Category Archives: Science in the News

New UBC Research Could Provide A Cure For Spinal Cord Injuries

Posted on January 31, 2022 by | Leave a comment

Currently, 27 million people worldwide are affected by a spinal cord injury (SCI). In Canada, an SCI will cost $1.5 to 5 million per person over their lifetime. With the significant amount of SCI’s and the cost associated with this traumatic event has researchers eager to find a cure, but there has not been a successful solution so far. However, UBC researchers think they may have found a potential solution.

What is a Spinal Cord Injury?

The spinal cord is a column of nerves that runs down the middle of your back. It functions to carry sensory information from your body to your brain, motor signals from your brain to your body and controls one’s reflex responses. The spinal cord is an essential part of the human body and allows us to sense and interact with our surrounding environment. Therefore, it can have profound implications when the spinal cord gets injured. The most common cause for SCI’s is from trauma to the back, with the most common being motor vehicle accidents for younger individuals in the USA, and falls are the most common cause for individuals over 65 years. Over 50% of spinal cord injuries occur in individuals between the ages of 16-30 years, and most are males. 

Description: Statistics associated with spinal cord injuries Source: https://mendthegap.ubc.ca/approach/

Exciting New UBC Research

Description/Source: Project Video By UBC Applied Science 

UBC researchers just received a $24 million grant for their “Mend the Gap” project working on spinal cord regeneration. The research aims to use a soft gel containing small magnetic filaments that will help guide and reconnect or regrowth the nerves damaged in the spinal cord. “Mend the Gap” has had success doing this in a petri dish and is now working on how this concept can be applied to the human body in a non-invasive way. With the gel being soft, it can mend to different sizes and shapes of gaps in the spinal cord in a non-invasive way preventing further damage to the spinal cord. This gel will also contain medication that can help reduce scar tissue that will help with the regeneration process. The UBC scientist Dr. John Madden leads this project and works with engineers and researchers from Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. Within Canada, ICORD, UBC, the University of Alberta, the University of Western Ontario, McGill University and the University of Toronto are all involved. The projects have 32 researchers from many disciplines, including electrical engineers, material chemists, microbiologists, neurobiologists, and neurosurgeons. “Mend the Gap” is hoping the project will be complete in 7 years from now. Dr. Madden hopes that their research will provide hope for SCI’s and potentially a cure.

The proposed method for spinal cord repair      Source: https://mendthegap.ubc.ca/approach/

Ultimately, SCI’s have many consequences that affect many aspects of an individual’s life. UBC researchers’ new approach to fixing injured spinal cords can hopefully help people with spinal cord injuries gain independence. In the meantime, this research provides hope for the future of spinal cord injury research.

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The tiny but mighty solution to antibiotic resistance

Posted on January 29, 2022 by | 2 comments

So picture this… It’s the year 1928 and penicillin has just been discovered. Penicillin revolutionized modern medicine and with other antibiotics to come, it would go on to treat the untreatable and save millions of lives. Now, let’s flash forward to a more grim version of the future. It’s the year 2022. Antibiotics were supposed to be our precious resource but every time we misused them or overused them, we gave bacteria a chance to evolve and become resistant, and at the same time our scientists were unable to bring new antibiotics to the market. The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health today” so in recent years scientists have been looking for new multi-dimensional strategies to combat this issue. One of those is the use of light-activated quantum dots.

Over-prescription and patient non-compliance exacerbate the issue of antibiotic resistance. Getty Images/Joe Raedle

What are quantum dots?

Quantum dots are tiny particles made of semiconducting material, meaning they partly conduct electrical current. They are only a few nanometres in size and can be engineered in terms of shape, size, and material. The way these quantum dots kill bacteria is not all that complicated. Basically, when our bodies are infected with bacteria, they naturally produce what scientists call Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in our immune cells to kill bacteria, and what light-activated quantum dots do is that they essentially mimic this natural killing process of the body by producing ROS of their own.

How is the killing initiated?

Now you may be thinking, how do we ensure that the cells that are not infected with bacteria, don’t end up getting killed? Well, the answer is quite simple. In application, quantum dots are specifically injected at the site of bacterial infection in the human body, so as to not affect other tissues, and when they receive an input of light of sufficient energy in a process called photoactivation, their electrons (particles with a negative charge of electricity) jump from a region of space with lower energy called the valence band to a region of space with higher energy called the conduction band. The energy difference between these two is referred to as the “bandgap” and when the electrons relax back to their ground level (i.e. the valence band), a photon of light is released that provides the energy needed for producing the killer Reactive Oxygen Species.

An input of light causes electrons of the quantum dots to move around, energy is released, and the killer ROS come to life! Adapted from Redox-Active Therapeutics

What are the consequences?

The killer ROS will break down bacterial biofilms (self-contained bacterial communities), damage the bacterial cell wall and cell membrane and inactivate enzymes needed for bacterial survival. And because the ROS are killing these microbes through all these different non-specific ways, the microbes can no longer develop resistance!

Quantum Dots and their many ways of killing bacteria! Adapted from McCollum et
al. and Imlay

One for the future?

It is abundantly clear that quantum dot technology shows great promise in combating the widespread issue of antibiotic resistance. Although the clinical use of the technology is a long way off, the strategy is an intriguing new approach at a time when the rate of drug development is much slower than the rate of antibiotic development and the pharmaceutical industry is lagging behind.

Student research on the applications of quantum dots at The University of Colorado. Materials Research Society

 

 

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication, Science in the News

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Exercise can Improve Brain Chemistry by Protecting Aging Synapses

 

Covid-19 pandemic has impacted communities across the world. In order to mitigate the spread of virus, the government is promotoming  ‘social distacing’ at a population level and ‘self-isolation’ of elderly people. However, despite the importance of Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM), the government face challenges to maintaining a physically active lifestyle, particularly for older adults.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, it is predicted that the global population of elderly people in developed and developing countries will double by 2050. As the number of people aged over 80 years is rising rapidly, it is increasingly important for individuals to maintain their quality of life, whilst preventing chronic conditions.

Physical activity among elders is one of the most widely recommended practices to support the brain, cognitive aging, and even delay memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease.

Elderly People Should Exercise Regularly           Credit: Donald Davis

According to a UC San Francisco study which was the first to utilize a set of data from human subjects, it has been discovered that proteins, which aid connection between neurons to maintain healthy cognition function, are found more abundantly in elderly people who remain more active.

This discovery has also been proven true in people with toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Furthermore, microglia is a specialized population of macrophages in the central nervous system (CNS) that can regulate a potent inflammatory response by clearing away biological debris in the brain.

YouTube Preview ImageSource: What Are Microglia?

During communication between neurotransmitters, the neuron releases a small peptide called amyloid-beta. An accumulation of amyloid-beta, in severe cases, result in memory loss and other cognitive diseases; the microglia is important because it clears such accumulation.

YouTube Preview Image Source:What you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s 

One such cognitive disease that is affected by accumulation of amyloid beta is Alzheimer’s. While the main cause of Alzheimer’s is still debated among many scientists, most neuroscientists believe that this is true.

To prove the effectiveness of elderly physical activity on cognitive health and wellbeing, Kaitlin Casaletto, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Neurology, conducted a study to show the relationship between synaptic protein regulation and physical activity.

More Proteins Mean Better Nerve Signals

Her study traced the late-life physical activity of elderly participants who gave consent to donate their brains after death. Researchers examined 167 stored brains to trace lingering biochemical markers of microglia activity.

The research found a strong linear relationship between levels of activity and healthy microglia, especially in the hippocampus, which is known to regulate memory as well as other functions in the brain. Also, more protein was found in the brains of elderly people who remained more active during their late years.

Greater average late-life physical activity relates to higher synaptic protein
Credit: Kaitlin Casaletto PhD

On the other hand, the relatively less active participants’ microglia tended to look very dysfunctional with low memory capacity compared to those with more active lifestyles.

While there is no perfect cure for Alzheimer’s disease, there are things we can still do to delay or alter complete memory loss. Since recent research has exemplified the positive overall effect of physical activity on cognitive health and function, a greater focus on educating elders and caretakers to support a more proactive and physical lifestyle may be worth pursuing. Turns out, exercise is not only good for the heart and the body, but also for our most used organ – the brain.

-Yeonjun (Irene) Choi

 

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Posted on January 24, 2022 by in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

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The Renaissance of Magic Mushrooms!

Posted on January 24, 2022 by | 1 comment

What do you think of when you hear magic mushrooms, otherwise known as psychedelic or medicinal mushrooms? Do you think of hippies protesting wars? Or high teenagers walking through the woods talking about how “trippy” the trees are? I bet you don’t see a therapist office with a licensed therapist and physician guiding a patient through a powerful psychedelic experience. However, this is precisely where the field of psychedelic research is heading.

Psilocybin, the active compound found in psychedelic mushrooms, is a powerful hallucinogenic that can cause numerous physical and psychological effects in the user. The potential physical effects include numbness, dry mouth, exaggerated reflexes and more. However, it is the psychological effects that make psilocybin a potential therapeutic drug for depression. Psilocin, a psilocybin metabolite, acts on serotonin receptors in the brain, increasing the hormone serotonin. This effect is similar to that of SSRIs, the most commonly used drug for depression. Unlike SSRIs, though, psilocybin has another property that helps combat depression; it increases communication across networks in the brain. This allows for a state of unstrained cognition that helps users resist depressive patterns by assisting the brain in building new neural connections.

Image showcasing the brain connections of a person on psilocybin (b) versus a person taking a placebo (a) Credit: Science Alert

The John Hopkins Center for Psychedelics and Consciousness Research leads the way in psychedelic research. The university hosted a clinical trial into psychedelic mushrooms as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). In this study, participants went through two psilocybin sessions four weeks apart in the context of supportive psychotherapy. Of the 24 participants in the trial, 17 (71%) saw an improvement in their MDD and 13 (54%) were considered in remission after 4 weeks. See the two videos below to hear Roland Griffiths talk about his research and this study and a participant speak about his experience.

YouTube Preview Image The video covers the experience of an individual that was participating in the study and their experience with psilocybin. Video Credit: John’s Hopkins Media Team

YouTube Preview Image The Video covers the motivation behind studying psilocybin as a treatment option for Major Depressive Disorder and the experience of carrying out the experiment. Video Credit: John’s Hopkins Media Team

Although the research into psilocybin as a treatment for depression seems like new, breakthrough research, it is actually a rediscovered field. In the 1960s and 1950s, hundreds of studies were done on the use of LSD and psilocybin as therapeutic agents. However, the association between these drugs and counterculture killed the research in this field until recently. In the past few years, there have been hundreds of studies published each year on psilocybin as a treatment for numerous mental health disorders: PTSD, addiction, and anxiety, along with depression. The renaissance we are experiencing into using psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds as treatment for mental health disorders could help millions of people as the prevalence of these disorders continues to rise.

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The Fight Against NEOs: Near-Earth Objects

Posted on January 24, 2022 by | 1 comment

“Don’t Look Up”, directed by Adam McKay and released in December 2021, follows the story of 2 astronomers who discover an approaching comet that they believe will destroy the Earth. Upon its release resurfaced an unsettling question; what are the odds of an asteroid striking Earth leading to mass extinction, and what actions can we take?

Encountering NEOs: Near-Earth Objects

Near-Earth objects are what scientists identify as asteroids or comets that have been nudged from the main asteroid belt into the inner solar system. The NEOWISE project is one of many ongoing operations tracking and predicting the orbital paths of NEOs to determine if they have the potential to impact Earth. The spacecraft used in this project detects NEOs by the infrared wavelengths they emit as a result of being warmed by the Sun and gathers data regarding the objects’ size and compositions. 

Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Famously known for the Cretaceous extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs, asteroid collisions with the Earth are not uncommon. Harmless small rocks routinely enter Earth’s atmosphere and are burned up due to the immense heating caused by friction. However, complications arise when objects larger than roughly 25 meters strike Earth. In 2013, an asteroid about 20 meters in diameter entered Earth’s atmosphere above the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The asteroid exploded before reaching the Earth’s surface, releasing energy equivalent to 30 times that of a nuclear bomb. The event injured over 1600 people and caused estimated infrastructure damage of 33

Informative Image

Trail of Chelyabinsk meteor taken at a distance 200km away moments after the explosion. Image Credit: Alex Alishevskikh

million USD. While encounters with NEOs large enough to cause regional damage only occur every few centuries to millennials, and civilization-threatening objects once every few million years, the environmental and human endangerment of such impacts is great enough for scientists to push for planetary defence operations. 

Planetary Defence Strategies

Planetary defence strategies to prevent encounters with hazardous NEOs are still being developed and tested today. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), launched on November 24, 2021, is the world’s first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique involving the deliberate crashing of the spacecraft into an object. Upon reaching the targeted moon of asteroid Didymos A in September 2022, the transfer of momentum generated from the impact of the spacecraft should change the moon’s orbit enough to redirect its path. If successful, scientists hope to implement this technique to divert threatening NEOs away from the Earth in the case of such future discoveries.

Source: JHU Applied Physics Laboratory

The use of a gravity tractor could act similarly to divert the path of a NEO. This theoretical spacecraft would steer close enough to a NEO where a small but significant attraction with the spacecraft would slowly pull and change the NEO’s orbital path. Other methods involving blowing up NEOs with a powerful laser or simply evacuating the predicted impact areas have also been discussed, however, further research is required.

Should We Be Concerned?

Ultimately, the chances of an asteroid wiping out the human race is arguably infinitesimal. Yet planetary defence remains crucial to protecting our planet as encounters like the Chelyabinsk meteor remind us that even relatively small NEOs can cause significant damage. 

Written by: Joanne Kit

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The Development of Bacteria Eating Plastics

Discovery of plastics

A century ago, the discovery of plastics brought the convenience of a strong and affordable structure. However, finding something so strong and easily disposable creates environmental concerns. Science is rapidly developing to accommodate issues caused by the developments. Science has now permitted the development of bacteria to decompose the plastics that have long contaminated Earth. Using bacteria to destroy plastics may be a long-term sustainable way to preserve the planet.

Plastics and their damage

Plastics are continuing to plague and damage Earth’s environment. Single-use plastics are wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. More than 8.3 billion tons of plastics were manufactured since the 1950s, and over 60% have been buried in landfills. Plastic waste ends up in rivers, dumps, and oceans. Plastics harm aquatic life, increase disease spread, and may lie in waste for centuries. Scientifically, there needs to be a method to destroy PET’s (Polyethylene terephthalate). PET’s common uses include water bottles and plastic containers, many of which are consumed once then immediately disposed of. PET’s are not biodegradable.

Source: rsscience.com

The chemical composition of PET allows bacteria to decompose the structure. The bacteria are capable of decomposing the polyester bond. The C, H, and O bonds are capable of being decomposed by the bacteria.

Bacteria: a solution?

In March 2016, there was a breakthrough scientific discovery. Japanese scientists found that bacteria could consume PET plastics. The idea of bacteria eating plastics empowers the thought of opening industry scale to demolish plastics. The plastic-eating bacteria could open doors to many other forms of waste that would end up in landfills. In 2017, the fungus Ideonella Sakaiensis was seen to be able to decompose plastics. In 2020, strains of bacteria were seen as capable of eating polyurethane plastics.

YouTube Preview Image

Implications

Researchers and industry are far from determining measures to implementing bacteria that will safely and quickly decompose plastics. Further research must be done to seek if the measures are truly environmental. There are unknowns of the side effects of bacteria decomposing plastic. There are uncertainties if toxins to the environment will harm the environment in the long run. Moreover, the rate of decomposition of plastics is currently too slow. There needs to be genetic engineering for faster industrial processes.

Source: Beautiful News Daily

The different forms of bacteria decompose different plastics. Bacteria mainly break down Polyurethane, and bacterial enzymes mainly break down Polyethylene. Mealworms are capable of decomposing Polystyrene. These are all plastics that contaminate the planet.

Developments moving forward

Scientists are currently working on implementing the enzymes of bacteria to break down plastics at a rate six times faster than the current rate. Recently, 12000 new enzymes having the capability of breaking down plastics were discovered. 60% of these newly determined enzymes are unclassified. These enzymes have the potential for industrial use to break down environmentally harmful plastics. With the progress of science, there are many adaptable forms of preserving the environment.

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Posted on January 23, 2022 by in Biological Sciences, Science in the News, Uncategorized