Hexbyte Glen Cove
“This new sensor we’ve developed is able to rapidly, cheaply, and easily measure opioids in wastewater,” said Boston College Professor of Physics Kenneth Burch, a lead author of the report. “Its sensitivity and portability would allow for wastewater-based epidemiology at the local scale—as specific as block-by-block or dorm-by-dorm—while ensuring privacy.”
The device responds to a primary challenge of the opioid epidemic: determining the amount and kind of drugs being used in a community. Privacy concerns and limited resources are barriers to testing large populations. An alternative approach is wastewater-based epidemiology, similar to testing wastewater to measure community levels of coronavirus infection during the pandemic.
“Wastewater testing is an emerging strategy that can defeat limitations and stigma associated with individual drug testing, and it provides a more objective measure of drug use at neighborhood level,” said Giner Labs Vice President for Advanced Materials Avni Argun, a co-leader of the project. “While wastewater testing has been widely conducted in Europe, only a few studies exist in the US. Rapid and portable nature of the team’s device would allow wide scale population testing at low cost and high geographical resolution.”
The work of Argun’s team at Giner Labs, in Newton, Mass., is funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is working with researchers to develop smart city tools that would assist public health surveillance programs addressing drug use and abuse. Additional funding for the project came from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Office of Naval Research.
The team’s prototype could provide a cheaper and faster tool for use by public health officials trying to determine the level of opioid usage and the impact of community-wide treatment interventions.
While graphene has been used before for sensing biological samples, the team’s work is the first demonstration that the material could be used with wastewater, Burch said.
In addition, it is the first demonstration of using graphene-based field effect transistors, an electronic device to read the amount of charge, to detect multiple targets at the same time, according to the report.
The breakthrough was enabled by the design and implementation of the graphene electronic multiplexed sensor (GEMS) platform, Burch said. The platform enables the sensing of four different target molecules at once, while shielding them from harsh elements in waste water, samples of which were provided by the Mass. Alternative Septic System Test Center (MASSTC) on Cape Cod.
The team fitted the graphene probes with “aptamers”, strands of DNA designed to only attach to a specific molecule—in this case, metabolites of various opioids in waste water. When the aptamer attaches to the drug it folds, bringing more charge to graphene. The amount of charge on the graphene is monitored to detect the presence of a specific opioid metabolite, Burch said.
“These aptamers were attached to our graphene devices and when trapping the drug the induced charge on the graphene was read electronically,” Burch said. “Our fabrication process and design resulted in a lower limit of detection an order of magnitude better than previous reports by other methods.”
Prior sampling tools faced the limitations because they required the shipping of samples and testing in a laboratory setting. Those requirements impose costs that limit wide adoption and use in communities without sufficient resources. By overcoming those limits, the graphene device can provide nearly real-time monitoring in multiple locations, which could also help distribute resources such as first responders or specific intervention strategies, Burch said.
“This is the first such sensor that can achieve it with such a simple and easy-to-use setup—a single GEMS platform is the size of a penny,” Burch added.
The success of GEMS resulted from a long-term collaboration led by Burch, bringing together the DNA expertise of Boston College Associate Professor of Biology Tim van Opijnen, graphene cultivation by Boston University chemist Xi Ling, and biosensor assay development expertise of Argun and scientists from Giner Labs.
Additional researchers on the project included Boston College graduate student Michael Geiwitz, research scientist Narendra Kumar, undergraduate Matthew Catalan, and post-doctoral researcher Juan C. Ortiz-Marquez; Giner Labs’ Muhit Rana, Niazul Islam Khan, Andrew Weber, and Badawi Dweik; and BU graduate student Hikari Kitadai.
Burch said the team was surprised at how well the device withstood the harsh wastewater environment. He said his lab is working with Giner Labs under NIDA small business innovation research (SBIR) funding to develop the devices for eventual commercial use.
“We are also working to see what else the platform can be used for, such as rapid at-home testing of viral infections and/or the presence of pathogens in wastewater,” Burch said.
More information:
Narendra Kumar et al, Rapid, Multianalyte Detection of Opioid Metabolites in Wastewater, ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c07094
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Hexbyte Glen Cove Change of scenery: New research outlines how recreation will shift with climate change in the west
Hexbyte Glen Cove
Change can be hard, especially when it involves soaring summer temperatures, mega-droughts, invasive species and other items from the list of unpleasant outcomes of climate change. There are innumerable economic and social implications from a changing climate—but in the Western U.S. where skiing, hiking, biking, hunting and other forms of outdoor recreation are core to many people’s lives, and where local economies rely on income generated by these activities, the impacts are already difficult to ignore.
New research from the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, works to define what, specifically, the changing climate will mean for the future of outdoor recreation in the West. The lesson at the heart of the review is that adaptation will be a critical skill as the new climate offers unpredictable scenarios to individuals, local economies, land-management infrastructures and long-term planners. The review, published in the Journal of Forestry, compiles the existing research that explores the ways in which climate change alters the types and timing of outdoor recreation activities, and the indirect effects of these shifts on everything from bear populations to new problems with seasonal staffing.
Campsites that are too hot, ski resorts with fluctuating snowpacks, rivers with low water levels, and forests crowned with a halo of wildfire smoke all affect the number of people who participate in outdoor recreation and the quality of their experiences. These impacts change the way people move through the landscape, value the experience and spend their money—but the specifics can be hard to define. For instance, if a campsite is too smokey, one group of recreationists may decide to drive further to reach an alternate site. Another might wait until the smoke clears, and another might choose to give up a particular activity altogether and go home. In the paper, the researchers provide activity-specific adaptation strategies that can be used to plan for these consequences (for instance, increasing capacities of existing outdoor recreation settings, adjusting season lengths, or improving communications to manage visitors’ expectations).
“Land managers can prepare for climate change by learning the best strategies for adaptation, as we currently understand them,” said Anna Miller, lead author on the study. “Learning from past successes and failures when responding to things like extreme weather events can help managers better understand what’s going to best help them adapt to change—if and when it happens again.”
Building resilience in outdoor recreation systems will take careful planning, according to the research. For example, developing collaborations and communication strategies between agencies within a local region right now will allow managers to respond more effectively as new situations arise. Managers also need to carefully consider how climate change adaptation strategies can improve equitable access to recreation opportunities.
Winter-based recreation sites may need to expand operations to include shoulder- and summer-based activities in order to stay viable in a warming climate. Summer operations may need to adjust budgets and staffing for longer seasons, and be better prepared for extreme temperatures. Wildlife and forest-product-gathering activities will have to build in flexibility and prepare for fundamental changes in the ecosystem as well.
“We may not know precisely what’s in store for outdoor recreation managers in the next decades,” said Miller, “but using our collective experience can help us learn how to adapt recreation planning for the most likely futures.”
More information:
Anna B Miller et al, Climate Change and Recreation in the Western United States: Effects and Opportunities for Adaptation, Journal of Forestry (2022). DOI: 10.1093/jofore/fvab072
Citation:
Change of scenery: New research outlines how recreation will shift with climate change in the west (2022, February 25)
retrieved 26 February 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scenery-outlines-recreation-shift-climate.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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Hexbyte Glen Cove How much energy does a dolphin use to swim?
Hexbyte Glen Cove
From foraging for prey to evading predators, ship strikes or other dangers, a dolphin’s survival often hinges on being able to crank up the speed and shift its swimming into high gear.
But burning all that rubber burns a lot of energy too, which, over time, can deplete reserves vital for growth, health and reproduction if the animal’s movements use more calories than it can take in.
Being able to estimate these energy costs of locomotion (COL) and determine where the metabolic tipping point might be is essential for answering fundamental questions about dolphin physiology and ecology, and for understanding the impacts of human disturbance on them. Because measuring costs of locomotion in dolphins in the wild is extremely difficult, past studies have estimated it based on the number of fluke stokes per minute. Since not all fluke strokes are the same size, it’s an imprecise measure of swimming effort.
A new Duke University-led study provides a more reliable way to estimate energy costs in dolphins by using overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA), an integrated measure of all body motions a dolphin makes during swimming.
“Researchers have used movement tags to measure ODBA in other species, but this is the first published study calibrating ODBA with energy expenditure in multiple dolphins,” said study leader Austin Allen, a postdoctoral researcher in marine biology at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. The work appears Feb. 24 in Journal of Experimental Biology.
As a proxy for measuring cost of locomotion in wild animals, Allen and his colleagues conducted swim trials on six trained bottlenose dolphins at Dolphin Quest, a zoological facility on Oahu, Hawaii, during May 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Using a non-invasive device known as a pneumotachometer, they measured each dolphin’s oxygen consumption while at rest and immediately after it swam an 80-meter underwater lap across a lagoon. Non-invasive biologging tags were also used to record each animal’s three-dimensional body motions over each section of the trial—such as when it was slowing down to make a turn or speeding up mid-lap.
By analyzing the collected data, a pattern began to emerge.
“There was some individual variation, but, overall, the results showed significant correlation between oxygen consumption and body acceleration, which suggests ODBA can be a reliable proxy for COL,” Allen said.
“Working with dolphins in zoos or aquariums is allowing us to use data we’ve already collected using these tags in the field to evaluate the cost of locomotion in wild populations,” he said.
More information:
Austin S. Allen et al, Dynamic body acceleration as a proxy to predict the cost of locomotion in bottlenose dolphins, Journal of Experimental Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1242/jeb.243121
Citation:
How much energy does a dolphin use to swim? (2022, February 24)
retrieved 25 February 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-02-energy-dolphin.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research,
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Hexbyte Glen Cove New therapy breakthrough changes the shape of treatment for undruggable diseases
Hexbyte Glen Cove
For some time, scientists have been working on the major challenge of developing new therapies against many human diseases. Many of these diseases are caused by the abberant action of certain proteins in our cells that are considered “undruggable,” or difficult to therapeutically target using classical drug discovery methods. A major class of “undruggable” proteins are those that are aberrantly degraded and destroyed in the cell leading to many human diseases, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases, and hundreds of genetic disorders.
These proteins are frequently destroyed through tagging with chains of a protein known as ubiquitin, which signals the cell to destroy the proteins through the “cellular trash can” called the proteasome.
While these proteins would benefit therapeutically by stopping their destruction and stabilizing and increasing the levels of the actively destroyed proteins, targeted protein stabilization of an actively degraded protein with a small-molecule drug has thus far remained impossible or “undruggable.”
Now, a team of researchers from the lab of Daniel Nomura, Professor of Chemical Biology and Director of the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies at UC Berkeley, in collaboration with researchers from the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research have reported the discovery of a new therapeutic paradigm called Deubiquitinase Targeting Chimeras (DUBTACs) to address the challenge of targeted protein stabilization.
DUBTACs are dumbbell shaped molecules that consist of a chemical compound that binds to the disease-causing protein linked via a linker to another chemical recruiter of an enzyme called deubiquitinase or DUB. The DUB removes the ubiquitin chains from actively degraded proteins, thus preventing their destruction and stabilizing their protein levels.
In new research published in Nature Chemical Biology, the researchers report on how DUBTACs stabilize the mutant form of the CFTR chloride channel protein that is otherwise degraded to cause the debilitating disease cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis was chosen as the initial test case for DUBTACs as this disease is caused by mutations in the CFTR channel which cause this protein to become unstable and actively degraded, leading to the cystic fibrosis pathology. The researchers postulated that a DUBTAC against mutant CFTR could stabilize and increase the levels of this mutant protein to restore CFTR function in cystic fibrosis patients.
The research has demonstrated that the CFTR DUBTAC restores chloride channel function in primary human bronchial epithelial cells from cystic fibrosis patients compared to currently approved therapies. The researchers also showed that a DUBTAC could be applied to cancers as well. They developed a DUBTAC to stabilize a tumor suppressor protein WEE1 kinase. WEE1 kinase is actively degraded in many tumors to promote cancer cell proliferation. Stabilizing the levels of WEE1 kinase in cancer cells could stop tumor growth.
Prof. Nomura states, “We believe that this new DUBTAC therapeutic platform can be used to develop a new class of medicines against many human diseases, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and many genetic disorders by enabling access to these previously “undruggable” proteins that were actively degraded to drive these diseases.”
More information:
Nathaniel J. Henning et al, Deubiquitinase-targeting chimeras for targeted protein stabilization, Nature Chemical Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-00971-2
Citation:
New therapy breakthrough changes the shape of treatment for undruggable diseases (2022, February 24)
retrieved 25 February 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-02-therapy-breakthrough-treatment-undruggable-diseases.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study
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Hexbyte Glen Cove More intense roasting of cocoa beans lessens bitterness, boosts chocolate liking
Hexbyte Glen Cove
Confection makers who want to develop products containing 100% chocolate and no sugar for health-conscious consumers can reduce bitterness and optimize flavor acceptance by roasting cocoa beans longer and at higher temperatures.
That’s the conclusion of a team of researchers who conducted a new study in Penn State’s Sensory Evaluation Center in the Department of Food Science. The study involved 27 100%-chocolate preparations made from cocoa beans roasted at various intensities and 145 people who came to the center on five consecutive days, evaluating five different samples each day.
The research confirmed that bitterness and astringency are negatively correlated to consumer liking, and demonstrated that those qualities in chocolate can be reduced through optimizing roasting, according to research team member Helene Hopfer, Rasmussen Career Development Professor in Food Science in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
“More and more people these days are eating darker chocolates with less sugar and more cacao because they are trying to cut down on sugar intake or they want to take advantage of perceived health benefits,” she said. “Dark chocolate is particularly high in flavonoids, particularly a subtype called flavan-3-ols and their oligomers, which are all considered functional ingredients due to their associated health effects.”
However, unsweetened chocolate is too bitter for most people to enjoy, so researchers experimented with roasting treatments to modify the flavor—investigating more than basic tastes such as sour and bitter—making it more acceptable for consumers, Hopfer explained.
For the study, research team member Alan McClure, founder of craft chocolate company Patric Chocolate and related consultancy Patric Food & Beverage Development, partnered with Hopfer and Penn State to characterize the flavor and acceptability of the chocolates.
Part of his doctoral degree dissertation research, McClure chose cocoa beans from three origins—Madagascar, Ghana and Peru, harvested in 2018 and 2019. He roasted and ground all samples into cocoa liquor at his factory in Columbia, Missouri, and then shipped the solidified 100% chocolate to Penn State, where he and Hopfer remelted and portioned out the chocolates into small disks for sensory evaluation.
McClure found the reaction of study participants to his 27 100% chocolate preparations especially interesting, and he suggested that what he learned from this research will guide him, and roasting staff at other chocolate manufacturing companies, in creating future products through an increased scientific understanding of the complex changes resulting from cocoa roasting.
In findings published in Current Research in Food Science, the researchers reported that more intense roasting conditions—such as 20 minutes at 340 degrees Fahrenheit, 80 min at 275 F, and 54 min at 304 F—all led to chocolate consumers finding unsweetened chocolate the most acceptable. Conversely, research participants did not find 100% chocolate acceptable when made from raw or lightly roasted cacao, such as beans roasted 11 minutes at 221 F, or 55 minutes at 147 F.
Hopfer noted that scientists’ understanding of the variation of cacao-related bitterness has historically come from instrumental investigation of the bitter compounds found in cocoa beans, but the Penn State research is novel because of its use of human sensory evaluation to quantify such variation.
“Our research was intended to learn about bitterness perception and the liking of chocolate made from cacao roasted with a variety of roasting profiles to see if wide consumer acceptability of 100% chocolate is possible,” she said.
“A chocolate maker doesn’t have many other options to influence the flavor quality of 100% chocolate except to vary how he or she roasts the beans, and our results show optimal roasting can adequately reduce bitterness.”
More information:
Alan P. McClure et al, Optimizing consumer acceptability of 100% chocolate through roasting treatments and effects on bitterness and other important sensory characteristics, Current Research in Food Science (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.crfs.2022.01.005
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Hexbyte Glen Cove Live wire: New research on nanoelectronics
Hexbyte Glen Cove
Proteins are among the most versatile and ubiquitous biomolecules on earth. Nature uses them for everything from building tissues to regulating metabolism to defending the body against disease.
Now, a new study shows that proteins have other, largely unexplored capabilities. Under the right conditions, they can act as tiny, current-carrying wires, useful for a range human-designed nanoelectronics.
In new research appearing in the journal ACS Nano, Stuart Lindsay and his colleagues show that certain proteins can act as efficient electrical conductors. In fact, these tiny protein wires may have better conductance properties than similar nanowires composed of DNA, which have already met with considerable success for a host of human applications.
Professor Lindsay directs the Biodesign Center for Single-Molecule Biophysics. He is also professor with ASU’s Department of Physics and the School of Molecular Sciences.
Just as in the case of DNA, proteins offer many attractive properties for nanoscale electronics including stability, tunable conductance and vast information storage capacity. Although proteins had traditionally been regarded as poor conductors of electricity, all that recently changed when Lindsay and his colleagues demonstrated that a protein poised between a pair of electrodes could act as an efficient conductor of electrons.
The new research examines the phenomenon of electron transport through proteins in greater detail. The study results establish that over long distances, protein nanowires display better conductance properties than chemically-synthesized nanowires specifically designed to be conductors. In addition, proteins are self-organizing and allow for atomic-scale control of their constituent parts.
Synthetically designed protein nanowires could give rise to new ultra-tiny electronics, with potential applications for medical sensing and diagnostics, nanorobots to carry out search and destroy missions against diseases or in a new breed of ultra-tiny computer transistors. Lindsay is particularly interested in the potential of protein nanowires for use in new devices to carry out ultra-fast DNA and protein sequencing, an area in which he has already made significant strides.
In addition to their role in nanoelectronic devices, charge transport reactions are crucial in living systems for processes including respiration, metabolism and photosynthesis. Hence, research into transport properties through designed proteins may shed new light on how such processes operate within living organisms.
While proteins have many of the benefits of DNA for nanoelectronics in terms of electrical conductance and self-assembly, the expanded alphabet of 20 amino acids used to construct them offers an enhanced toolkit for nanoarchitects like Lindsay, when compared with just four nucleotides making up DNA.
Transit Authority
Though electron transport has been a focus of considerable research, the nature of the flow of electrons through proteins has remained something of a mystery. Broadly speaking, the process can occur through electron tunneling, a quantum effect occurring over very short distances or through the hopping of electrons along a peptide chain—in the case of proteins, a chain of amino acids.
One objective of the study was to determine which of these regimes seemed to be operating by making quantitative measurements of electrical conductance over different lengths of protein nanowire. The study also describes a mathematical model that can be used to calculate the molecular-electronic properties of proteins.
For the experiments, the researchers used protein segments in four nanometer increments, ranging from 4-20 nanometers in length. A gene was designed to produce these amino acid sequences from a DNA template, with the protein lengths then bonded together into longer molecules. A highly sensitive instrument known as a scanning tunneling microscope was used to make precise measurements of conductance as electron transport progressed through the protein nanowire.
The data show that conductance decreases over nanowire length in a manner consistent with hopping rather than tunneling behavior of the electrons. Specific aromatic amino acid residues, (six tyrosines and one tryptophan in each corkscrew twist of the protein), help guide the electrons along their path from point to point like successive stations along a train route. “The electron transport is sort of like skipping stone across water—the stone hasn’t got time to sink on each skip,” Lindsay says.
Wire wonders
While the conductance values of the protein nanowires decreased over distance, they did so more gradually than with conventional molecular wires specifically designed to be efficient conductors.
When the protein nanowires exceeded six nanometers in length, their conductance outperformed molecular nanowires, opening the door to their use in many new applications. The fact that they can be subtly designed and altered with atomic scale control and self-assembled from a gene template permits fine-tuned manipulations that far exceed what can currently be achieved with conventional transistor design.
One exciting possibility is using such protein nanowires to connect other components in a new suite of nanomachines. For example, nanowires could be used to connect an enzyme known as a DNA polymerase to electrodes, resulting in a device that could potentially sequence an entire human genome at low cost in under an hour. A similar approach could allow the integration of proteosomes into nanoelectronic devices able to read amino acids for protein sequencing.
“We are beginning now to understand the electron transport in these proteins. Once you have quantitative calculations, not only do you have great molecular electronic components, but you have a recipe for designing them,” Lindsay says. “If you think of the SPICE program that electrical engineers use to design circuits, there’s a glimmer now that you could get this for protein electronics.”
More information:
Bintian Zhang et al, Electronic Transport in Molecular Wires of Precisely Controlled Length Built from Modular Proteins, ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c10830
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