The mice may never be afraid of cat, making it a lost story soon! yes, if things shape up well at the Tokyo University, the mice will soon shed their sense of cower at the smell or sight of the cat.

In an experiment, the Japanese scientists, through genetic engineering, were able to turn off certain nasal cells successfully, which trigger terror amongst the rodent. The result was striking enough, the mice was no longer afraid of the feline. A rare view, — the genetically changed mice even played with the cat and nested against it! The research team leader Ko Kobayakawa said he chose domesticated cats for his research as they were less likely to pounce.

A craft of genetic engineering has shattered the common belief that mice are afraid of cats because they prey on them and they learn fear through experience, instead it is a genetic behavior pattern. The research is being considered as a breakthrough in understanding the whole phenomena of fear and the ways to control it.

Via: Yahoo

This time though they have taken a considerably riskier and bigger challenge of creating new life forms with the double stranded helix of deoxyribonucleic acid. The DNA is a nucleic acid which contains genetic material determining the characteristics of any living organism. This information is in the encoded form and is weaved in the double helix strand of DNA. These DNA are contained in the Chromosomes which form the cell which is the basic unit of life.

Scientists of Maryland have successfully created a completely artificial piece of chromosome containing all the information required for survival. This chromosome is now being planned to be embedded in a cell where it can manifest all the characteristics that it has been programmed to.

This idea however, doesn’t seem to have been gone down well with everyone and they are questioning the ethical aspect of this experiment. The anthropologists and philosophers are all strongly opposing this mingling of artificial and real. How would you ever come to know whether the person next to you is biologically born or synthetically created in the laboratory? Wouldn’t this be exploiting God’s right of determining birth and death? What if some companies buy the monopoly of this formulation and then produce human beings as computers fully programmed to do whatever they wish to? These questions again raise a very controversial issue.

Image Credit: BaseSciences

Via: DallasNews

The liquid crystal screen through which a beam of half-inch-wide laser rays were made to pass, caused the rays of the laser beam to interfere with each other in such a way that the brightest part of the beam appeared to move in a curved path.

The new technology by which light beams could be bended would help in telecommunications and development of advanced microscopes.

Source & image:msnbc

The scientists have, in the past, expressed grave concern over the possibilities of Avian flu outbreaks leading to epidemics. Researches are conducted to determine the cause for this virus getting transferred from birds to humans. Many theories are proposed in this direction; with the latest theory falsifying the previous ones.

Flu viruses come in many strains. Of these, the H5 strain of virus is known to be found only in birds. However, those affected by the Avian flu showed the virus H5N1, a modified form of the H5 virus. This virus, when found in humans, is said to have very high fatality rates. It is known that a virus can attack and infect any individual only when it attaches itself to the receptor cells of the body. It is recently, a team of MIT researchers have come up with spotting a difference between flu viruses, which infect birds and humans.

But previously, is was found to be only possible when the hemagglutinin, a protein found on the surface of the virus, can bind itself to the glycan found on the receptors of the respiratory tract. The receptors found in the respiratory tract of humans are classified as alpha 2-6 whereas those found in the respiratory tracts of birds are classified as alpha 2-3.

Since, the virus could attach itself to the receptors of birds, it was becoming incomprehensible for the scientists as to how could the same virus attach itself to two different receptors. As an answer to this, they concluded that the virus might be mutating itself according to the receptor thus affecting both birds and humans. However, in stark contrast was a study by Sasisekharan, which says that the virus has the ability to attach itself to a particular shape, of particular alpha 2-6 glycan receptor. It determines whether or not it can affect humans.

These receptors come in two shapes of umbrella and cones and the avian virus is suspected to link itself to the umbrella-shaped ones. This research will largely help in further developments and studies related to Avian flu. According to Proffessor Ram Sasisekharan,

Now that we know what to look for, this could help us not only monitor the bird flu virus, but it can aid in the development of potentially improved therapeutic interventions for both avian and seasonal flu.

Via: Sciencedaily

For long, animal rights activists had been demanding a ban on animal tests by pharmaceutical companies that they consider unethical. More often, the animal specimens are not exact replicas of the human biological features and drugs tested in labs on animal specimens always do not produce the desired result in humans.

However, animal testing might soon become a matter of past if chips developed by Professor Jonathan Dordick of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Douglas Clark of the University of California are accepted by the researchers. The product developed by the duo consists of two glass slides. The first glass slide is called the MetaChip that contains an array of little blots containing human liver enzymes. The DataChip is the other glass slide, which, depending on the test, contains blots of bladder or liver or kidney, heart, skin, or lung cell cultures. When pressed together the two chips show the human body’s reaction to the testing compound.

The newly developed in-vitro product is believed to be more efficient than animal testing in labs. At last, a new product has come up that will save animals being butchered in laboratories in an effort to save the human species.

Source: Yahoo!

Image Credit: NTNU

Stem cell research received a major boost, when scientists announced a major through. The researchers in Massacheusetts led by Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass announced that they have created colonies of human embryonic stem cells without harming the embryos, from which they were derived! The new technique involves removal of a single cell from a newly formed eight-cell embryo and coaxing that cell to divide repeatedly, until it forms a self-replenishing colony of embryonic stem cells.

While the researchers are excited over the new development, as they expect the breakthrough to receive funding from the U.S government, critics are rising question on the embryos’ safety. This can be confirmed only when embryos are implanted again in women’s womb and the resulting babies are found healthy.

But, such an experiment would be unethical and there is no other way to prove that the embryos are not harmed. Opponents of stem cell research were up against using embryos for research, finding it unethical as the embryos are eventually destroyed. This research, if accepted, could speed the development of stem cell-based treatments for a variety of diseases.

Image

Via:sun-sentinel

The scientists combined light emitting genes of jellyfish with grains of gold and injected the combination into the seahorse egg cells. The outcome was seahorses with sparkling gold on the body.

This is a great achievement in the world of luxury. Now aquariums will flaunt gold seahorses - a new designer item. Soon other creatures will be genetically modified to incorporate gold in their bodies and we will have golden pets and who knows if the craze of designer babies picks up we will have humans born with gold on the body - requirements for gold jewelries might cease after all.

Source & image:trendhunter

The South Korean scientists have made an important discovery for the treatments of human genetic diseases. They cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene to study the genetically disorders in cats. The development will help in cloning an animal with a manipulated gene in future.

Kong I1-Keun and his research team at Gyeongsang National University have used the skin cells of a mother cat to create three cloned cats that glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet light.

The scientists have inserted a virus in the skin cells of the mother cat. Then, they transplanted these infected cells into the womb. By doing so, they showed a new way of cloning an animal with a manipulated gene.

It is the first major development in the cloning technology where cats with RFP genes have been cloned. The development will also enable to clone endangered animals such as tigers, leopards and wildcats. It will provide some vital inputs in the areas of stemcell treatments.

Via: Inventorspot

Using novel voltage-sensitive nanoparticles, researchers from the University of Michigan have found electric fields inside cells as strong as those produced in lightning bolts.

Previously, it has only been possible to measure electric fields across cell membranes, not within the main bulk of cells. But now it’s possible to measure them. Traditional techniques for studying disease at the level of tissues average out differences between cells. Many developments in cancer research over the past few years have been ‘more reactive’, working toward developing diagnostics for catching the disease in its earlier stages and for better predicting to which drugs patients will respond. Voltage-sensitive dyes are not new. For decades, neuroscientists have used them to measure voltages across cell membranes in studies of how nerve cells generate and respond to electrical charges.

The Experiment:

The researchers encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes in polymer spheres just 30 nanometers in diameter. When illuminated with blue light, the voltage-sensitive dyes emit a mixture of red and green light; the exact frequency of light emitted is influenced by the strength of local electric fields, allowing the researchers to measure those fields. Testing these nanoparticles in the internal fluid of brain-cancer cells, Kopelman found electric fields as strong as 15 million volts per meter, perhaps five times stronger than the field found in a lightning bolt.

Experts Support:

Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer certifies

They have developed a tool that allows you to look at cellular changes on a very local level. This development represents an attempt to start using nanoscale tools to understand how disease develops.

Jerry S.H. Lee, a nanotechnology project manager also at the National Cancer Institute, says that Kopelman’s research bolsters the set of nanoscale tools that scientists are developing to probe cells’ physical properties, such as special microscopic probes for measuring cell stiffness.

From Kopelman’s Desk:

It’s not possible to control the placement of these dyes in cells. They are hydrophobic and aggregate in cell membranes, so it has not been possible to use them to study the cytosol, the bulk of the interior of the cell. These dyes might be reacting with enzymes and other molecules in cells. His encapsulated dyes aren’t hydrophobic and can operate anywhere in the cell, not just in membranes. Because it’s possible to place his encapsulated dyes in a cell with a greater degree of control, Kopelman likens them to voltmeters.

Hope for Future:

Researchers hope to learn about disease states such as cancer by studying these electric fields.

Via: Technology Review

Ever wondered how it would be like to stay in a world as shown in the Matrix, a world where the difference between human beings and machines is almost null. It seems like we are heading towards the best science fiction world of our imagination in approximately 21 years. By 2029, we will have machines implanted in our brains to make us more intelligent, as discussed by a panel of technology experts at American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston.

Ray Kurzweil, a US inventor, says that machines have always been developed to make our life easier and to help us overcome our physical and mental constraints. He predicts machines getting artificially and emotionally intelligent by the predicted year 2029, when a child would require to insert a chip or a nanobot to his brain to understand a sum. This chip will be inserted via our capillaries and stimulate the biological neurons to understand and see things more precisely and act accordingly. The nanobots will adapt themselves to the virtual world through human nervous system.

While it sounds creepy to me, according to him, the machines we are dealing with at present help us carry out our day to day life with comfort, so why not go steps ahead and live with them. But after being one of the group of 18 avant-garde personalities chosen by US National Academy of Engineering, he can dare see a future of technological expansion.

The other eminent technology thinkers chosen by the academy are Dr Craig Venter, a genome pioneer and Larry Page, who founded Google. These high thinkers have come up with a total of 14 challenges that are facing humanity at the outset of 21st century.

This may not sound like an alien invasion to this team, yes sire, but inserting a chip in my head will mean not an alien but a super machine invasion. Would anyone ask these intelligent people, if we would also have buttons, to set emotional priorities for our daily affairs? Scary, huh!

Source: BBC