Could other planets support life? It's likely, and there may be more in our very own galaxy than previously thought. Astronomers have found that there are about 100 million other places in the Milky Way galaxy that could support complex life.
The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 planets and used a formula that considered planet density, temperature, substrate, chemistry, distance from its central star and age. This gave scientists a good sense of whether the planet could potentially support life; from this, the researchers created the Biological Complexity Index (BCI).
What if it were possible to explore your brain in virtual reality, watching your thoughts flashing before your eyes? A team of neuroscientists and software developers have created a way to do precisely that.
A new system combines brain scanning, brain recording and virtual reality to allow a user to journey through a person's brain in real-time. This "glass brain" was demonstrated here at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival today (March 10).
The concept of teleportation seems to primarily come from science fiction literature throughout history, but things have recently changed. It’s 2014 and developments in quantum theory and general relativity physics have been successful in exploring the concept of teleportation for quite some time now.
Massive planets called "super-Earths" are common in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, though, scientists have found that these planets are far more likely to have an Earth-like climate than previously thought. The findings could help researchers in their hunt for habitable planets.
In previous research, scientists thought that super-Earths would be very unlike Earth; each would be a waterworld with its surface completely covered in water. This new study, though, challenges these findings.
In order to learn a bit more about super-Earths, the researchers created a model that treated these exoplanets like Earth, which has quite a bit of water in its mantle. This rock contains tiny amounts of water, which quickly adds up because the mantle is so large.
In addition, a deep water cycle moves water between oceans and the mantle. This idea actually showed that if super-Earths stored most of their water in their mantles, then they would have oceans and exposed continents. This would enable a stable climate, like Earth's.
The process by which common algae is converted into usable biofuel just got a whole lot more environmentally friendly and efficient thanks to new discoveries recently made at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
Researchers there have reportedly come up with a new method of extracting crude oil from wet algae that uses no toxic chemicals and takes about an hour to complete, arguably the most significant renewable energy technology breakthrough in recent years.
The process is known as hydrothermal liquefaction, and some experts say it is the most promising advancement yet towards the eventual commercial production of usable fuel from algae. By putting harvested algae under immense and continuous pressure and heat, PNNL researchers discovered that the all-natural substance can be quickly and effectively transformed into usable crude oil, generating only clean water, nutrients and natural fuel gas as byproducts.
Is there another you reading this article at this exact moment in a parallel universe?
Dr. Brian Greene, author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, believes that this freakish quirk of nature may exist; and he discusses its amazing possibilities in this 3-minute TV interview.
A growing number of cosmologists agree with Greene that we are but one of many universes and at least one of these other worlds lies close to ours, maybe only a millimeter away. We can't see this world, because it exists in a type of space different from the four dimensions of our everyday reality.
Quantum entanglement is a part of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as "spooky action at a distance." Now, though, scientists have discovered that this phenomenon could be even stranger than Einstein thought.
They've found that quantum entanglement may be intrinsically linked with wormholes, which are hypothetical features of space-time that that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of universe to another.
Scientists are getting a little help when it comes to exploring the universe. More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists have helped to catalog more than 300,000 nearby galaxies.
Named Galaxy Zoo 2, the project is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to help categorize the galaxies in our universe.
Crowdsourcing is becoming a new and useful tool for scientists. While computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as the size and color of galaxies, they're unable to tackle more challenging characteristics. For example, computers have a hard time determining the shape and structure of galaxies. That's where citizen scientists come in.
Scientists have made a materials breakthrough. They've created the first self-healing thermoset elastomer that requires no intervention to induce its repair. The findings could be huge when it comes to the creation of self-healing materials.
Self-healing polymers mend themselves by reforming broken cross-linking bonds. Yet this cross-linking healing mechanism usually requires an external stimulus, which means that these materials aren't necessarily practical. These stimuli can include energy inputs or specific environmental conditions, such as pH. The researchers came close before to making such a self-healing material. In Spain, scientists created self-healing silicone elastomers using silver nanoparticles. Unfortunately, an applied external pressure was needed to make them work.
Virgin Galactic has made another leap forward when it comes to perfecting its fleet of spacecraft.
The company's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) has successfully completed its second rocket-powered, supersonic flight. That's not all, though; the company has also released some spectacular footage of this amazing flight.
SS2 is actually designed to ferry passengers into space. This latest flight, which occurred on September 5, demonstrated the vehicle's full technical mission profile in a single flight for the first time. This included a high altitude deployment of the unique wing "feathering" re-entry mechanism.
Are we hardwired for friendship? We just may be. One of the most defining features of humanity is our empathy and now, scientists have discovered why we may be hardwired to empathize.
In order to study our capacity for friendship and empathy, researchers examined 22 adult participants who underwent fMRI scans of their brains during experiments to monitor brain activity. During the scans, the volunteers were under threat of either receiving mild electrical shocks to themselves or to a friend or stranger.
The sun is a major source of visible light and energy on this planet. It represents all-pervading consciousness which animates all things providing us with what some believe to be unlimited energy.
According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip. What are the cosmic and personal implications of this? It is not such a unique phenomenon, as it happens every eleven years. Still, every eleven years, shifts in human consciousness around this period seem to occur like clock work.
It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of ‘Solar Max’ will be behind us, with half yet to come.
“It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”
Hoeksema is the director of Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun’s polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet’s polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun’s polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals–with a fourth in the offing.
A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.
The sun recently unleashed three X-class solar flares which were the strongest flares of the year so far. They signaled a significant increase in solar storms now supported by continued activity.
Maximum Sunspot Activity Correlates with Mass Human Excitability
Historically, research has been conducted to link the 11 year cycle of the sun to changes in human behavior and society. The most famous research was been done by professor A.L. Tchijevsky, a Russian scientist, who presented a paper to the American Meteorological Society at Philadelphia in the late 19th century. He prepared a study of the history of mass human movement compared to the solar cycle, beginning with the division of the Solar cycle into four parts: 1) Minimum sunspot activity; 2) increasing sunspot activity; 3) maximum sunspot activity; 4) Decreasing sunspot activity. He then divided up the agitation of mass human movements into five phases:
1) provoking influence of leaders upon masses
2) the “exciting” effect of emphasized ideas upon the masses
3) the velocity of incitability due to the presence of a single psychic center
4) the extensive areas covered by mass movements
5) Integration and individualization of the masses
By these comparisons he constructed an “Index of Mass Human Excitability” covering each year from 500 B.C. to 1922 A.D. He investigated the histories of 72 countries in that period, noting signs of human unrest such as wars, revolutions, riots, expeditions and migrations, plus the number of humans involved. Tchijevsky found that fully 80% of the most significant events occurred during the years of maximum sunspot activity. He maintained that the “exciting” period may be explained by an acute change in the nervous and psychic character of humanity, which takes place at sunspot maxima.
Tchijevsky discovered that the solar minimum is the lag period when repression is tolerated by the masses, as if they lacked the vital energy to make the needed changes. He found that during the sunspot maximum, the movement of humans is also at its peak. Tchijevsky’s study is the foundation of sunspot theory on human behavior, and as Harlan True Stetson, in his book Sunspots and Their Effects, stated, “Until, however, someone can arrive at a more convincing excitability quotient for mass movements than professor Tchijevsky appears yet to have done, scientists will be reluctant to subscribe to all the conclusions which he sets forth.” Stetson did acknowledge that the mechanism by which ultraviolet radiation is absorbed was still a puzzle biologists had to solve.
Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth’s geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October.
Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk over the same period.
Shumilov acknowledges that a correlation like this does not necessarily mean there is a causal link, but he points out that there have been several other studies suggesting a link between human health and geomagnetism.
For example, a 2006 review of research on cardiovascular health and disturbances in the geomagnetic field in the journal Surveys in Geophysics (DOI: 10.1007/s10712-006-9010-7) concluded that a link was possible and that the effects seemed to be more pronounced at high latitudes.
Twinned peaks
The review’s author, Michael Rycroft, formerly head of the European Geosciences Society, says that geomagnetic health problems affect 10 to 15% of the population.
“Others have found similar things [to Shumilov's results] in independent sets of data,” says Rycroft. “It suggests something may be linking the two factors.”
A 2006 Australian study, for example, also found a correlation between peaks in suicide numbers and geomagnetic activity (Bioelectromagnetics, vol. 27 p 155).
Brain storms
Psychiatrists too have noticed a correlation between geomagnetic activity and suicide rates. A review of 13 years of South African data on suicides and magnetic storms in South African Psychiatry Review, vol. 6 p. 24) suggested a link.
Geomagnetic storms – periods of high geomagnetic activity caused by large solar flares – have also been linked to clinical depression.
In 1994, a study was published suggesting a 36.2% increase in the number of men admitted into hospital for depression in the second week after geomagnetic storms (British Journal of Psychiatry vol 164, p 403).
What may be the cause of the link, if there is one, remains unknown. “The intriguing correlation between geomagnetism and suicide justifies more research into its mechanism,” says Rycroft.
Environmental cue?
“The most plausible explanation for the association between geomagnetic activity and depression and suicide is that geomagnetic storms can desynchronise circadian rhythms and melatonin production,” says Kelly Posner, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in the US.
The pineal gland, which regulates circadian rhythm and melatonin production, is sensitive to magnetic fields. “The circadian regulatory system depends upon repeated environmental cues to [synchronise] internal clocks,” says Posner. “Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues.”
Geomagnetic storms could disrupt body clocks, precipitating seasonal affective disorder and therefore increase suicide risk, Posner stated.
There seems little doubt that the brain responds to electromagnetic fields – coils that generate electromagnetic fields can trigger muscular twitches when placed over a person’s skull.
However, Shumilov, who was presenting his data at the European Geoscience Union (EGU) annual meeting in Vienna, Austria, last week, does not believe geomagnetic activity influences everyone equally.
Suicide statistics
He also presented hospital data from 6000 pregnant women who had routine scans of their fetus’s heart rates between 1995 and 2003. In 15% of the fetuses, periods of disturbances in their heart rates coincided with periods of high geomagnetic activity.
Shumilov accepts that light levels in northern countries can influence depression, but believes that geomagnetism may be another factor, and one that is under-appreciated.
"The trouble with studying the causes of suicide is that it is a rare condition," says Klaus Ebmeier, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. “You are bound to get spurious effects. A study of the causes would have to enrol a country’s entire population.”
Cosmo Hallstrom, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, agrees. “You have to be very careful with suicide statistics,” he says. “Countries report them differently. Catholic countries are very reluctant to diagnose suicide. Scandinavian countries consider it a social injustice not to.”
Photonic energy inevitably affects Consciousness and influences our health
While the mechanism behind the stimulation of human behavior is still a mystery, many are now accepting that humanity is receiving the highest support from the consciousness of the cosmos, allowing us to wake up to our magnificence and divine connection to each other and the universe. The Sun is only assisting in this inevitable process.
It will be traumatic for many when those revelations of why human consciousness if shifting at the same time major changes are being introduced. Knowing that all of the confusion and turmoil is heralding Earth’s exit from third density, how will we be prepared to weather the coming months and to help those who are foundering.
The interesting fact about this energy is that since it is of a higher frequency it creates the power of instant manifestation of our thoughts, which means whatever we think, we create instantly. This never before happened in our lifetime and that is why many people are writing books on the subject on the Power of Attraction.
Photonic energy connects to our thoughts so it is important that we know what we want, rather than we don’t want, otherwise, we will manifest more of what we don’t want. If you are in the process of change and transformation this energy works well for you. On the other hand, if you are stuck in the past through victimization and anger, you will simply manifest more reasons to remain stuck in victimization until you are ready to release it.
There is some Russian research that shows an increase in cardiac problems during sunspot maxima. The solar activity probably sets off a preexisting condition and no one is suggesting that people will drop dead in the streets. We could see the stress of solar activity on the biology of living things as an evolutionary agent weeding out the old and sick and strengthening those who can resonate with its radiations.
There will also be an increased frequency of deaths worldwide following the solar maxima. These may take place through accidents, illness and other factors which will be attributed to chance, however most of these deaths will be related to an acceleration of consciousness and self-imposed termination for those not willing or ready to experience a fourth dimensional experience.
Professor d’Arsonval gives several examples of research done in the last hundred years that shows the most malefic effects from solar activity come at the sunspot minima. He notes from the British Medical Journal, March 7th & 14th of 1936 that both Colonel C.A. Gill and Dr. Conyers Morrel found increases in pandemics of deadly diseases during the period of minimal sunspot activity.
In Gill’s study he showed that every pandemic of malaria since sunspot records were taken had occurred when sunspot numbers were lowest. Similar trends were observed in East Africa and elsewhere with Yellow fever epidemics since 1800 occur during the sunspot minima. Dr. Conyers Morrel also finds that, “…waves of epidemic diseases covering considerable periods exhibit a very close correspondence with the phases of sunspot periods. Diphtheria, Typhus, and Dysentery seemed to prosper when there was an absence of solar activity. We also see an increase in disease in Solco W. Tromp’s study. Without the stimulation from the Sun human health seems to diminish. The immune system seems to grow unresponsive during the solar lull and diseases can more easily gain a foothold in the body.
Not only human health but Life itself seems hampered by the lack of solar activity. William Hershel wrote in 1801, “It seems probable analyzing the period between 1650 and 1713, and judging by the normal yields of wheat, that a scarcity of vegetation occurred whenever the sun appeared to be free from spots.” The depressed state of metabolism and lack of food in agricultural centers may have seemed very inviting to the Mongols. Goncharov, in an abstract on the “Asian Nomadic Invasions and Solar Cycles”, aid, “From the 4th to the 16th centuries the Central Asian Steepe was the cradle of the series of great nomadic tribal invasions into agricultural regions of Europe, China, and South Asia. Those invasions had similar features. They arose in middle latitudes and recurred every 160-220 years — exactly after solar abatements.”
What we will be experiencing in 2013 and 2014 more than anything else is a constant upgrade to our current belief systems, collective consciousness and awareness of earth’s true history from the constant bombardment of solar activity.
There will be no more major wars but a shift with no central ideology. This ideology will grow and spread worldwide with no exception. The shared understanding is arising from different economic sectors, cultures and regions. Our economic landscape will change, and although a planned one-world currency will be enacted, we will quickly dismiss this new system within a short period of time and move toward non-monetary systems.
All these information packets from the Sun will make us feel like we need to find a new center of truth. As galactic connections increase around the 2012 summer solstice and then again for the universal collective around the 2012 winter solstice, we must all listen intently to our intuition and trust it. If it doesn’t feel right, switch over to something that does. It’s that simple.
Astronomers have discovered a ‘comet graveyard’ within the Solar system’s asteroid belt, consisting of ‘Lazarus comets’ that could jump back to life after having been inactive for millions of years.
The ‘enormous graveyard of ancient dormant and extinct rocky comets’ was discovered in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to researchers from the University of Antioquia in Colombia.
Meanwhile, comets are traditionally thought to come from two much further locations – the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, trans-Neptunian objects that lie at extreme distances from the Sun.
In the last decade twelve active comets have been discovered in the asteroid main belt region, but scientists have managed to describe their origin for the first time.
The researchers believe the asteroid belt could have once held thousands of active comets but over time these comets lost energy and became dormant.
"These objects are the 'Lazarus comets', returning to life after being dormant for thousands or even millions of years. Potentially any one of the many thousands of their quiet neighbors could do the same thing," said the leading astronomer of the study Professor Ignacio Ferrin.
The astronomers named the celestial bodies ‘Lazarus comets’ referring to the biblical figure Lazarus who was resurrected by Jesus Christ several days after his death.
These comets may represent a long-lost population of the icy chunks of rocks, thought to have started out near the fringes of the planetary system, said the astronomers.
Comets’ resurrection
'Lazarus comets' can come back to life when they pass relatively close to Jupiter, the biggest planet of the Solar System, and the shape of their orbits is tugged by Jupiter’s gravity, bringing them closer to the sun, increasing the temperature, according to the study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. read more
Every day seems to bring new revelations in the area of neuroscience.
Based on the recent whistleblower release of a secret DARPA mind control program at Arizona State University, and the subsequent takedown of those documents, it appears that ethical concerns in this field are indeed justified.
Obama's BRAIN project appears to being paying dividends, as other recently leaked documents reveal a "nudge squad" program being developed to employ new, sophisticated narrative propaganda aimed at "shaping Americans' behavior."
Just in the past few weeks, we have also learned that scientists have been working on "neural dust" to create a remote-controlled computer pathway to the brain; and that scientists have been successful implanting false memories in mice.
Yes, the age of direct mind control is here.
Experiments in controlling gadgets and even drones have also been successful. So what's the next logical step?
How about controlling other living beings by thought alone.
Researchers at Harvard University have created the first noninvasive brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human … and a rat. Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans — which is a good thing in the case of friends and family, but terrifying if you stop to think about the nefarious possibilities of a fascist dictatorship with mind control tech. read more
Something is up with the sun. It has begun to behave very erratically, and scientists don’t know quite what to make of it.
Sunspot activity appears to be slowing down with each new cycle and absolutely gigantic holes have started to appear in the sun. At the moment, the sun is approaching the peak of its 11 year cycle, and an increasing number of scientists are becoming concerned about what the next cycle will bring. If sunspot activity continues to diminish, could the sunspot cycle eventually die altogether? Is it possible that we could be approaching another ice age?
Even worse, could the increasingly erratic behavior of the sun be an indication that the sun is dying? Traditionally, scientists have taught that the sun won’t die until billions of years from now, but in recent years astronomers have observed stars similar to our own sun suddenly begin to behave very erratically and then rapidly die. Is it possible that the same thing could happen to our sun?
It is a fact that the current solar cycle has been the weakest in 100 years. This has many scientists searching for answers…
The Sun is acting weird. It typically puts on a pageant of magnetic activity every 11 years for aurora watchers and sungazers alike, but this time it overslept. When it finally woke up (a year late), it gave the weakest performance in 100 years.
What’s even weirder is that scientists, who aren’t usually shy about tossing hypotheses about, are at a loss for a good explanation.
Of course most scientists insist that everything is going to be okay and that we don’t have a thing to be worried about, but others are not so sure.
For example, Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory believes that a new ice age may be on the way…
Penn offered another, more catastrophic option: the sunspot cycle might die altogether. His team uses sunspot spectra to measure their magnetic fields, and his data show a clear trend: the magnetic field strength in sunspots is waning.
“If this trend continues, there will be almost no spots in Cycle 25, and we might be going into another Maunder Minimum,” Penn states. The first Maunder Minimum occurred during the second half of the 17th century. Almost no spots were seen on the Sun during this time, which coincided with Europe’s Little Ice Age.
Another strange phenomenon that astronomers are watching closely is the appearance of absolutely massive holes in the sun. Just recently, a massive hole that covered nearly a fourth of the entire surface of the sun made headlines all over the globe…
A space telescope aimed at the sun has spotted a gigantic hole in the solar atmosphere — a dark spot that covers nearly a quarter of our closest star, spewing solar material and gas into space.
The so-called coronal hole over the sun’s north pole came into view between July 13 and 18 and was observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. NASA released a video of the sun hole as seen by the SOHO spacecraft, showing the region as a vast dark spot surrounded by solar activity.
This comes on the heels of another giant hole in the sun that was spotted between May 28 and 31.
So is this something to be alarmed about? read more
The race to decode the brain continues. A wild array of new possibilities are opening in the field of mind control.
The mind control of the future forgoes all pretense at indirectly altering perception through media and politics, or even mind-altering drugs and environmental toxins. The mind control of the future goes straight into direct programming.
This direct programming could take place in a number of ways, from gadgets that create a brain-computer interface, to magnetic manipulation via "neural dust," to the direct uploading of the contents of our brain and the subsequent hacking of our minds in the digital realm.
Memory research is a key component of this as well. Our memories help us form our identity: who we are relative to where we have been. Positive or negative lessons from the past can be integrated into our present decisions, thus enabling us to form sound strategies and behaviors that can aid us in our quest for personal evolution. But what if we never knew what memories were real or false? What if our entire narrative was changed by having our life's events restructured?
Current research on mice indicates a disturbing quest by technocrats and reductionists to interfere with this human cognition and even deliberately plant false memories.
The military already has openly discussed a desire to erase the memories of soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is seen as a viable solution, rather than investigate and ameliorate the horrific events which have put soldiers into stressful situations to begin with. Multi-tour soldiers are more suicidal than ever before, and military researchers would like to rewire their brains, as opposed to rework our current understanding of war and peace.
Damn the ethics; science continues full throttle, largely at the behest of military ideology and funding. The proverbial canary in the coal mine has transformed into a mouse in a laboratory. Apparently, until humanoid robots can be released full force, they need to create the best human facsimile possible.
In a supposed attempt to understand why people can have memories of things that never happened, or divergent reports of the same documented event, the upshot of recent experiments with mice is that it is in fact possible to implant false memories of events that never have happened. Beyond that, researchers can implant fear:
The researchers place a mouse in a brand new environment. As the mouse explores this environment (Place A), new memories are created in the hippocampus (the region of the mammalian brain that we know is deeply involved with memory formation). In Place A, the mouse has the time of its life. The mouse is then relocated to a different environment (Place B). While in Place B, the neuroscientists stimulate the memory of Place A using optogenetics . . . while simultaneously delivering electric shocks to the mouse’s feet, causing fear and pain. Then, when the mouse is returned to Place A, it freezes in fear. This is because the mouse’s brain has somehow confused the fear of electric shocks in Place B with its memory of Place A — in other words, a false memory has been created.
What you have just read is a form of trauma-based mind control.
Of additional note is that scientists employed a virus to change "the neuron’s DNA so that they produce a protein switch that is sensitive to light. Then, when these neurons are struck by light (a hole is drilled in the mouse’s skull and a laser is shot into that region of the hippocampus), the memory is turned on."
A literal on/off switch to produce fear.
This is part of the grand future of neuroscience, which is receiving funding from the $100 million BRAIN project in the U.S., and another $1.3 billion committed by Europe. We are already seeing some very unethical applications.
We would do well to weigh the positives and negatives while we still have the capacity to freely form and communicate our own thoughts; because the next step is on the horizon . . . and it looks rather grim for anyone who values human emotion:
The next step, of course, is to actually do something with these findings. The research group would like to use its memory manipulation technology to fix/treat undesirable brain function, such as anxiety and depression. Being able to delete or reprogram bad memories, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, would probably make short work of many mental woes. Perhaps more excitingly, though, is the potential to directly encode new memories into our neurons — kind of like when Neo learns to fly a helicopter in The Matrix. That’s probably a few years away yet, though.
Probably...
Genes make up the roadmaps of our bodies, revealing exactly how we function. Controlling these genes could allow us to learn more about them, possibly revealing new insight into diseases.
Now, researchers may have a way to do so. Scientists have developed a technique that can rapidly or halt the expression of any gene of interest simply by shining light on the cells.
Human cells have an estimated 20,000 genes. Yet only a fraction of these genes are turned on at any given time, depending on the cell's needs. Because of this, researchers need a way to manipulate the status of these genes to figure out exactly how they function. This latest method gives them the perfect tool to do so.
"Cells have very dynamic gene expression happening on a fairly short timescale, but so far the methods that are used to perturb gene expression don't even get close to those dynamics," said Silvana Konermann, one of the researchers, in a news release. "To understand the functional impact of those gene-expression changes better, we have to be able to match the naturally occurring dynamics as closely as possible."
The new technique is based on something known as optogenetics, which uses proteins that change their function in response to light. In this case, the scientists adapted the light-sensitive proteins to either stimulate or suppress the expression of a specific target gene almost immediately after the light comes on. More specifically, the method consists of several components that interact with each other to control the copying of DNA into messenger RNA (mRNA), which carries genetic instructions to the rest of the cell.
The scientists found that a single pulse of light was enough to stimulate protein binding and initiate DNA copying. Pulses of light delivered every minute or so were the most effective way to achieve continuous transcription for the desired period of time. In all, they targeted nearly 30 different genes and were able to boost transcription by a factor of two to 200.
"You could control, at precise times, a particular genetic locus and see how everything responds to that with high temporal precision," said Karl Desseroth, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, who was not part of the new study, in a news release.
The new method could allow researchers to better understand specific genes and their function.
There are other applications, though, including research into epigenetic modification. Thought to play a key role in learning and forming memories, epigenetic modification could be studied by allowing researchers to interfere with modifications of individual genes precisely. The findings could be huge for future research.
Researchers have just recently been able to identify some significant factors regarding the deadly Ebola virus. In fact, a new study shows that a disabling protein in Ebola can actually stop the virus from replicating and infecting the host.
The Ebola virus causes severe disease in humans as it deactivates the innate immune system. According to Christopher Basler, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai, he and his colleagues studied how Ebola evades the immune system and discovered that a viral protein known as VP35 is critical for deactivation of the immune system.
They also found that when VP35 interacts with an important cellular protein called PACT, it blocks PACT from activating the immune system which allows the virus to spread.
"Ebola viruses are extremely lethal, and are a great threat to human health as a bioweapon," said Dr. Basler, via a press release. "Currently, there is no approved vaccine or treatment. Our findings will hopefully pave the way for future antiviral treatments."
Researchers at the University of Texas provided access to special high containment facilities, according to Dr. Basler, that allowed his team to study infected healthy cells with the Ebola virus that had mutated versions of VP35. These mutations disabled VP35's ability to interact with PACT, and allowed the activation of the immune system to prevent the virus from replicating it.
Researchers also overexpressed PACT in healthy cells and infected them with the Ebola virus cells. They found that overexpression of PACT also inhibited viral replication.
More information regarding this study can be found in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.
The human race knows very little of itself, almost like a race with amnesia. As we continue to move forward through time, new discoveries are made that make old theories obsolete and false.
It’s a good lesson that shows us how we can attach ourselves to “truths” and believe them whole-heartedly, often forgetting that truth is constantly changing and new paradigms of perception always lurk around the corner.
Decades after scientists described our “chemical code” of life using the double helix DNA, researchers have discovered four-stranded DNA within human cells. The structures are called G-quadruplexes, because they form in regions of DNA that are full of guanine, one of the DNA molecule’s four building blocks. The others are adenine, cytosine and thymine. A hydrogen bond is responsible for holding the four guanines together. The four stranded DNA usually presents itself right before cell division.
The discovery was published online in Nature Chemistry, and you can take a look at it here. The study was led by Shankar Balasubramanian at the University of cambridge, UK.
"For us, it strongly supports a new paradigm to be investigated – using these four-stranded structures as targets for personalized treatments in the future.We have found that by trapping the quadruplex DNA with synthetic molecules we can sequester and stabilise them, providing important insights into how we might grind cell division to a halt"— Shankar Balasubramanian
The study went on to show certain links between concentrations of four-stranded G-quandruplexes and the process of DNA replication, which is crucial to cell division and cell production. G-quadruplexes, (when targeted with synthetic molecules responsible for trapping and holding these DNA structures) prevent cells from replicating their DNA, thus blocking cell division. Scientists believe that this discovery could possibly lead to a stop in cell proliferation at the root of cancer
"We are seeing links between trapping the G-quadruplexes with molecules and the ability to stop cells dividing, which is hugely exciting. The research indicates that G-quadruplexes are more likely to occur in genes of cells that are rapidly dividing such as cancer cells. It’s been sixty years since its structure was solved but work like this shows us that the story of DNA continues to twist and turn” – Shankar Balasubramanian
We now know that G-quandruplexes form in the DNA of human cells. If anybody had mentioned this earlier, they would probably be labelled as crazy. Maybe we could take this as a lesson and accept the fact that there are always new discoveries to be made about our biology, as well as the nature of our reality. For all we know, our DNA could be multidimensional in nature? It could be 12 stranded DNA? Maybe we have yet to discover it? Maybe a majority of our DNA, and the biological functions it serves are largely undiscovered. Maybe some portions of our DNA have yet to be activated? The more we discover about our own biology, the better, as we are witnessing with the discovery of the G-quandruplex.
