location. The Earth supports the only known life in the universe. So no matter what form life elsewhere in the solar system or universe may take, we have to make sure we protect it from harmful contaminationwhether it is terrestrial life or alien lifeforms.

So could aliens be among us? I don't believe that we have been visited by a life form with the technology to travel across the vast distances of space. But we do have evidence for life-forming, carbon-based molecules having arrived on Earth on meteorites, so the evidence certainly doesn't rule out the same possibility for more unfamiliar life forms.

Samantha Rolfe is a Lecturer in Astrobiology and Principal Technical Officer at the Bayfordbury Observatory, University of Hertfordshire, U.K.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Invisible Aliens May Be Living Among Us. How Could This Be Possible? - Newsweek

Biochemistry

Januarys Rotary Youth of the… – Renton Reporter

Rotary members recognize three Renton School District high school students each month as Youth of the Month.

After being selected by counselors at each of the districts three comprehensive high schools, a selection committee of Rotary members review applications and interview students to identify those who will be selected as Youth of the Month.

The award is given to students who possess leadership abilities, maintain a good grade point average, participate in school activities and volunteer in their community.

January Rotary Youth of the Month are:

Megan Fung

Senior at Hazen High School

Megan holds a 3.9 GPA; she has been involved in Band, Key Club, HOSA, STEM Club and National Honor Society. She has received Solo and Ensemble Band ratings of Excellent and Superior and Outstanding Marcher Award.

Megan volunteers with the Bellevue Arts Museum, KidsQuest, local schools, Seattle Reign and many other fundraising events in the community.

She plans to attend a four-year university to major in a STEM field, like engineering and would like to intern at labs during her college years to gain experience and prepare for a career after she completes her degree. At this time, she hopes to become a chemical engineer.

Lauren Huynh

Senior at Hazen High School

Lauren holds a 3.9 GPA; she has been involved in Hazen Drill Team, Key Club, Philharmonic Orchestra, National Honor Society, Gordy Guides and Earth Corps. She has received Hazen Academic All-Star (multiple times), Soundview Orchestra Superior Ratings, Drill Team Academic State Champions, Varsity Letters, District and State Drill Awards, and 2019 National Drill Champion.

Outside of school, Lauren has been taking piano and viola lessons for many years.

She plans to attend a four-year college or university to study architecture or design and is interested in working as an interior designer for staging homes, hotels or businesses.

Connor Donahue

Senior at Lindbergh High School

Connor holds a 3.9 GPA; he has been involved in Key Club, National Honor Society, Class Senator, College Access Now, Eagle Crew and Lindbergh Swim. He has received AP Scholar with Distinction, Perfect Score-SAT II World History, Department Student of the Month, Outstanding Junior Award, OSHA and Microsoft JAVA Certification, Eagle of the Year Award, and State and District Swim placements/awards.

Connor works part-time as a lifeguard for the City of Renton and volunteers with Birthday Dreams and the Chinook Aquatic Club.

Hes planning to attend a private four-year college to pursue a degree in engineering or economics and is interested in a career in a STEM related field such as biochemistry or nuclear engineering.

Samirah Apdalhaliem

Senior at Renton High School

Samirah holds a 3.9 GPA; she has been involved in HOSA Club, Renton Peer Mentor, Renton Multicultural Festival and Renton High Tennis. She has received Honor Roll, Department Award and Citizenship/Academic Award.

Samirah works at the Samena Swim and Recreation Club as a front desk member and has spent time volunteering with the Woodland Park Zoo, Cham Refugee Community, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

She is planning to attend a four-year university, in Washington, majoring in Biology-Physiology. She hopes to continue her education to attend the University of Washington Medical School and pursue a career in medicine to give back to her community.

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Januarys Rotary Youth of the... - Renton Reporter

Biochemistry

Aloin Inhibits the Proliferation and Migration of Gastric Cancer Cells | DDDT – Dove Medical Press

Ziqian Wang, 1, 2 Tuo Tang, 1, 2 Shengnan Wang, 1, 2 Tianyu Cai, 1, 2 Hong Tao, 1, 2 Qing Zhang, 1, 2 Shimei Qi, 1, 2 Zhilin Qi 1, 2

1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, Anhui 241002, Peoples Republic of China; 2Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Active Biological Macro-Molecules, Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, Anhui 241002, Peoples Republic of China

Correspondence: Zhilin QiDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wannan Medical College, 22 Wenchang West Road, Wuhu, Anhui 241002, Peoples Republic of ChinaEmail 422627721@qq.com

Background: Aloin has been reported to have many pharmacological effects including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-tumour activities. However, the precise molecular mechanisms underlying the anti-tumour properties of aloin are yet to be elucidated.Methods: HGC-27 and BGC-823 gastric cancer cells were treated with aloin. EdU and colony formation assays were used to detect the proliferation ability of cells. The migration of cells was detected using wound healing and transwell assays. Western blotting was used to detect the levels of cyclinD1, cyclin E1, MMPs, N-cadherin, E-cadherin and NOX2. The phosphorylation of Akt, mTOR, P70S6K, S6, Src, stat3 and IB were also detected by Western blotting. Flow cytometry was used to detect the cell cycle distribution.The location of p65 in cells was determined by using a confocal microscopy assay. The total amounts of ROS present in cells were measured using an ROS assay kit.Results: Here, we found that aloin inhibited the proliferation and migration of HGC-27 and BGC-823 gastric cancer cells using a combination of EdU, colony formation, wound healing and transwell assays. Further investigations revealed that aloin decreased the protein expression levels of cyclin D1, N-cadherin, and the matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-2 and MMP-9; increased E-cadherin expression in a dose-dependent manner; inhibited reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation; and mediated the activation of Akt-mTOR, signal transducer and activator of transcription-3 (Stat3), and NF-B signalling pathways. Our results also indicated that aloin is able to attenuate the expression levels of the two regulatory proteins of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase 2 (NOX2), p47phox and p22phox, but had no effect on the level of gp91phox. N-acetylcysteine treatment of gastric cancer cells inhibited ROS production and Akt-mTOR, Stat3, and IB phosphorylation. Taken together, our data suggest that aloin inhibits the proliferation and migration of gastric cancer cells by downregulating NOX2ROS-mediated activation of the Akt-mTOR, Stat3, and NF-B signalling pathways.Conclusion: Our findings suggest a potential role for aloin in the prevention of gastric cancer cell proliferation and migration and provide novel insights into the anti-cancer properties of aloin.

Keywords: aloin, gastric cancer, proliferation, migration, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase 2, reactive oxygen species

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