Weekly Round up: Air Pollution, Gene therapy and raspberries

Air pollution is the new smoking Stopping smoking has led to massive falls in rates of lung cancer. But this fearsome disease is still lurking out there. The current cause? Air pollution ,as Ian Sample explains for the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/02/air-pollution-lung-cancer-dna-mutations-study

Gene therapy chalks up another win Ok,today it’s one particular form of deafness, attributable to one particular gene, as Maoli Duan explains for the Conversation. But: the more science you do the more you learn. Meaning other disabilities may one day prove susceptible as well. And the more you spend on scientific research the more you get benefits like this. A lesson rapidly being forgotten in the United States of America

https://theconversation.com/gene-therapy-restores-hearing-in-toddlers-and-teenagers-born-with-congenital-deafness-new-research-258112?utm_medium

Machines that out think humans It’s the scary nightmare of science fiction films from Blade Runner to the Terminator series. Up until recently the idea still seemed to be fiction. All that may be about to change as Nature Briefing reports

An artificial-intelligence system called Centaur can predict the decisions people will make in a wide variety of situations — often outperforming classical theories used in psychology to describe human choices. Trained on data from 160 psychology experiments in which 60,000 people made more than 10 million choices, the system can simulate human behaviour in tasks from problem-solving and gambling, and even those it hasn’t been trained on. Using Centaur, “you can basically run experimental sessions in silico instead of running them on actual human participants”, says cognitive scientist and study co-author Marcel Binz.

Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

Friday Night Feast Raspberries and Ice cream We are not all gloom and serious stuff here. Thinking it was time for a quick Friday Fun feature, we realised that we’d done strawberries several times (LSS passim), In which case the humble raspberry can make a really pleasant alternative, especially if combined with ice cream instead of cream. After all, even if we are on a diet-you, gentle reader may not be. So- eat a bowl for us we used to love it.

#cancer #AI ~pollution #gene therapy #raspberries

Paracetamol from Plastic Bottles-this could be the start of something big

Remember how your mum always made you swallow water to wash down your headache pills? What if those pills had been made from the remains of a long discarded plastic bottle that some other child had been forced to undergo? According to the resourceful Nicola Davis of the Guardian, it’s about to happen.[1] And the implications are enormous.

A team lead by Professor Stephen Wallace of the University of Edinburgh has actually gone and turned old plastic bottles into medicine. Combining the very best in organic chemistry and genetic engineering, they have modified a strain of E. coli to make good old paracetamol, that standby of every household drugs stash the world over. [2] The details of how they do it may be read in the links supplied. But our interest today is somewhat different.

At last someone has found a use for all those mountains of ghastly plastic waste which so disfigure this once beautiful planet. It can be made into something which millions, no billions, of people can deploy every day: and to some beneficent purpose. And if paracetamol, why not other things? Meanwhile. fans of economics will note the creation of a demand., Soon people may be fighting each other in the streets to get the best plastic bottles to sell to wholesalers. Nations will go to war to gain access to those vast disgusting rafts of waste which currently drift around the oceans. There’s one sure way to modify the behaviour of the ignorant mass of humankind- Turn virtue into economics and let them make some money from it. The Professor and his team may have done just that.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/23/scientists-use-e-coli-bacteria-to-turn-plastic-waste-into-paracetamol-painkiller

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-025-01845-5

#genetic engineering #organic chemistry #plastic #pollution #medicine

This is what awesome intelligence looks like

No we’re not writing about ourselves as some hardened readers may have already guessed. Because we couldn’t achieve what the researchers in these two stories, both from Nature Briefing, have indeed achieved. Sorry guv- we don’t have their intellectual bandwidth . Cognitive intricacy. Brains, in good old fashioned English But we know intelligence when we see it, and we know you do too.

Algorithms design remarkable enzymes Researchers have used computer algorithms to design highly efficient synthetic enzymes from scratch, reducing the number of tedious hands-on experiments needed to perfect them. The products facilitate a chemical reaction that no known natural protein can, with an efficiency similar to that typically achieved by naturally occurring enzymes. One design was also 100 times more efficient than similar enzymes previously crafted using artificial intelligence. In comparison to enzymes that occur in nature, the algorithm’s creations are less complex and can’t grapple with multi-step chemical reactions, but they’re proof that the approach has promise.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

The medical potential of designer enzymes will not be lost on readers as intelligent as our own. Yet some discoveries are to be relished not for their use, but for what they tell us about the world and our real place in it Try this for size

Dragon Man was a Denisovan Ancient proteins and mitochondrial DNA extracted from the ‘Dragon Man’ fossil — a cranium found in northeastern China that is at least 146,000 years old — have confirmed that it belonged to a Denisovan, an archaic human group. The fossil is the first skull to be definitively linked to the group, which sheds light on what the ancient people looked like, putting an end to decade-long speculation.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Cell paper & Science paper

Learning. Reason. Curiosity. Handy, aren’t they? Their absence can lead to different outcomes indeed. As the inhabitants of certain regions of the globe know only too well.

#protein #mRNA #medicine #health #evolution

Faecal Pellets: Watch the good bacteria chase out the bad

Imagine you get bad news: antibiotic resistant bacteria have set up a colony in your intestine. OK here’s some worse: they could escape and invade your blood, kidneys, whatever. In which case you have real problems. This is a very real scenario which that brilliant researcher Dr Blair Merrick of Guys and St Thomas Hospital has sought to address. [1] as reported by James Gallagher of the BBC Why not, he has reasoned, get some good non resistant bacteria to chase out all those bad ones? It is his chosen method which may raise more than one eyebrow among you, gentle readers

According to Dr Merrick, the way to get the good bacteria into his subjects is via pills made of…..well, made of faecal matter, you know,,,poo. To quote James:

Dr Merrick says there are “really promising signals” that poo pills could help tackle the rising scourge of superbugs and that donor bacteria could be going to microbial war with the superbugs as they compete over food and space on the lining of the gut and either rid the body of them completely or “reduce them down to a level that doesn’t cause problems”.

We like this for all sorts of reasons. Firstly the gut really is such a good harbour of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Secondly, as in all things ecological, making its flora more diverse can only be a good thing. Thirdly, we think it has a clever little principle behind it. Antibiotic resistant bacteria have devoted a tiny bit more of their genome to this purpose than non resistant ones. In the world of ecological competition, where tiny differences can make an enormous difference to long term survival, this could be crucial. If done correctly, the good non resistant ones should out compete the bad ones.

It’s early days yet, and the early trials have only been on 41 subjects But as seasoned veterans of the long wars of antibiotics will know, we at LSS welcome every initiative, however unusual it may at first seem. We wish every success to Dr Merrick and his team and hope that their early accomplishments continue in the bigger trials to come,

_{thanks to Ms G lynch}

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyge290l4xo

#gut #microbiome #antibiotic resistant bacteria #health #medicine

AIDS breakthrough shows what science can do

We now live in an age when science (and the rational habits of mind it depends upon) is under attack. Heirs to the rational tradition have always had to live with religious fundamentalists who deny inconvenient truths like evolution. But nowadays attacks come thick and fast from those who wish to deny climate change, the dangers of smoking, the efficacy of vaccines and much besides. From people who nevertheless cheerfully accept other scientific findings which suit them. So, just to redress the balance we thought we’d showcase this breathtaking new advance in AIDS research which, for the first time, holds out the hope of a permanent cure.

It comes from Kat Lay of the Guardian,[1] reporting the work of the Peter Doherty Institute in Australia.[2] The background will be familiar: the great evolutionary survival trick of the HIV was to bury itself deep in certain white blood cells of the immune system, where it was immune to our attack. In the words of Kat:

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers have shown for the first time that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding, by encasing it in a tiny, specially formulated fat bubble. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus. First AIDS was a death sentence: then it could be slowed with drugs. Now at last comes hope of a real cure for its 40 million or so sufferers

Science itself is a process, not a monolithic entity. It evolves, refines, and corrects itself over time. But when people selectively accept only the parts that align with their worldview, they undermine the very foundation of rational inquiry This kind of cherry-picking often stems from cognitive biases, ideological commitments, or economic incentives. Climate change denial, for example, is frequently tied to political or financial interests, while opposition to vaccines or smoking regulations can be fuelled by misinformation or personal convenience. But the deniers should remember one thing: if they do decide to overthrow the rationalists, will they put anything better in our place?

Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.”

Milton: Areopagitica

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/05/breakthrough-in-search-for-hiv-cure-leaves-researchers-overwhelmed?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[2]https://www.doherty.edu.au/

#HIV #AIDS #disease #mRNA #medicine #science #climate change #smoking

Bit of a round up: Yes Men, Fusion, Bowel Cancer, molecular shuttles and seething in the Sahel

Overwhelmed by a huge flood of suggestions , the only way we could cope was to pull them into this handy easy to access guide to some of the most significant happenings of the week. You don’ have to click on all of them

Will the Yes men Bring Down Donald Trump? As organisations get successful they attract more people who are adept at climbing the ladder rather than doing the job. The USA is somewhere near peak Trump at the moment. The Conversation warns how bad advice could end all in tears

https://theconversation.com/trump-surrounds-himself-with-sycophants-its-a-terrible-way-to-run-a-business-and-a-country-257391?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from

Fusion on Trent The person who sent us this idea has had to endure our enthusiasm for nuclear fusion for more than fifty three years, despite the fact that it hasn’t worked for fifty of them. Now all that may be about to change in Nottinghamshire in the UK as The I newspaper explains https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/limitless-clean-energy-nuclear-fusion-3711971

^{thanks to P Seymour} ^{via Apple News}

Weighing the risks of bowel cancer Inequality leads to poor diets. Poor diets lead to obesity. Obesity leads to bowel cancer. How ironic, therefore, to see a riff on this theme in the Mail, of all places. But there it is so, there you go, as they say(that’s enough cliches-ed)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14756279/Doctors-discover-vital-new-clue-search-cause-mystery-bowel-cancer-explosion-50s.html

Shuttle and open We’ve riffed a bit ourselves here about the blood brain barrier over the years. It’s a pretty tough problem for those who would like to treat various disorders of the central nervous system. Now new hope come sin the form of molecular shuttles as Nature Briefing explains

To reach the brain, drugs must pass through the highly-selective blood-brain barrier. Large molecules, such as antibodies, don’t cross easily, if at all. Now, small chemical tags that can ‘shuttle’ drugs across the barrier are offering a way forward. Several such shuttles, which take advantage of natural transport systems, are in the works. Some have already been trialled in rare diseases, with signs of success. The field is in its infancy, but these shuttles promise to revolutionize treatments for diseases from Alzheimer’s to cancer.Nature | 10 min read

When scientists have a bone to pick It is an invariable law in paleontology , especially of the human kind, that the rancour of the disputes between its protagonists is in inverse proportion to the numbers of remains they have to work with. There is no better example of fear and loathing than the disputes over the bones of Sahelanthropus, the famous Toumai, which was once hailed as the uber-ancestor of us all. Before you hand over the world to an Aristocracy of the Educated, as some advocate, read this.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/27/the-curse-of-toumai-ancient-skull-disputed-femur-feud-humanity-origins?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#cancer #bowel #nuclear fusion #dona;d trump #health #medecine #alzheimers #sahelanthopus

Brand New Antibiotic- a last hurrah for Harvard University?

Today we are brining you news of one of the best stories we’ve covered in many a long year of campaigning. Today Hofman-La Roche have announced late stage trials of a brand new antibiotic called Zosurabalpin. If all goes well it could be ready for clinical practice very soon. [1] We’ve been following this for a while now (LSS 1 4 24; The Conversation 5 1 24)[3] : it’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the long process so near to fruition.

There’s much to be excited about at a pure scientific level. Zosuralpin is designed to go after the particularly deadly bacterium Acinobacter baumannii, which can kill up to 50% of its victims. It’s one of those gram negative ones with a double cell wall. Zosurabalpin tackles this in a new way, specifically targeting lipopolysaccharides which the organism uses to maintain the integrity of those walls. For the first time since we entered the world of antibiotics, a gram negative bacteria, the ones which used to really concern the great Professor Garner and the other founders hasa been cornered. But that’s not our main learning point today.

Because Hofman did not develop this alone. Like all modern research it was international and collaborative. The international partner they chose was Harvard University, the oldest in the United States Of America, and one of the best in the world. Until recently. For as astute readers will know, this institution has recently been on the end of a tremendous kicking from President Donald Trump (pictured above with some of his supporters) and other members of his government. We are not certain yet if this will end terminally for Harvard. But at the very least, the time they spend defending themselves from their barbaric assailants would be time better spent developing new antibiotics. It’s worth balancing consequences like that against the savage impulses of the unreasoned, the unlearned and the unintelligent.

[1]https://www.ineosoxford.ox.ac.uk/news/new-antibiotic-class-shows-promise-against-drug-resistant-bacteria

[2]https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/health/new-antibiotic-could-defeat-resistant-superbug-human-test-zosurabalpin/

[3]https://theconversation.com/new-antibiotic-zosurabalpin-shows-promise-against-drug-resistant-bacteria-an-expert-explains-how-it-works-220564

#antibiotic resistance #hofman La roche #zosurabalpin #gram negative #medicine #healh #harvard #donald trump #harvard

We said Base Pair editing would outshine CRISPR. This breakthrough proves we were wrong. Or not

When is CRISPR- Cas-9 Base Pair Editing, and when is Base Pair editing CRISPR Cas-9?. Readers of this blog may be forgiven for thinking Base Pair Editing was the exciting new kid in town that was going to make CRISPR look like VHS tapes ( what they?–ed) But according to reports of a recent breakthrough in medicine, they are, sort of, one and the same thing.

Perhaps we had better start with the breakthrough. Doctors in Pennsylvania in the USA have used gene editing techniques to treat a poor little boy whose liver lacked the necessary enzyme system to process ammonia. Our reports come firstly from Ian Sample of the Guardian and the New England Journal of medicine via hyperlink) , where Base Pair is very much to the fore While Nature Briefing has the following take , again with the hyperlink to the NEJM, Baby Boy Receives CRISPR for One Therapy

A baby boy with a devastating genetic disease is thriving after becoming the first known person to receive a bespoke, CRISPR therapy-for-one. KJ Muldoon, now almost 10 months old, received three doses of a gene-editing treatment designed to repair his specific disease-causing mutation, which impaired his body’s ability to process protein. While Muldoon appears healthy, it is too soon to use the word “cure”, says paediatrician Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas. “This is still really early days.”Nature | 5 min read
Reference: New England Journal of Medicine paper

From all of which we have obtain the following Learning Points for your Edification , gentle reader:

1 It matters less what you call it, and more that it works-the kid’s OK now!

2 Maybe Base Pair Editing is a subset of CRISPR the way that Hammersmith is a region of London. OK, it’s Hammersmith. But it’s London too. What’s the big deal?

3 It would be interesting to learn if other big cities like New York or Madrid for examples, contain smaller areas with funny names. But we will leave that to another day.

4 If you educate people, teach them critical thinking skills and give them some money to buy test tubes with, things like this can happen

5 If you keep people working long hours for little money, educate them to a minimum and give them things like Fox News to watch, societal outcomes may be very different

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/15/us-doctors-rewrite-dna-of-infant-with-severe-genetic-disorder-in-medical-first?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

also: see LSS 23 7 2022 and follow ups

#gene therapies #base pair editing #CRISPR Cas-9 #medicine #health

Cancer testing saves lives-and shows why science works

Today we a re going to talk about cancer. In the UK alone it kills 167 000 people annually, which is about 29% of all recorded deaths . Meanwhile about 3.5 million people are trying to live with it on a daily basis. The statistics for your country will be comparable, gentle reader. Nothing would cheer us more than to report some good news. And today we think we can, courtesy oft the far sighted Professor Peter Sasieni and his team at London’s Queen Mary University via the Mail [1] [2]

Professor Sasieni and his team are not pioneering cures directly. Their skill is devising new ways of testing. To detect the terrible disease early, before it can wreak havoc, and unleash the cures when they have the optimal chances of success. The linked article is a good summary of all the wonderful work they are doing. But we have filleted out this tiny quote which will give you some flavour of what they are achieving

Yearly screening under the fast tumour growth scenario led to a higher number of diagnoses than usual care – 370 more cancer signs were detected per year per 100,000 people screened. There were also 49 per cent fewer late-stage diagnoses and 21 per cent fewer deaths within five years than patients receiving usual care.

If that’s not hope we don’t know what is

But there’s a deeper story here. For us, the best working definition of intelligence is how you respond to reality. You may have a lot of money, talk well, and even have a genius IQ. But if you ignore facts, deny them, or distort them, then you are a fool. There’s no mystery about science. It is simply a way of collecting true facts and organising them according to the rules of logic, which is what Professor Sasieni has done. This works globally for things like changes in the climate. It works locally, for things like diseases in the human body such as a diagnosis of cancer To deny truth once is the start of denying it always. With fatal results.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14694059/blood-tests-detect-earliest-signs-cancer-prevent-advanced-stage.html

[2]https://www.qmul.ac.uk/wiph/people/profiles/peter-sasieni.html

#cancer #testing #screening #health #medicine

Is this plastic eating bacterium the ultimate in antibiotic resistance?

Bacteria that mutate to resist the strongest known antibiotics. At this blog, it’s in our DNA, if you will pardon the flippant quip. But-get this-what if the bacterium in question starts eating the walls you are trying to contain it in? Sounds fantastic, like the plot of one of those old 1950s B movies. Read this piece called Hospital Superbug eats Medical Plastic from the admirable Nature Briefings

Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a strain of bacterium that often causes antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals — can produce an enzyme that can break down medical-grade plastic. Researchers found that the enzyme, dubbed Pap1, can break down a plastic called polycaprolactone that is commonly used in health care because of its biodegradable properties. The ability to break down plastic could explain why these microbes persist in hospital environments, says biomedical scientist and study co-author Ronan McCarthy.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Cell Reports paper

We’ve put up the Cell Reports posting for you too here[1]in case the clicker above does not get you through

So is this it? The big one? A wave of highly infectious bacteria that not only eats us humans, but gleefully chomps its way through the very defensive systems we use use to contain it? Possibly, yes. But-let’s keep our Alans on, as they used to say in the old Guy Ritchie movies. For there are two good reasons to do so.

First, it’s only eating one type of plastic, so far. There are lots of others which could be deployed for special medical uses which will be less vulnerable.

Secondly, the fact that this plastic is indeed biodegradable, and that something has found a way to do it, offers great hope. Imagine a plastics ecosystem wherein every bottle, every carton, each piece of wrapping is open to attack by this Pap-1 enzyme. Potentially it opens the way to clean beaches, litter- free hedgerows and unblocked rivers and sewers. There is no reason that the genes to make the enzyme could not be spliced into a safer organism than Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, we say.

[1]https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)00421-8

#plastics #antibiotics #microbial antibiotic resistance #science #ecology #pollution