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Happy Friday, have a great weekend!
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Scientists alerted they won a Nobel Prize when their circadian research woke them up
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Three scientists – Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young – were woken up by their important research into circadian responses to light and dark. That is, the research they did won them a Nobel Prize, and it was either their circadian rhythms that woke them up, or the phone call saying they won. Their research showed that simple organisms like the fruit fly up to and complicated organisms like humans all oscillate in response to light and dark. This year’s prize award is in many ways, a rebuke to the recent trend towards applied science, like HIV research, versus basic research, or research for its own sake. As funding gets tighter and many policy makers are demanding justification for researching these basic mechanisms of life, some speculate that these and other Laurates may never have received a dime for their research in today’s atmosphere. In fact, Jeffrey Hall left science because he ran out of money and was fed up with academia! Of course, it is not lost on many that many people contributed to this work, and by honoring only three, it dismisses all of the work put in by others in their lab. And, they tend to be males.
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Cell line misidentification is a bigger problem than many scientists will admit – as many as a third of cell lines used in research are misidentified or contaminated. The International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC) is a volunteer group of experts who take this problem seriously, and they keep one of the best databases of misidentified cell lines out there with over 450 known misidentified cells. They just published a study noting how two common cell lines, a melanoma line - UCLA-SO-M14 (M14) – and a breast carcinoma cell line - MDA-MB-435 – seem to have originated from the same donor, suggesting that one of them might have gotten contaminated. Through molecular characterization, they were able to show that later (newer) samples of both correspond to M14 frozen in 1975, and that M14 is the authentic line and the MDA-MB-435 is actually misidentified. That is likely to be helpful for anyone working with those lines.
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In what could be a game changer for this writer, scientists have used CRISPR to knock out 35 of the 45 primary genes responsible for gliadin production in wheat. Gliadin, of course, is one of the components to gluten, and is responsible for the major immune reaction by those with celiac. This removal reduced gluten production by 85%, and more importantly, the low-gluten bread made from it didn’t taste like a cardboard box.
With the sports concussion issue on the national stage, and the very real threat of athletes (read that as mostly football players) developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at a young age, researchers at Boston University identified a possible biomarker – CCL11 – that may distinguish CTE from other neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. Additional studies are needed to determine when increased levels occur, but identifying CTE in the 99.92% of high school football players who do not make it to the NFL could change their lives forever.
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The alternative Nobel Prize winners, known as the “Ig Nobel Prize” were announced late last month in the 10 fields they award. The Ig Nobel Prize is intended to make you laugh, then think. They give the awards to published research with funny names. This year’s prize in biology will not make it past most spam filters, so instead, will mention that the winner for the Medicine Prize is for “using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese.” Check them out while you are sneaking out of work early today!
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