Smart Economy

No such thing as ethnic groups, genetically speaking

Central Asian ethnic groups are more defined by societal rules than ancestry. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genetics found that overall there are more genetic differences within ethnic groups than between them, indicating that separate 'ethnic groups' exist in the mind more than the blood.  

Evelyne Heyer, from the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, France, led an international team of researchers who studied mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome data from several populations of two major language ethnic groups of Central Asia, the Turkic and Indo-Iranian groups.

She said, "Our results indicate that, for at least two of the Turkic groups in Central Asia, ethnicity is a constructed social system maintaining genetic boundaries with other groups, rather than being the outcome of common genetic ancestry".

The boundaries used by individuals to distinguish themselves from members of other ethnic groups are generally cultural, linguistic, economic, religious and political. Heyer and her colleagues confirm the absence of common ancestry in a specific ethnic group; there were on average more differences between members of the same ethnic group than there were between groups. Speaking about these findings, Heyer said, "Analysis of genetic data, such as in this study, is an important tool for investigating ethnological issues"

 

Source:  Genetic diversity and the emergence of ethnic groups in Central Asia; Evelyne Heyer, Patricia Balaresque, Mark A Jobling, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Raphaelle Chaix, Laure Segurel, Almaz Aldashev and Tanya Hegay; BMC Genetics (in press),

 

Walter Derzko

Stop Influenza, Swine Flu, H1N1, and Avian Flu with Vitamin D

Ever wonder why most people come down with influenza almost exclusively in the winter time, when the influenza virus is present in the environment year round?

Researchers have concluded that a Vitamin D deficiency which happens more in the winter then the summer, is what makes us susceptable  to all sorts of influenza.

So, why aren't health officials world wide  recommending this easy, inexepensive,  preventive action and cure? (vs  the far more costly Tamiflu or vaccines which won't be ready till months after the expected Sept outbreak) I'm sure they all read the same medical literature too, but maybe there are other vested interests involved here, --fighting flu the traditional way each year is a major industry.

In a paper titled Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D by Cannell JJ, Vieth R, Umhau JC, Holick MF, Grant WB, Madronich S,Garland CF, and Giovanucci E. published in the prestigious peer-reviewed academic journal Epidemiol Infect. 2006 Sep 7;:1-12, researchers address the above paradox.

From the abstract:

In 1981, R. Edgar Hope-Simpson proposed that a ‘seasonal stimulus ’ intimately associated with solar radiation explained the remarkable seasonality of epidemic

influenza. Solar radiation triggers robust seasonal vitamin D production in the skin;

vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, 1,25(OH)2D,

a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. 1,25(OH)2D acts as

an immune system modulator, preventing excessive expression of inflammatory

cytokines (cytokine storms or cascades are what destroys lung cells in young otherwise -healthy teens who catch swine flu--Walter Derzko) and increasing the ‘oxidative burst’

potential of macrophages. Perhaps most importantly, it dramatically stimulates the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides,which exist in neutrophils, monocytes,

natural killer cells, and in epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract where they play

a major role in protecting the lung from infection. Volunteers inoculated with live

attenuated influenza virus are more likely to develop fever and serological evidence

of an immune response in the winter. Vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections. Ultraviolet radiation (either from artificial sources or from

sunlight) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections, as does cod liver oil

(which contains vitamin D). An interventional study showed that vitamin D reduces

the incidence of respiratory infections in children. We conclude that vitamin D, or

lack of it, may be Hope-Simpson’s ‘seasonal stimulus.

Cannell, one of the co-authors provides the following added evidence:

"In the paper, we propose that vitamin D explains the following 14 observations:

1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest,

2. Why vitamin D disappears in the months following the summer solstice,

3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season,

4. Why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin D blood levels, is associated with influenza,

5. Why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated with outdoor temperatures,

6. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds,

7. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections,

8. Why Russian scientists found that vitamin D-producing UVB lamps reduced colds and flu in school children and factory workers,

9. Why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberately infected with a weakened flu virus - first in the summer and then again in the winter - show significantly different clinical courses in the different seasons,

10. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter,

11. Why children with vitamin D deficiency and rickets suffer from frequent respiratory infections,

12. Why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses of vitamin D to children who were constantly sick from colds and the flu, found the treated children were suddenly free from infection,

13. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter rather than in the summer,

14. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are.

Although our paper discusses the possibility that physiological doses of vitamin D (5,000 units a day) may prevent colds and the flu, and that physicians might find pharmacological doses of vitamin D (2,000 units per kilogram of body weight per day for three days) useful intreating some of the one million people who die in the world every year from influenza, we remind readers that it is only a theory. Like all theories, our theory must withstand attempts to be disproved withdispassionately conducted and well-controlled scientific experiments."

 

Risks and Toxicity...as with anything you consume, it's the dose that makes the poison(Hat tip to my neighbour, who as a child with rickets in the UK,  sat under a UV lamp getting treatment.)

Vitamin D toxicity can cause nonspecific symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, constipation, weakness, and weight loss [74]. More seriously, it can also raise blood levels of calcium, causing mental status changes such as confusion and heart rhythm abnormalities [8]. The use of supplements of both calcium (1,000 mg/day) and vitamin D (400 IU/day) by postmenopausal women was associated with a 17% increase in the risk of kidney stones over 7 years in the Women's Health Initiative [75]. Deposition of calcium and phosphate in the kidneys and other soft tissues can also be caused by excessive vitamin D levels [5]. A serum 25(OH)D concentration consistently >200 ng/mL (>500 nmol/L) is considered to be potentially toxic [15]. In an animal model, concentrations ≤400 ng/mL (≤1,000 nmol/L) were not associated with harm

Vitamin D also has the potential to interact negatively with various types of medication so get a medical professional  to talk to you about it ..well this sounds like a good theory to me...I've upped my daily dose to 5,000 IU of Vitamin D since I doubt that the health authorities will be giving me this advice...it's too easy.

 

Walter Derzko,

Smart Economy, Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in challenging times featuring 45 opportunity scenarios by J. Wiley and Sons.

 

Fusion of nano-circuits and bio-membranes creates new hybrid technology

A hybrid of silicon nanocircuits and biological components that mimics some of the processes that control the passage of molecules into and out of cells has been created by a team of scientists from UC Davis, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC Berkeley.

The lipid-coated nanocircuits could lead to the development of new classes of bio-sensing tools and biological applications, such as comprehensive blood-chemistry tests that fit on the point of a needle or screening tools for the development of new drugs.

"This is an example of a marriage between integrated circuit technology and biotechnology,"  said Pieter Stroeve, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at UC Davis and one of three lead scientists on the project. "The technology of both can be mass produced, so in theory, their integration can also be mass produced."

While modern communications devices rely on electric fields and currents to carry the flow of information, biological systems are much more complex. Their use of membrane receptors, channels and pumps to control chemical signals within and between cells is unmatched by even the most powerful computers. Because these complex operations have the potential for enhancing technological systems, scientists have been trying to develop techniques to blend the systems together.

An added advantage of such a fusion is its potential for miniaturization. "If you want to go to the nanoscale of circuit technology, some of the components need to be so small that they are either very difficult to produce, or they may fail," Stroeve said. "On the other hand, many biological components have the tendency to self-assemble. And that's what we built our work on."

To create their hybrid system, Stroeve and lead scientist Aleksandr Noy, a chemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Costas Grigoropoulos, a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, turned to lipid bilayer membranes: the thin films that surround cells, acting as gatekeepers for molecules passing into and out of the cell.

Using a technique they had previously developed, the team immersed nano-scale transistors made of silicon wire into a suspension of lipid molecules in water. Attracted to the negatively charged nanowire surfaces, the lipids accumulated onto them, forming a double layer that served to insulate the wires' electrical properties as well as shield them from the surrounding water.

The team fused proteins from bacteria called Gramicidin A and Alemethicin into the lipid bilayers. In living cells these proteins serve as channels for molecules crossing the membrane.

By creating a voltage difference across the membrane, the researchers found that they could open and close the protein channels.

"This is much the same thing that happens in a cell," Stroeve explained. "Now that we can open and close these channels, we can, in effect, regulate our system's ability to sense chemicals in its environment."

A paper describing the research was posted Aug. 10, 2009  in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and published in the journal's Aug. 18 issue.

Walter Derzko,

Smart Economy, Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios by J. Wiley and Sons

 

Canadian researchers successfully reverse multiple sclerosis (MS) in mice with designer protein

The journal Nature Medicine reported today that researchers from the Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for  Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal, have developed a new experimental treatment for  multiple sclerosis (MS) that completely reverses the devastating autoimmune  disorder in mice, and might work exactly the same way in humans.

[...]

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-suppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharmaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way. GIFT15 is composed of two proteins, GSM-CSF and interleukin-15, fused together artificially in the lab to form a novel "chimera" protein.. Under normal circumstances, the individual proteins usually act to stimulate the immune system, but in their fused form, the equation reverses itself.

GIFT15 is a new "designer" protein hormone composed of two distinct proteins, and when they're stuck together they lead to a completely unexpected biological effect."This effect, explained researchers, converts B-cells -- a common form of white blood cell normally involved in immune response -- into powerful immune-suppressive cells. Unlike their better-known cousins, T-cells, naturally-occurring immune-suppressing B-cells are almost unknown in nature and the notion of using them to control immunity is very new.

One cavet--MS must be caught in its earliest stages, researchers cautioned, and clinical studies are needed to test the treatment's efficacy and safety in humans. No significant side-effects showed up in the mice, , and the treatment was fully effective with a single dose. "It's easy to collect B-cells from a patient," .... "It's just like donating blood. We purify them in the lab, treat them with GIFT15 in a petri dish, and give them back to the patient. That's what we did in mice, and that's what we believe we could do in people. It would be very easy to take the next step, it's just a question of finding the financial resources and partnerships to make this a reality."

Full story here

Walter Derzko

Live recordings of cell to cell communication

Look at any science discovery/ breakthrough and behind it you will usually find a previous breakthrough in instrumentation or visualization.

 

A new advanced method developed at the

University

of

Copenhagen

for nano-scale imaging of vesicle-fusion – vesicles that are biological nano-sized containers inside cells - could add to our understanding of diseases of the nervous system and viral infections. In the long term, this could be useful in developing a cure for neurological diseases and mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease).

 

Neurons communicate with each other with the help of nano-sized vesicles. Disruption of this communication process is responsible for many diseases and mental disorders like e.g. depression. Nerve signals travel from one neuron to another through vesicles - a nano-sized container loaded with neurotransmitter molecules. A vesicle fuses with the membrane surrounding a neuron, releases neurotransmitters into the surroundings that are detected by the next neuron in line. However, we still lack a more detailed understanding of how the fusion of vesicles occurs on the nano-scale. We just don't know what happens in the exact pathway(s)...which this method could unravel

 

see story here Live recordings of cell communication

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

When will the recession end? Part 29 Who is more job resilient in a recession? Startups or Large incumbant Corporations?

Who creates more jobs in a downturn? New Start-ups, estisting SME's  or established incumbent corporations?The following chart from a recent Kauffman Foundation study found that over the past several decades that job creation, even in a recession by start-ups has been fairly consistent in the USA , ranging between 250,000 and 375,000 net new jobs created per year (new jobs created minus jobs losses), while total job creation has see-sawed between large positive and negative flucutions for the economy as a whole. ie existing small business (<50 employees) let go 138,000 in the USA in July 2009, according to payroll processor ADP.

When household name corporations lay off anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of empoyees it make the front page headlines, but we never hear about the new startups that may pick up from a few to a dozen new staff members faithfully every year, until they grow into a Fortune 500 or 1000 company. They are off most people's radar screens. Many are not considered sexy enough or newsworthy to be covered by business journalists and the mainstream press.

If tradition holds true in the USA, we are likely to see between 400,000 to 700,000 new start-ups created both this year and last. Many of course will fail after one to two years, some will just limp along in survival mode, teetering on the brink, but many will thrive and grow, with a few showing up on the Fortune 500 or Inc 500 in a few years (2020 or 2030). Some may spawn new innovations and scientific discoveries across all sectors, from software / IT to packaging to food processing, just like we saw in the 1930's.

Similarly in Canada, we saw a blip of 30,000 net new jobs through self-employment created in March 2009.

Source: The Chart is from the study--The Economic Future Just Happened, June 2009; pg 12, The Kauffman Foundation

New Lab-on-a-chip Technology performs 1,000 chemical reactions at once

New Technique may accelerate drug discovery for cancer, other diseases

 

Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results — literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.

Toward that end, UCLA researchers have developed technology to perform more than a thousand chemical reactions at once on a stamp-size, PC-controlled microchip, which could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer.

Their study appears in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Lab on a Chip and is currently available online.

 

Full story here

 

Walter Derzko