2019

“Natural killer cells” roam the body, demanding that other cells produce evidence of good faith—otherwise, they kill them: In general, two things must happen before an NK cell attacks a target cell: (1) It must receive an activating signal from a body cell that says, “Kill me!” (2) It must not receive an inhibitory signal that says, “Wait, don’t kill me!” This inhibitory signal is essentially a proper “ID card” known as a major histocompatibility complex I (MHC I) protein. When a body cell shows the NK cell this identification, the NK cell is temporarily satisfied and moves on to the next cell. If the next cell is not able to provide an MHC I molecule (or provides one that Read More ›

The National Academies of Science is wading into the longstanding mess over the validity of research findings. It doesn’t, of course, agree that there is a “crisis.” That said, the report also notes that the American public’s confidence in science hasn’t wavered at all in recent years, despite major news articles discussing the “crisis” in psychology and elsewhere. And it found that even scientists who have criticized the current state of things aren’t completely on-board with calling science broken. “How extensive is the lack of reproducibility in research results in science and engineering in general? The easy answer is that we don’t know,” Brain Nosek, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science, told the report committee during a Read More ›

Riffing off Elon Musk’s goal of sending humans to Mars by 2024, and NASA’s plans to send astronauts there after they visit the Moon again, Rice University evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon envisions “mutations cascading through the gene pool”: After about two generations, he thinks their bones will strengthen, they’ll need glasses for nearsightedness, their immune systems will be null, pregnancy and childbirth will be significantly more perilous, and the exposure to radiation—more than 5,000 times the amount we’re exposed to on Earth during a normal lifetime, Solomon says—could lead to an influx of cancer.Natalie Coleman, “Evolutionary Biologist: Mars Colonists Will Mutate Really Fast” at Futurism As a result, he thinks Martians should stop having kids with Earthlings. Hey, what do Read More ›

Let’s read the Nature abstract: Nature (2019) Article | Published: 15 May 2019 Total synthesis of Escherichia coli with a recoded genome Julius Fredens, Kaihang Wang, Daniel de la Torre, Louise F. H. Funke, Wesley E. Robertson, Yonka Christova, Tiongsun Chia, Wolfgang H. Schmied, Daniel L. Dunkelmann, Václav Beránek, Chayasith Uttamapinant, Andres Gonzalez Llamazares, Thomas S. Elliott & Jason W. Chin AbstractNature uses 64 codons to encode the synthesis of proteins from the genome, and chooses 1 sense codon—out of up to 6 synonyms—to encode each amino acid. Synonymous codon choice has diverse and important roles, and many synonymous substitutions are detrimental. Here we demonstrate that the number of codons used to encode the canonical amino acids can be reduced, Read More ›