Find out all the latest and greatest news from the worlds of science and medicine. This week’s talking points include research into Alzheimer’s and both types of grass (pastural and recreational).
Hear ye! Hear ye! Dublin, the capital city of a country famed for producing such scientific giants as Robert Boyle, John Tyndall, Ernst Walton and Jocelyn Bell Burnell has hereby reclaimed its rightful place at the summit of European scientific endeavour by officially inaugurating itself as the City of Science 2012.
By Anthea Lacchia
Scientists at University College San Diego have discovered a new chemical reaction that may help uncover new information on the ancient atmospheres of Earth and Mars. This chemical reaction takes place on the surface of aerosols in the atmosphere. The researchers also discovered that atmosphere can be trapped in carbonate rock. This provides insight into how carbonates form on Earth and Mars, as well as advancing understanding of climate change on Earth.
In particular, a higher than expected proportion of oxygen-17 isotopes was found in the carbonates. Interestingly, this discovery also provides a simple chemical explanation for the carbonate inclusions found in a meteorite from Mars that was once thought to be evidence of ancient Martian life.
By Anthea Lacchia
Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Centre for High-Content Analysis in Trinity College were the recipients of GE Healthcare’s High-Content Analysis (HCA) Award.
The lead authors of the award-winning study, Dr Michael Freeley and Dr Dara Dunican, investigated how white blood cells (T lymphocytes) move in the body during immune response. In fact, not only is their movement crucial to an effective immune response, but irregular movement of T lymphocytes into tissues is a major contributing factor in the development of diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Researchers involved used the IN Cell Analyser 1000 to measure a range of parameters related to cell shape and took steps in defining the proteins involved in T lymphocyte migration.
By Anthea Lacchia
Scientists from Trinity College and the University of Leicester have made an exciting breakthrough in understanding the body’s immune response to pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia. The researchers sought to understand what happens when the pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae infects a cell. The research showed that immune response is triggered by the bacterial toxin pneumolysin, which activates a group of proteins called NLRP3 inflammasome.
It was also discovered that this mechanism operates independently of other immune response proteins. These results have the potential to play a significant role in the development of vaccines against pneumococcal disease, which is responsible for over one million infant deaths annually and also affects the elderly by infecting the respiratory tract. Results were published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
It is hard to talk about Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species without seeming overstated. But to his credit, it remains one of the most influential books ever written.
This Wednesday witnesses the 151st anniversary of Darwin’s seminal classic, whose impact has been felt by scientists worldwide, by Nazi eugenicists, and even by Irish writers. To this day there is only one other book that is so widely known, discussed and debated, yet so rarely read: the Bible.
The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. A century and a half later, his influence is felt by natural scientists, theologians, sociologists, political scientists and more. It has inspired a revolution in understanding human nature, but has also been severely misinterpreted.
The Origin of Species has even helped to shape Irish writing. The famous playwright and Trinity College graduate J. M. Synge wrote in 1892, “When I was fourteen I obtained a book of Darwin’s. My studies showed me the force of what I read, and the more I put it from me the more it rushed back with new instances and power.” Born Protestant, Synge later renounced Christianity. “Soon after relinquishing the Kingdom of God”, Synge recalled, “I began to take a real interest in the Kingdom of Ireland.”
It is a lengthy book; at times it is tedious, at times politically incorrect. In spite of its shortcomings, The Origin of Species continues to amaze its readers with 600 pages of pure human observation. J. M. Synge proves it: you certainly don’t need to be a scientist to read the book that changed biology forever.
Kate Palmer
Alannah NicPhaidin
Contributing Writer
On November 12, 1833 some people in the western hemisphere thought that the world was coming to an end. It appeared that the sky was raining stars, and the brightness caused by the occurrence awoke many a sleepers. What people did not understand was it was a phenomenon that we refer to today as the Leonid Meteor Shower. This celestial light show made its return to Earth between November 10 and 21, 2010. During the peak hours of the cosmic event, a shooting star was visible every few minutes.
We do not expect the same show of light and shooting stars as in 1833 but people were able to notice some of these bits of comet debris crashing into the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
These particles have an average estimated speed of 160,000 miles per hour, or 72 kilometres per second. The fastest bullets on the market today can reach speeds of only 1.22 kilometres per second, a mere crawl compared to Leonid.
One of the reasons these bits of comet debris hit at such speed is that the Earth is orbiting the Sun in the opposite direction to the particles in the Leonid shower. This means that the combined speed of the Earth going in one direction, and the speed of Leonid going in the other, increases the intensity of the collision between Leonid and the Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating the effect that we see in the night sky.
The history of this phenomenon has been exceptionally well-recorded. Some of the most impressive years for Leonid’s activity were in the years 1533, 1366, 1037, and 934. The year 902 was referred to as the “Year of the Stars” in Arab calendars.
Unfortunately this year was not to be one of the more spectacular years for the average “sightseer” but it was still worth braving the cold to see the spectacle.
While the show can be dazzling, the particles that make up Leonid are not just pleasant to look at, they also hold a few important key pieces of information that may help us to understand our solar system, and the universe.
These particles are thought to be small pieces of material created in the upheaval that was the birth of our solar system.
These bits of comet debris are thought to have formed along with our Sun an estimated 4.6 billion years ago. This means that at the centre of each of these pieces of comet are the unspoiled particles that were the same as some of the main pieces of matter that created our solar system all those billions of years ago.
Yet each time particles from Leonid pass the Sun and are exposed to its intense amount of solar radiation, some of the particles are boiled away. Eventually it will be completely broken apart by the Sun, or have crashed into something else, like Earth’s upper atmosphere.
All things, including the stars, eventually end. So it is well worth taking the time to watch the show.
Alexander Hess
Contributing Writer
Often called the “Nobel Prize Factory,” the internationally renowned Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, has made another potentially groundbreaking discovery.
Just last year the laboratory celebrated bringing home its fourteenth Nobel Prize since its foundation in 1947. Among its accolades are the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 by the famous duo Crick and Watson, and most recently in 2009 the elucidation of the structure of the ribosome, the primary protein “factory” in the cell.
The latest “eureka moment” to ring out from the fumehoods of this laboratory may just be a bona-fide treatment for the menace that is the common cold. This treatment, developed by Dr Leo James and his team, can also tackle many other viral ailments currently afflicting the world.
The winter vomiting virus (noravirus) and even rotavirus (which inflicts severe diarrhoea and kills thousands of children in developing countries) can literally be picked to pieces by the protein TRIM21.
Why has this protein, already well known to science, become the source of all this excitement? The answer is the discovery of how it operates inside the cell in conjunction with antibodies.
We have been led to believe until now that the action of antibodies were restricted to outside the cells, in the bloodstream, extra-cellular fluids, etc., seeking out foreign bodies and sticking to them, preparing them for attack and destruction by an army of white blood cells.
It has now been revealed that these antibodies can act inside the cell, contrary to what many of College’s first-year Science students learn in the prescribed biology textbooks.
It was previously thought that the immune system had no choice but to kill the wayward cell before the virus could replicate, become too ambitious and infect the other cells of the body.
It was revealed by James and his team that, “the antibody is attached to the virus and when the virus gets sucked inside the cell, the antibody stays attached, there is nothing in that process to make the antibody fall off.” These still-attached antibodies attract the attention of TRIM21, which naturally occurs within the cell.
It in turn attracts cylindrical proteins that inhabit the inside of the cell and attach themselves to the virus particle and proceed to rip the virus into tiny virus components.
“The beauty of it is that for every infection event, for every time a virus enters a cell, it is also an opportunity for the antibody in the cells to take the virus out,” James said.
One distinct possibility is that this TRIM21 protein could be delivered in a nasal spray, to attack the viruses directly and bring this piece of biological war-machinery to where it hurts.
“This is a way of boosting all the antibodies you’d be naturally making against the virus. The advantage is that you can use that one drug against potentially lots of viral infections,” states James.
In short, TRIM21 gives the infected cell a chance to fend off the virus by itself with its own biological machinery instead of the use of conventional drugs.
Sir Greg Winter, deputy director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, sums it up: “Antibodies are formidable molecular war machines; it now appears that they can continue to attack viruses within cells.
“This research is not only a leap in our understanding of how and where antibodies work, but more generally in our understanding of immunity and infection.”
Scientists believe the first clinical trials of new drugs based on the findings could begin within two to five years. It appears this celebrated laboratory has done it again.
By Anthea Lacchia
The cause of male infertility, long shrouded in mystery, has had some light shown upon it by researchers in the Pasteur Institute in France and University College London. The new study provides new insight into the reasons for male infertility.
The research shows that genetic defects could be responsible for at least some of the cases of currently unexplained male infertility. Mutations of the NR5A1 gene were found in a small percentage of infertile men and linked to physical defects in the development of the testicles.
The research team sequenced the gene in 315 men and results suggest that, even when there is no physical manifestation of the mutation, the defective gene may still be affecting sperm production. However, the process involves the interaction of many genes and is not yet fully understood.
As Dr Allan Pacey, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield points out, there is still “embarrassingly little” known about the genetics behind male infertility. Hopefully, with this new development, steps toward curing male infertility will soon be possible.
By Anthea Lacchia
New research suggests that volcanic eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction, allowing modern humans to establish themselves in Northern Eurasia. This theory is reported in the October issue of Current Anthropology.
Researchers have linked the massive eruptions that took place around 40,000 years ago to ash layers found in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, where Neanderthal bones and tools have been found.
The ash cloud that was funnelled into the atmosphere following the eruptions would have led to global winter conditions and severe damage to many ecosystems. Carbon dioxide levels would have also undergone a sharp increase. Millions of years before this, eruptions of a similar scale are thought to have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs.
However, it is likely that the eruptions in the Caucasus region did not have a direct impact on early modern humans, who occupied more southern parts of western Eurasia and Africa.
The research team concluded that modern humans benefited from the newly opened niches of northern Eurasia, allowing them to colonise these new areas unimpeded by competition with Neanderthals.
