Day: 12/20/2013

DNA clamp to grab cancer before it develops.

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As part of an international research project, a team of researchers has developed a DNA clamp that can detect mutations at the DNA level with greater efficiency than methods currently in use. Their work could facilitate rapid screening of those diseases that have a genetic basis, such as cancer, and provide new tools for more advanced nanotechnology. The results of this research is published this month in the journal ACS Nano.

Toward a new generation of screening tests

An increasing number of genetic mutations have been identified as risk factors for the development of cancer and many other diseases. Several research groups have attempted to develop rapid and inexpensive screening methods for detecting these mutations. “The results of our study have considerable implications in the area of diagnostics and therapeutics,” says Professor Francesco Ricci, “because the DNA clamp can be adapted to provide a fluorescent signal in the presence of DNA sequences having mutations with high risk for certain types cancer. The advantage of our fluorescence clamp, compared to other detection methods, is that it allows distinguishing between mutant and non-mutant DNA with much greater efficiency. This information is critical because it tells patients which cancer(s) they are at risk for or have.”

“Nature is a constant source of inspiration in the development of technologies,” says Professor Alexis Vallée-Bélisle. “For example, in addition to revolutionizing our understanding of how life works, the discovery of the DNA double helix by Watson, Crick and Franklin in 1953 also inspired the development of many diagnostic tests that use the strong affinity between two complementary DNA strands to detect mutations.”

“However, it is also known that DNA can adopt many other architectures, including triple helices, which are obtained in DNA sequences rich in purine (A, G) and pyrimidine (T, C) bases,” says the researcher Andrea Idili, first author of the study. “Inspired by these natural triple helices, we developed a DNA-based clamp to form a triple helix whose specificity is ten times greater than a double helix allows.”

“Beyond the obvious applications in the diagnosis of genetic diseases, I believe this work will pave the way for new applications related in the area of DNA-based nanostructures and nanomachines,” notes Professor Kevin Plaxco, University of California, Santa Barbara. “Such nanomachines could ultimately have a major impact on many aspects of healthcare in the future.”

“The next step is to test the clamp on human samples, and if it is successful, it will begin the process of commercialization,” concludes Professor Vallée-Bélisle.

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Artist’s rendering of the discovery: the research team took advantage of the ability of certain DNA sequences to form a triple helix, in order to develop a DNA clamp. This nanometer-scale clamp recognizes and binds DNA sequences more strongly and more specifically, allowing the development of more effective diagnostic. Professor Alexis Vallée-Bélisle, Department of Chemistry, Université de Montréal worked with the researcher Andrea Idili and Professor Francesco Ricci of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Professor Kevin W. Plaxco, University of California Santa Barbara, to develop this diagnostic nanomachine

Fluoride is a Poison Linked to Brain Damage and Mind Control

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There are so many myths and assumptions surrounding putting fluoride in water that many people go into a state of incredulous disbelief if they are told that our water supply is being poisoned.

Fluoride is a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, phosphate fertilizer industries, has a capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials, and can weaken bone and dental matter. It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and acts as a Trojan Horse to carry aluminum across the blood brain barrier. It can even inhibit function needed for sound, deep sleep.

While the issue of whether fluoride reduces dental decay is often debated when discussing this topic (it doesn’t – in fact it actually slightly increases tooth decay – for studies see this article), this is a just a distraction from the real issues – fluoride is put in the water to create a profitable way to dispose of a lethal industrial by-product, and to make the population more submissive.

The only reason it remains in the water supplies of a handful of American influenced countries (less than 4% of the population globally) is because the officials who have been pushing this mass medication program don’t want to admit it has been thoroughly discredited.

It’s a difficult subject for many people to look into with an open mind, because if fluoride really is toxic, they would have to then question many of their other assumptions about the society we live in. “It must be good for us, otherwise ‘they’ wouldn’t put it in the water..”

I have added some good resources bellow, for those of you who would like to investigate the issue of  Fluoride further.

By Tom Retterbush

SOURCES & RESOURCES

Videos

Doctor Exposes Fluoride as Poison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP7IPDfC3yg

HITLER & FLUORIDE added High Dose to Water at Concentration Camps Keep People LIKE WALKING DEAD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dZPOJ4p1DM

Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know – Fluoridation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r0c_kfdwQU

Articles

Fluoride: How A Toxic Poison Ended Up In Our Water Supply
http://www.chrisbeatcancer.com/fluoride-is-poison/

Fluoride: Deadly Poison? History & Dangers of Fluoride
http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston/fluoride.html

THE FLUORIDE WARS: THE PROTECTED POISON – The Real History Of Fluoride “Strange Journey – From Hazardous Waste To Good For Teeth”
http://truedemocracyparty.net/2012/11/the-fluoride-wars-the-protected-poison-the-real-history-of-fluoride/

Cell-suicide blocker holds promise as HIV therapy.

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NIBSC/Science Photo Library

Immune cells (green) infected with HIV (pink) undergo a cell-suicide process known as pyroptosis.

HIV infection causes a mass suicide of immune cells — a process that can be halted by an experimental drug that blocks cellular self-destruction, studies in cell cultures suggest. Researchers are now proposing a clinical trial of the drug in people with HIV.

Current HIV therapies act by targeting key proteins made by the virus. But findings from cell cultures, published today in Science1 and Nature2, suggest that targeting proteins in host cells might be an alternative approach to preserving the immune system in the face of an HIV infection.

The papers also address a decades-old mystery: why infection-fighting immune cells die off in people with HIV. A 2010 study3 showed that HIV does not directly kill most of these cells, called CD4 cells. Instead, the cells often self-destruct. “It’s much more a suicide than it is a murder,” says Warner Greene, a molecular virologist at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in San Francisco, California, and a co-author of both the latest works.

Ring of fire

In the latest studies, Greene’s team investigated these ‘abortive’ infections. They identified a sensor that detects viral DNA in the cell and activates the suicide response1. And they found that most of the cellular suicide occurs via a process called pyroptosis, in which the dying cells unleash a ferocious inflammatory response2. A key protein involved in pyroptosis is caspase 1, and an experimental caspase-1 inhibitor made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had already been tested in humans as a potential treatment for epilepsy. The drug, VX-765, failed to help epileptics, but six-week-long studies suggested that it was safe.

Greene and his colleagues tested VX-765 in HIV-infected cells cultured from human tonsils and spleens, and found that it blocked pyroptosis, prevented CD4 cell death, and suppressed inflammation. Greene hopes that the approach could one day provide an alternative or embellishment to the antiretroviral drugs currently used by 9.7 million people worldwide to manage HIV infection.

Because a caspase-1 inhibitor would target a host protein rather than the virus, HIV is less likely to become resistant to the therapy, says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. But any new HIV therapy will face steep competition from the more than 30 antiretroviral drugs currently available. “You’ve got to be pretty good to replace the antiretrovirals,” says Fauci.

Self-sacrifice

Understanding why HIV infection kills CD4 cells is an important step for researchers, says Gary Nabel, chief scientific officer at Sanofi, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris. “We need to understand when a cell would rather die than let a virus infect it, and how the virus can evade that cellular suicide response to infection,” he says.

But Nabel also urges caution. He worries that some of the infections that Greene and his team consider abortive may progress if the immune cells survive. “Preventing cell death is a double-edged sword in the context of HIV,” he says. “Death can be protective if a T cell says ‘I’m going to die before I let this virus replicate and spread to other cells.’”

Greene counters that his team looked for evidence of progression to active infection, and found none. “Pyroptosis is not a strategy to protect the host from productive infection,” says Greene. “Instead, this is a pathway that actually promotes clinical progression to AIDS.”

A Tale of Two Brains: How Your Second Brain Is Key To Understanding Many Chronic Illnesses.

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Not many people realize they have two brains. Yes, you read that right. And your second brain may have more to do with your health that you ever imagined.

We tend to think of our brain as the command center from which all physiological functions stem. But there is another intelligence in your body that you may not realize… and its importance to your health may be the key you’re looking for when searching for the cause of chronic illness and even mental health issues.

If you see a thirty something man with gray hair, or a forty year old woman with balding head, or a fifty year old stroke victim in a coffin, or a sixty-five year old grandpa with shaky hands, or a seventy year old grandma with dementia — look no further than inside their compromised guts. (Gut Sense: How to Restore Intestinal Flora and What Happens If You Don’t)

The “second brain” or belly brain is much different from the brain in our heads. While our cranial brain performs complex cognitive functions, allowing us to process information, apply knowledge, and change preferences, our belly brain is intuitive and receives signals and messages regarding our bodies and the environment that it sends back to our cranial brain and vice versa.

Understanding the belly brain and its functions is often the answer to helping people who are plagued with many problems that are often dismissed by traditional medical practitioners. Your belly brain, known to scientists as the enteric nervous system, is connected to your cranial brain by the vagus nerve. The same brain-regulating chemicals found in your cranial brain have also been found in your belly brain — including hormones and neurotransmitters. It’s estimated that one hundred million neurotransmitters line the length of the gut, approximately the same number found in the cranial brain. (Dr. Gershon, Scientific American: Think Twice)

The belly brain also produces dopamine and 95% of the chemical serotonin in our bodies. Without adequate levels of these two “feel-good” chemicals, we may experience depression, insomnia and other emotional distress. Be glad for these symptoms as they are warning signals—alerts–that tell you plainly to “Listen to me! Pay attention to my gut!”

Our belly brain influences not just mood, but is key to understanding many of our disease processes as well. It’s easy to see why, when you realize that approximately 70% of our immune system is located in our digestive tract. Taking care of both your brains will serve you well in many areas of health.

As Americans, we spend more than any other nation in the world on healthcare. You would think that for this price tag we would be the healthiest people on the planet. Yet we are among the sickest population. Prescription drug use for gastrointestinal and mental conditions is at an all-time high, yet too many people are still suffering and walking around in a drug-induced haze.

Maybe it’s time to look to the cause of the problem rather than simply treating the symptoms. Popping a pill to ease your discomfort may be the easy way out, but it’s wreaking havoc with your health. If you don’t address the cause of your discomfort, the problem will only get worse until it definitely has your attention. By taking care of our two brains, we can greatly influence the quality of our health.

How do you take care of your second brain?

First, let’s look at what we eat. The gut is like any environment–it is only as healthy as what you put into it. There are ten times more microbes in your intestinal biome than you have cells in your body. In fact, these microbes are made up of more than 500 different species and weigh in at somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds! If we produce a good environment for healthy, helpful microbes, we have a healthy body. Sounds easy enough, right?

So what produces a healthy gut?

Unfortunately, we have seen an increasing number of patients in our practice with serious health problems, and many of these disorders stem from intestinal issues. While a different protocol may be prescribed for each patient, there are some basic things you can do to improve the health of your gut.

1. Stay away from chicken and meat that have antibiotics when possible. These antibiotics alter the flora in your intestines. Antibiotics are meant to kill the harmful bacteria; unfortunately, they kill the good bacteria, too, leaving you even more defenseless.
2. Stay away from high carbohydrate intake, i.e., sugar, pasta, rice and grains. They feed the bad flora. Never before in the history of mankind have humans eaten such large amounts of sugar and refined carbohydrates, and our bodies are not designed to optimize this fuel on a full-time basis.

3. Stay away from gut irritants. Avoid chemical toxins such as MSG, food preservatives and flavor enhancers. Eat organic whenever possible and avoid foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Gluten sensitivity is an increasing problem in our culture where 99% of the wheat we now consume is a hybrid developed back in 1970 by Norman Borlaug. This dwarf wheat also contained 14 new strains of gluten. It is estimated about 40% of our population could be gluten sensitive or intolerant, and many think this is one of the reasons why.

Flickr - Brain - Lnk.Si

4. Increase your intake of fermented foods such as sauerkraut, fermented relish, or Kombucha, a fermented tea. Just a tablespoon or two of one of these delicious foods at the start of your meal can populate your inner ecosystem with the good bacteria our bodies need.

5. For more information about healing diet and gut protocols go to http://www.gaps.me

Scientists line up unruly gas molecules for X-rays.

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It’s hard to study individual molecules in a gas because they tumble around chaotically and never sit still. Researchers at SLAC overcame this challenge by using a laser to point them in the same general direction, like compass needles responding to a magnet, so they could be more easily studied with an X-ray laser.

The experiment with SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), reported Dec. 6 in Physical Review A, is a key step toward producing movies that show how a single molecule changes during a chemical reaction. Understanding the many stages of a reaction could help scientists design more efficient, controllable reactions for important industrial processes, many of which rely on gases that react with solids.

“This is the ‘trailer’ for the molecular movie – these are the first frames,” said Daniel Rolles of the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY national laboratory in Germany, who led the experiment. “People know, theoretically, that molecules do all kinds of weird things. If you can see the changes and check the theory, then you can understand how it’s happening and have a handle on controlling it.”

In the experiment, researchers jetted a thin stream of fluorocarbon gas into the path of two intersecting lasers: an optical laser that polarized the molecules – aligning them along a common axis, like a spinning top with a slight wobble – and the LCLS X-ray laser.

Fluorocarbon molecules were chosen because their chemical makeup allows them to be polarized by the electric field of a laser and because they are somewhat complex; each features a ringed structure and a tail-like spur and contains more than a dozen atoms. This makes them a good test case for future studies of even larger molecules.

https://i0.wp.com/cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/2013/2-scientistsli.jpg
This diagram shows the setup for an experiment at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source that positioned fluorocarbon molecules along a common axis with an optical laser and then used X-ray laser pulses to explore their structural details. The molecules were first channeled into a narrow molecular beam. The optical laser and X-ray laser intersected the path of this gas beam (center). The ball-and-stick structure of the molecule is shown at the upper left. Detectors captured the fingerprint of fluorine atoms and electrons that were ejected from the molecules by the X-ray pulses, which were used to understand the original shape of the molecules. Credit: Phys. Rev. A 88, 061402(R), 2013

The X-ray laser was carefully tuned so it would eject electrons mostly from the fluorine atoms in the sample before bursting the molecules into charged fragments. Scientists measured the freed fluorine electrons and charged fluorine fragments with sensitive detectors, and sorted and analyzed this data to reconstruct the original shape and structure of the molecules. Even though each X-ray laser pulse hit many molecules, the angles of the ejected electrons revealed details about the structure of individual molecules.

The LCLS X-ray is uniquely suited for this type of atomic-scale chemical study because it allows scientists to pinpoint a particular element in a molecule that they want to study, Rolles said.

“This is element and site specific: We can pick one place in a molecule and image that environment,” he said.” It’s like singling out one type of tree that otherwise would be hidden by the forest around it.” That selectivity can allow scientists to zero in on areas of particular interest in a chemical reaction.

Laser alignment of molecules, first demonstrated in 1999, is still a very young field, and the ultrafast X-ray pulses from the LCLS could allow scientists to study changes in aligned molecules that occur in quadrillionths of a second – a far shorter timescale than possible with other research tools. While not all molecules can be aligned with lasers, the researchers note that a rich assortment of molecules is suited to the technique.

If researchers could achieve fuller, three-dimensional alignment of molecules – like stopping a spinning top with your finger and rotating it to face you in a certain way – they would have an even easier time measuring their properties and determining their structure. “You could solve the structure of an individual molecule even without prior knowledge of its shape,” said John Bozek, an LCLS staff scientist who participated in the experiment, adding that this could be useful for studying the intermediate stages of a chemical reaction.

“Good” Protein Actually Promotes Liver Cancer.

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  • Scientists at the University of Iowa say they have identified an unexpected molecular link between liver cancer, cellular stress, and these health problems that increase the risk of developing this cancer. Their study (“The Stress-Regulated Transcription Factor CHOP Promotes Hepatic Inflammatory Gene Expression, Fibrosis, and Oncogenesis”) is published in PLOS Genetics. It shows that a protein called CHOP, which had previously been thought to generally protect against cancer, actually promotes liver cancer in mice and may do the same in humans.

    “Good” Protein Actually Promotes Liver Cancer

    “Obesity, alcoholism, and viral hepatitis are all known independently to cause cellular stress and to induce expression of CHOP,” said Thomas Rutkowski, Ph.D., assistant professor of anatomy and cell biology in the UI Carver College of Medicine and senior study author. “So this finding suggests a biological pathway that links those ‘upstream’ health problems to liver cancer at the end.”

    CHOP is a transcription factor that is produced when cells experience certain kinds of stress. It is known to promote cell death. Usually, factors that promote cell death protect against cancer by causing damaged cells to die.

    The study shows that, despite its role in cell death, CHOP actually is elevated in liver tumor cells in mice. Furthermore, mice without CHOP are partially protected from liver cancer, developing fewer and smaller tumors than the normal mice in response to liver cancer-causing drugs. The mice without CHOP also had less liver scarring and inflammation than mice with the protein.

    “We show that CHOP expression is up-regulated in liver tumors in human HCC [hepatocellular carcinoma] and two mouse models thereof. CHOP-null mice are resistant to chemical hepatocarcinogenesis, and these mice exhibit attenuation of both apoptosis and cellular proliferation,” wrote the investigators. “CHOP-null mice are also resistant to fibrosis, which is a key risk factor for HCC. Global gene expression profiling suggests that deletion of CHOP reduces the levels of basal inflammatory signaling in the liver. Our results are consistent with a model whereby CHOP contributes to hepatic carcinogenesis by promoting inflammation, fibrosis, cell death, and compensatory proliferation.”

    “We turned out to be completely wrong about CHOP. We found that it contributes to the development of liver cancer in mice and is associated with liver cancer in humans,” continued Dr. Rutkowski. “CHOP is indeed killing cells, just as we thought it would, but we think the consequence of this killing is not the prevention of tumors, but instead the stimulation of inflammatory signals in the liver that cause excessive proliferation of other cells.”

    Having implicated CHOP as a contributing factor in liver cancers associated with obesity, alcoholism, and hepatitis, Dr. Rutkowski next wants to learn whether CHOP acts early in the process of tumor formation or if it plays a role in helping established tumors to grow. He also is interested in identifying the other proteins that partner with CHOP to promote liver cancer.

    “This discovery opens up an avenue into a new pathway that promotes liver cancer,” explained Dr. Rutkowski. “Once we know what those other genes are that interact with CHOP, then maybe we can find a druggable target molecule. The hope is that down the line scientists will be able to convert that finding into something therapeutically useful for patients.”

Anxiety linked to higher long-term risk of stroke.

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The greater the anxiety level, the higher risk of having a stroke, according to new research published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

The study is the first in which researchers linked anxiety and stroke independent of other factors such as depression. Anxiety disorders are one of the most prevalent mental health problems. Symptoms include feeling unusually worried, stressed, nervous or tense.

Over a 22-year period, researchers studied a nationally representative group of 6,019 people 25-74 years old in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Participants underwent an interview and took blood tests, medical examinations and completed psychological questionnaires to gauge anxiety and depression levels.

Researchers tracked strokes through hospital or nursing home reports and death certificates. After accounting for other factors, they found that even modest increases in anxiety were associated with greater stroke risk.

People in the highest third of anxiety symptoms had a 33 percent higher stroke risk than those with the lowest levels.

“Everyone has some anxiety now and then. But when it’s elevated and/or chronic, it may have an effect on your vasculature years down the road,” said Maya Lambiase, Ph.D., study author and cardiovascular behavioral medicine researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pittsburgh.

People with high anxiety levels are more likely to smoke and be physically inactive, possibly explaining part of the anxiety-stroke link. Higher stress hormone levels, heart rate or blood pressure could also be factors, Lambiase said.

In earlier work, researchers found that depression was linked to greater risk of stroke, which is the No. 4 killer and a leading cause of disability in the United States. In contrast to anxiety, depression is a persistent feeling of hopelessness, dejection and lack of energy, among other symptoms.