Various useful Science and Technology updates for you
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Science and Technology updates - 10th August, 2021
- Understanding Borgs: Scientists closely associated with the development of CRISPR (the gene editing technology) have now reported of a class of DNA structures that imbibe genes from other microbes. These are "Borgs".
- What are Borgs: They aren't yet living entities by themselves, but are long chains of DNA and can be considered as extra-chromosomal elements (ECE) and may code for proteins whose purposes aren't immediately clear.
- In a bioRxiv paper, Jillian Banfield, of UC Berkley, and colleagues report their discovery of about 19 different Borg types that were assimilated into Methanoperedens archaea, a family of organisms that are similar to bacteria but with a distinct evolutionary history.
- Methanoperedens have the ability to oxidise methane and the Borg genes expand their respiratory capacity in response to changing environmental conditions.
- Thus, scientists speculate, Borgs, that were identified in swamps, groundwater and wetland soil may have a role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions and hence a role in designing future climate-controlling microbes.
- Oral drug fenofibrate may cut SARS-CoV-2 infection by 70%: An oral drug used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood could reduce infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by up to 70 per cent, according to a new study. Researchers found that fenofibrate and its active form fenofibric acid can significantly reduce SARS-COV-2 infection, that causes COVID-19, in human cells in the laboratory. Since fenofibrate is an oral drug which is very cheap and available worldwide, together with its extensive history of clinical use and its good safety profile, our data has global implications – especially in low-middle income countries. The researchers noted that the drug, if cleared in clinical trials, may be useful in people for whom vaccines are not recommended or suitable such as children, those with hyper-immune disorders and those using immune-suppressants. Fenofibrate is approved for use by most countries in the world including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), they said. It is an oral drug currently used to treat conditions such as high levels of cholesterol and lipids in the blood.
- The Karman line: Named for aerospace specialist, physicist and mathematician, Theodore von Karman, this the imaginary boundary that demarcates the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and outer space. This is 100 km above the Earth's Mean Sea level. While this is a round easy-to-remember number, it is by no means the universally accepted definition. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) defines this limit at 80km and international law doesn't even recognise such distinctions as the edge of the atmosphere. The logic is that it signifies the outer limit to which aeronautical flight is possible. An aeroplane stays up because the energy from its fuel generates forward motion relative to the air below and this energy, along with the surrounding air, helps the plane's wings to generate lift. The higher the altitude, the thinner the air and more the speed needed to keep the plane flying. At close to 90 km, this speed almost equals the orbital velocity or one at which satellites can orbit the earth. The Karman line is thus, a definition of space purely from the perspective of aeronautics and other ways of determining the 'edge of space' can yield different definitions depending on if you are a meteorologist or a planetary scientist. Billionaire Richard Branson and other members aboard his private shuttle, went 85 kilometres, meeting the NASA-specified definition of having crossed into space and they were even officially recognised as astronauts on their return.
- mRNA magic in full display: Speed is critical during a public health emergency. Think back to March 2020: as the World Health Organisation declared the start of the covid-19 pandemic, scientists knew that vaccination would be a key step on the path back to normality. But they knew the scale of the challenge and did their best to manage the world’s expectations. Developing, trialling and manufacturing a vaccine against a brand new virus, they cautioned, might take years, if it was even possible at all. The first licensed vaccine—made by Pfizer in partnership with BioNTech, a small German biotech firm—was administered to Margaret Keenan, in Britain, in December 2020. The vaccine, which used messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in people for the first time, had arrived at record speed, a mere nine months after the start of the pandemic. The mRNA vaccines did not come from nowhere. What manifested as lightning-quick progress for the rest of the world was, in fact, the end of decades of hard slog for a few researchers led by Dr. Katalin Kariko, a biochemist at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the one convinced that pieces of mRNA could be used to instruct cells to use their own machinery to make medicines. It took until 2005 before she and a colleague, Drew Weissman, an immunologist, found a way to tweak mRNA so that it could get into cells without being attacked by the body’s immune system.
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