Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step in Life on Earth

Follow how single-celled organisms began forming multi-cellular clusters

Green cells are undergoing cell death, a cellular division-of-labor–fostering new life.
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January 16, 2012

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

Now scientists have replicated that key step in the laboratory using common Brewer’s yeast, a single-celled organism.

The yeast "evolved" into multi-cellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment–in essence, they became precursors to life on Earth as it is today.

The results are published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"The finding that the division-of-labor evolves so quickly and repeatedly in these ‘snowflake’ clusters is a big surprise," says George Gilchrist, acting deputy division director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"The first step toward multi-cellular complexity seems to be less of an evolutionary hurdle than theory would suggest," says Gilchrist. "This will stimulate a lot of important research questions."

It all started two years ago with a casual comment over coffee that bridging the famous multi-cellularity gap would be "just about the coolest thing we could do," recalled Will Ratcliff and Michael Travisano, scientists at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and authors of the PNAS paper.

Other authors of the paper are Ford Denison and Mark Borrello of UMN.

Then came the big surprise: it wasn’t that difficult.

Using yeast cells, culture media and a centrifuge, it only took the biologists one experiment conducted over about 60 days.

"I don’t think anyone had ever tried it before," says Ratcliff. "There aren’t many scientists doing experimental evolution, and they’re trying to answer questions about evolution, not recreate it."

The results have earned praise from evolutionary biologists around the world.

"To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multi-celled organisms," says Sam Scheiner, program director in NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology.

"This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition," says Scheiner, "providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago."

In essence, here’s how the experiments worked:

The scientists chose Brewer’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast used since ancient times to make bread and beer because it is abundant in nature and grows easily.

They added it to nutrient-rich culture media and allowed the cells to grow for a day in test tubes.

Then they used a centrifuge to stratify the contents by weight.

As the mixture settled, cell clusters landed on the bottom of the tubes faster because they are heavier. The biologists removed the clusters, transferred them to fresh media, and agitated them again.

Sixty cycles later, the clusters–now hundreds of cells–looked like spherical snowflakes.

Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division.

That was significant because it meant that they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells died off in a process known as apoptosis to allow offspring to separate.

The offspring reproduced only after they attained the size of their parents.

"A cluster alone isn’t multi-cellular," Ratcliff says. "But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that’s an evolutionary transition to multi-cellularity."

In order for multi-cellular organisms to form, most cells need to sacrifice their ability to reproduce, an altruistic action that favors the whole but not the individual, Ratcliff says.

For example, all cells in the human body are essentially a support system that allows sperm and eggs to pass DNA along to the next generation.

Thus multi-cellularity is by its nature very cooperative.

"Some of the best competitors in nature are those that engage in cooperation, and our experiment bears that out," says Travisano.

Evolutionary biologists have estimated that multi-cellularity evolved independently in about 25 groups.

Travisano and Ratcliff wonder why it didn’t evolve more often since it’s not that difficult to recreate in a lab.

Considering that trillions of one-celled organisms lived on Earth for millions of years, it seems like it should have, Ratcliff says.

That may be a question the biologists will answer in the future using the fossil record for thousands of generations of multi-cellular clusters, which are stored in a freezer in Travisano’s lab.

Since the frozen samples contain multiple cell lines that independently became multi-cellular, the researchers can compare them to learn whether similar or different mechanisms and genes were responsible in each case, Travisano says.

The next steps will be to look at the role of multi-cellularity in cancer, aging and other critical areas of biology.

"Multi-cellular yeast is a valuable resource for investigating a wide variety of medically and biologically important topics," Travisano says.

"Cancer was recently described as a fossil from the origin of multi-cellularity, which can be directly investigated with the yeast system.

"Similarly the origins of aging, development and the evolution of complex morphologies are open to direct experimental investigation that would otherwise be difficult or impossible."

-NSF-

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2011, its budget is about $6.9 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

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Multi-cellular ‘snowflake’ yeast images with a blue cell-wall stain and red dead-cell stain.
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First steps in the transition to multi-cellularity: ‘snowflake’ yeast with dead cells stained red.
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A multi-cellular yeast consisting of hundreds of cells.
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Multi-cellular yeast individuals containing central dead cells, which promote reproduction.
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Aberrant shapes of multi-cellular yeast’s dead cells: break points for reproduction.
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Last Updated: January 16, 2012

BBC News, January 11, 2012

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The tiny frog sits easily on a US dime, whose diameter is 18mm

A frog species that appears to be the world’s smallest has been discovered in Papua New Guinea by a US-based team.

At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world’s smallest vertebrate – the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.

The researchers also found a slightly larger relative, Paedophryne swiftorum.

Presenting the new species in PLoS One journal, they suggest the frogs’ tiny scale is linked to their habitat, in leaf litter on the forest floor.

Continue reading the main story

What are amphibians?

• First true amphibians evolved about 250 million years ago
• Three orders: frogs (inc. toads), salamanders (inc. newts) and the limbless caecilians
• Adapted to many aquatic and terrestrial habitats
• Present on every continent except Antarctica
• Many metamorphose from larvae to adults

• Amphibians videos, news and facts: BBC Nature

Finding the frogs was not an easy assignment.

They are well camouflaged among leaves on the forest floor, and have evolved calls resembling those of insects, making them hard to spot.

"The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were," said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.

"So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.

"It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.

"When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around," he told BBC News.

Littering the leaves

The Paedophryne genus was identified only recently, and consists of a number of tiny species found at various points in the eastern forests of Papua New Guinea.

The tiny limbs of amauensis (top) and swiftorum are rendered translucent

"They’re occupying the relatively thick leaf litter of tropical forest in low-lying parts of the island, eating incredibly small insects that typically are much smaller than insects that frogs eat," said Professor Austin.

"And they’re probably prey for a large number of relatively small invertebrates that don’t usually prey on frogs."

Predators may well include scorpions.

Intriguingly, other places in the world that also feature dense, moist leaf litter tend to possess such small frog species, indicating that amphibians are well placed to occupy this ecological niche.

Before the Paedophrynes were found, the title of "world’s smallest frog" was bestowed on the Brazilian gold frog (Brachycephalus didactylus) and its slightly larger Cuban relative, the Monte Iberia Eleuth (Eleutherodactylus iberia). They both measure less than 1cm long.

The smallest vertebrates have until now been fish.

Adult Paedocypris progenetica, which dwells in Indonesian swamps and streams, measure 7.9-10.3 mm long.

Male anglerfish of the species Photocorynus spiniceps are just over 6mm long. But they spend their lives fused to the much larger (50mm long) females, so whether they should count in this contest would be disputed.

Paedophryne amaunensis adults average 7.7mm, which is why its discoverers believe it how holds the crown.

The remote expanses of Papua New Guinea rank alongside those of Madagascar as places where hitherto undiscovered amphibian species are expected to turn up, as they are largely undeveloped and not well explored.

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More on This Story

Related Stories

• Asia’s smallest frog discovered 26 AUGUST 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
• Japan’s giant salamanders 06 FEBRUARY 2010, SCI/TECH
• Smallest fish compete for honours 31 JANUARY 2006, SCI/TECH

Related Internet links

• PLoS One
• Louisiana State University

Around the BBC

• BBC Nature – Amphibians

How many planets in the Milky Way could support life? How about 10 billion.

Kate Allen

January 11, 2012

There are likely billions of habitable planets in the Milky Way, according to new research set to published in Nature magazine on Thursday.

“People have been speculating for hundreds of years — are planets like the Earth the rule, rather than the exception?” says Uffe Graae Jørgensen, a study author and an astrophysicist with the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

“Now, for the first time, we have a statistically robust number.”

On average, every sun in our galaxy hosts 1.6 planets in the region that corresponds to the distance between Venus and Saturn, according to the study.

One in ten stars has an Earthlike planet in the “habitable” orbit range, in which water could exist. Since there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, there are about 10 billion stars with planets that could — theoretically — support life.

“That’s surprisingly many,” says Jørgensen. The new data raises interesting questions outside of the scope of the Nature study, he added.

“If there are really 10 billion planets in the galaxy where the temperature is right so that life could exist, why have we not been visited by space aliens? The obvious explanation is there must be something more that is required for life to originate.”

The study crunched six years worth of data collected from telescopes around the world.

Researchers used a tricky technique called microlensing to observe the stars clustered in the centre of the Milky Way. Microlensing, unlike other planetary observation techniques, is uniquely capable of detecting planets orbiting in a range that, in our solar system, corresponds to the zone between Venus to Saturn.

The other planetary observation techniques, called the transit method and the radial velocity method, are much more sensitive to planets that orbit close to their host suns. In the transit method, planets are discovered when they pass in front of their sun, measurably dimming it. In the radial velocity method, planets are discovered when their gravitational field causes the host sun to wobble.

With microlensing, a planet is discovered under very specific, chance conditions. When one sun passes in front of another sun, the gravitational field of the foreground star will bend the light of the background star, acting like a magnifying lens. That brightening effect can be measured from Earth. If the foreground sun is orbited by a planet, it will result in a bump in the light-curve data.

Out of 500 million stars observed in the six-year study, 500 were observed during microlensing events. Ten of those had planets.

By crunching probability data, the researchers were able to extrapolate that 10 billion planets in the Milky Way could support life, and that stars orbited by planets are the rule, rather than the exception.

By WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
January 9, 2012

Researchers have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.

Providing clues to deafness, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.
In humans, this gene, known as FGF20, is located in a portion of the genome that has been associated with inherited deafness in otherwise healthy families.
“When we inactivated FGF20 in mice, we saw they were alive and healthy,” says senior author David M. Ornitz, MD, PhD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Developmental Biology. “But then we figured out that they had absolutely no ability to hear.”
The results, published online Jan. 3 in PLoS Biology, show that disabling the gene causes a loss of outer hair cells, a special type of sensory cell in the inner ear responsible for amplifying sound. While about two-thirds of the outer hair cells were missing in mice without FGF20, the number of inner hair cells, the cells responsible for transmitting the amplified signals to the brain, appeared normal.

“This is the first evidence that inner and outer hair cells develop independently of one another,” says first author Sung-Ho Huh, PhD, postdoctoral research associate. “This is important because most age-related and noise-induced hearing loss is due to the loss of outer hair cells.”
As such, Ornitz and Huh speculate that FGF20 signaling will be a required step toward the goal of regenerating outer hair cells in mammals, the only vertebrates incapable of such feats of hearing restoration.
“Birds and, in fact, all vertebrates other than mammals have the ability to regenerate hair cells,” says co-author Mark E. Warchol, PhD, professor of otolaryngology. “Understanding how mammals differ from the rest is a topic of great interest.”
The FGF20 gene codes for one member of a family of proteins known as fibroblast growth factors. In general, members of this family are known to play important and broad roles in embryonic development, tissue maintenance and wound healing.
Beyond a simple on and off switch, Ornitz and his colleagues found that FGF20 signaling (or its chemical equivalent, FGF9) must occur on or before day 14 of the embryo’s development to produce a normal inner ear. Even if FGF20 or FGF9 signaling occurred on day 15 or later, the inner ear still did not develop properly.
“In mice, the precursor cells that can become outer hair cells must be exposed to the FGF20 protein at an early stage,” Ornitz says. “After embryonic day 14, it doesn’t matter if they see the protein. It’s too late for them to become outer hair cells.”
This critical time point does not exist in other vertebrates that retain the ability to form new hair cells throughout their lives. Whether FGF20 plays a role in this regeneration remains an open question.
“We’re literally doing those experiments right now,” Warchol says. “But FGF20 has been shown to be involved in other kinds of regeneration like the regrowth of zebrafish fins.”
Ornitz and his colleagues also see evidence that mutations in FGF20 may play a role in human deafness. A genetic region known as DFNB71 has been associated with congenital deafness in a few human families.
“And FGF20 is right smack in the center of that region,” Ornitz says. “Based on our work, we are predicting that these families will have some sort of mutation in the FGF20 gene. It hasn’t been found yet, but a group at the Baylor College of Medicine is sequencing this region of the genome to look for FGF20 gene mutations.”

By Elizabeth Flock, Washington Post, January 6, 2012

Physicist, cosmologist and obsessor of black holes Stephen Hawking turns 70 Sunday, despite a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease that doctors said would kill him almost five decades ago. Many scientists are taking the birthday as a chance to reflect on what the man taught us in his brilliant career.

Stephen Hawking. (MARKUS SCHREIBER – AP)

As a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Hawking taught countless students about cosmology, gravitation and complex mathematics. As the author of “A Brief History of Time,” he instructed readers on the Big Bang, black holes and other mysteries of the universe. And despite losing his ability to speak, he continues to teach disbelieving doctors that people can live past their life expectancy if they try.

Below, six other lessons Hawking has taught us in his 70 years:

1. We will never have all the answers.

At the end of a lecture in the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, England, in 2010, Hawking was asked: “Do you think it will come the time that people will learn everything about physics?” The scientist quickly responded: “I hope not!” And when a reader of Time magazine that same year asked him whether it felt like a huge responsibility to have all the answers, Hawking wrote back: “While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick.”

2. Knowledge is best put to use when shared.

Despite its difficult subject matter, Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” has been read by legions of people because the physicist made it so accessible. A popular story goes that Hawking’s publisher told him readership would be cut in half for every equation in the book, so Hawking included only one: E = mc².

“The fact is that information in his mind would be useless to anyone else if he wasn’t able, somehow, to communicate it effectively,” Science blogger Mic Farris writes.

3. Learn the lessons of history.

Hawking fielded questions from the BBC this week on what might happen if humans discover other intelligent life. Hawking’s response: Know your history. “The discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the biggest scientific discovery ever,” he said. “But it would be very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilization. If aliens decided to visit us then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans.”

5. Study what fuels your passion.

When the Washington Post interviewed Errol Morris, director of the film adaptation of “A Brief History of Time,” in 1992, Morris explained why he believed Hawking was so fascinated with the study of black holes: “To me, it’s like some real-life Edgar Allan Poe story, a version of the premature burial — being essentially buried alive inside of one’s self. . . . When he was 21 years old, he was given a death sentence with 2 ¹ / ₂ years to live, and in the nearly 30 years since then, he has become increasingly incapacitated. And what is the central objective of his inquiries? Black holes. Stars that collapse in on themselves, implode, become so incredibly dense that nothing can escape their gravitation field . . . To me, there’s a very close metaphorical connection.”

5. Never lose your voice.

Because of his motor neuron disease, Hawking had to undergo a tracheotomy in 1985 that removed his ability to speak on his own. But he never stopped talking. Like movie critic Roger Ebert or the protagonist of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” Hawking adopted his own way of speaking — by using a computer that picks up the twitching movements of his right cheek.

6. Genius shouldn’t always be associated with precocity.

Hawking admitted in the same Royal Albert Hall lecture that he did not learn to read until he was 8 years old. He also said he was a lazy student at Oxford University, his classwork untidy and his handwriting the “despair of my teachers.” Late bloomers, take heart.

By Elizabeth Flock  |  12:41 PM ET, 01/06/2012
Tags:  National, Stephen Hawking

This story is taken from Sacbee / PR Newswire

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to Convene Annual Meeting

Published Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011

CHARLESTON, S.C., Dec. 29, 2011 — Scientists will present research on marine biodiversity, climate change, animal behavior, and rapid evolutionary changes

CHARLESTON, S.C., Dec. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, one of the oldest and most prestigious interdisciplinary biological organizations, will hold its annual meeting at the Charleston Area Convention Center in Charleston, SC, from Jan. 3 to Jan. 7, 2012.  More than 1500 scientists will present the latest research on animal ecology, evolution, physiology, neurobiology, and biomechanics, offering journalists a rich assortment of news and feature possibilities.

Experts from a wide array of different disciplines will convene at the meeting to discuss topics relevant to marine biodiversity, climate change, animal behavior and neurobiology, and rapid evolutionary changes.  In addition to presentations of the latest research, the conference will include events with societal implications, such as a special lecture on evolution, education, and creationism over the past decades. 

This year, the SICB highlights three society-wide symposia:

• The Impacts of Developmental Plasticity on Evolutionary Innovation and Diversification
• Novel Methods for the Analysis of Animal Movement
• Dispersal of Marine Organisms

The Impacts of Developmental Plasticity on Evolutionary Innovation and DiversificationEcologists, evolutionary biologists, physiologists, and developmental geneticists discuss Developmental Plasticity—how animals grow differently, from zygote to adult, due to changes in their environment.  For example, young male dung beetles with access to plentiful food supplies grow large horns to fight other males, allowing for eased access to females.  Conversely, male beetles with limited food do not grow horns and instead develop alternative ways to access females.  Scientists think that such plasticity helps organisms to evolve rapidly and also promotes the formation of new species.  But no one fully understands what sorts of environmental changes promote plasticity, or what genetic and physiological changes actually cause animals to grow differently. 

Novel Methods for the Analysis of Animal Movement Scientists consider new ways to understand animal and cell movements, including cell movements in the earliest stages of embryo formation, insect flight, insect migration, and whales turning and diving.  Experts in genetics, biomechanics, and ecology will present computational approaches that rely on data from microscopy, high-speed video, and radar and satellite imaging. 

Dispersal of Marine OrganismsA diverse group of scientists talk on patterns of marine animal dispersal throughout the oceans. To explain the diversity and ecology of ocean species, these researchers will examine how tiny larval organisms can find suitable habitats in which to live. These methods of movement can include  swimming or crawling, drifting with ocean currents, or hitching a ride on larger animals on drifting seaweed, or on boats.  This symposium assembles an interdisciplinary group of outstanding young and established speakers to address dispersal in marine organisms in order to foster integration and cross-talk among different disciplines and to identify gaps in scientific knowledge and areas for future research.

SOURCE Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

600-Million-Year-Old Microscopic Fossils Upend Evolution Theory

VOA News, December 23, 2011

Photo: AP

This composite of microscope images shows fossil animal embryos – discovered in China – that have opened a window on an early and poorly understood stage in the evolution of animals, February 1998 (file photo)

A remarkable new fossil discovery of amoeba-like micro-organisms that lived 570 million years ago could make scientists rethink some widely-accepted theories about how complex life on Earth first evolved from a single-celled universal common ancestor. 
An international team of researchers analyzed the rock-encased fossils in precise computer models created from high high-energy X-rays generated using a particle accelerator. 
The scientists say they were surprised when the results indicated the fossilized cell clusters were not animals or embryos. That is because it had long been thought that fossils showing this apparent pattern cell division represented the embryos of the earliest animals.

Instead, they say the finely detailed X-ray images exposed features pattern that led them to conclude the organisms were, “the reproductive spore bodies of single-celled ancestors of animals.”
Study co-author Phil Donoghue of Britain’s University of Bristol said the new results mean much of what has been written about the fossils for the last 10 years is “flat wrong.”
The new study is published in the journal, Science.
The microscopic fossils examined in the study were recovered from rocks collected in southern China. The scientists say the micro-organisms lived during the Ediacaran geologic period between 600 million and 543 million years ago when multi-celled life was just starting to evolve. 
Geologists say the Ediacaran period marks the end of the last ice age in a 250 million year-long series of glaciations that covered most of the planet and froze the oceans from pole to pole – a time commonly known as Snowball Earth. 
One theory proposed that climate shocks during the planet’s Snowball Earth phase initiated the evolution of complex, multicellular life that emerged in the Ediacaran period.

Find this article at:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/600-Million-Year-Old-Microscopic-Fossils-Upend-Evolution-Theory-136172283.html

Study: Autistic Children Have More Brain Cells

By Alice Park Wednesday, November 9, 2011

There’s growing evidence that the brains of autistic children are very different from the brains of other youngsters. Now a new study that found an excess of brain cells in children with autism comes closer to pinpointing the origins of the condition: in utero versus in toddlerhood.

In research reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), scientists at the University of California, San Diego, found that autistic children have about 67% more nerve cells in a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex than children without autism. The prefrontal cortex is involved in processing social skills, communication, cognitive functions and language — all areas in which autistic children often show abnormal development.

Lead researcher Eric Courchesne studied the brains of seven autistic boys between the ages of 2 and 16 after their death and compared his analysis to the brains of six unaffected boys who died at similar ages. The excess of neurons was a bit of a surprise since in most cases, deficits in social skills — like the ones autistic children typically have — are linked to less, not more, nerve tissue.

“When we think of the inability to handle complicated information, we usually think of too little in the way of connections or brain cells,” he says. “But this is just the opposite.”

MORE: Risk of Autism Is Five Times Higher in Low-Birthweight Babies

Functionally, however, the autistic children may have been suffering from a dearth of proper nerve connections since the overabundance of neurons may have led to difficulty in their ability to connect and communicate with each other. That situation, says Courchesne, could "lead to pathways that slow down or prevent normal active interaction between different regions of the brain.”

Social interaction and communication, for example, require that nerves from distant portions of the brain link up. Think of too many nerves like an overgrown forest that could choke some of these critical neural bridges.

Equally significant is the fact that the excess of neurons in the prefrontal cortex aren’t formed after birth, but during early development, in utero. That suggests that the changes responsible for autism are occurring much earlier than scientists had thought.

MORE: Could the Way We Mate and Marry Boost Rates of Autism?

“Knowing that we have a specific type of defect that occurs very early in development really helps us to focus and sharpen the next steps in research to determine what caused the excess,” says Courchesne. And hopefully find new treatments that can help children and their families cope better with the symptoms of autism.

Find this article at:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/09/study-autistic-children-have-too-many-brain-neurons/

© 2011 Time Inc. All rights reserved

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/09/study-autistic-children-have-too-many-brain-neurons/print/#ixzz1dDWRdOxS

By Karin Kloosterman
November 06, 2011

Israeli company formulates a drug that ‘trains’ the immune system to seek and destroy malignant cells that have already invaded the body.

Cancer cells.

As we get older, modern medicine will help more of us live with cancer rather than die from it. That’s the assumption behind a vaccine to treat cancer, being developed by a pharmaceutical company in Israel.

Vaxil BioTherapeutics’ main product, ImMucin, is now in advanced clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

CEO Julian Levy tells ISRAEL21c that this therapeutic vaccine doesn’t prevent cancer from invading, but activates and enhances the body’s natural immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells already present in the body, such as those lingering after cancer surgery.

Malignant cells normally get out of control by tricking the immune system not to notice them, a strategy that works especially well in older people because immune systems get less efficient with age.

The vaccine is currently being tested against a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. However, Vaxil’s scientific breakthrough is based on a drug platform, VaxHit, which can be tailored to treat not only 90 percent of cancers, he says, but also diseases such as tuberculosis.

This disease is cropping up in developing nations as existing vaccines are proving less and less effective.

"Two billion are affected by the pathogen," says Levy. "Ten percent will develop the active disease. And while TB can be treated by drugs, it takes several months and it can be brutal."

Julian Levy, CEO of Vaxil BioTherapeutics.

According to Levy, the vaccine presents no side effects, and can be taken indefinitely, like vitamins. ImMucin is designed to overcome cancer cells that mutate, rendering other drugs ineffective.

A hit for long-term survival

Depending on the outcome of clinical trials, the ImMucin vaccine could be ready and marketable within the next six years. It could have major implications for the treatment of leading killers like prostate and breast cancer.

New studies in the United States suggest that fewer men will go under the scalpel to remove their cancerous prostate gland, and simply live with the usually slow-growing cancer. Vaxil could be a helpful tool in prolonging lives of these patients.

The specific molecular markers on most cancer cells, which ImMucin "trains" the immune system’s T-cells to find and kill, were discovered by the company’s founder, Dr. Lior Carmon, a biotechnology entrepreneur with a doctorate in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

Vaxil was founded in 2006, and the company of five is currently based in Nes Ziona, Israel. This year, Vaxil signed a memorandum of understanding to merge its business into Sheldonco, an Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Anna Scrivenger | Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 10:06 am

Missing link between birds and mammals: the platypus of eastern Australia

Arguably Australia’s weirdest animal, the platypus, is at the centre of a new theory about mammalian evolution.

The platypus is a strange, halfway house species, caught in time between the egg layers and the placental mammals. Bridging the gaps between bird, reptile and mammal it is warm-blooded and furry, but lays eggs rather than giving birth to live young. The echidna, also found in Australia, is the only other example.

This is a process that all mammals must have been through at some point in our evolutionary past, as life on Earth, for reasons best known to itself, moved from everyone laying eggs, towards certain species giving birth instead. Monotremes – mammals who still lay eggs – have therefore been very useful in understanding the origin of our sex chromosomes.

Professor Grutzner at the University of Adelaide says that the platypus gives key insight into how the mammalian genome has evolved over the past 200 million years. He has been working on an international project, led by the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, that uses new technology to highlight the active genes within different tissues and organs of different species, from mice to hens to humans.

The study has revealed that certain tissues, like the sexual organs, have evolved faster between different species than brain tissue has. In other words, the brains of different species are not as different as our other parts are.

The platypus was included in the study because of its ‘missing link’ status – representing our distant mammalian relative.

“We already know that our sex chromosomes emerged after the separation of monotremes from other mammals,” Professor Grutzner reports. “This allowed us to examine in this study how the activity of genes changes once they found themselves on a sex chromosome.”

The platypus brain was also found to be particularly active in explorative and navigational activity, something it has in common with fellow forager the mouse, but is less active in some other more domesticated beings.

The research will enable connections to be made between the physiology, anatomy, behaviour and underlying genes of different species, which can eventually help to map evolutionary history with animal characteristics and behaviour.

“It’s a very important starting point for further study,” Professor Grutzner said.

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