Stop The Ban On Blood Donation Of Gay Men

Neil Druckmann - HBO's The Last of Us Podcast: Episode 5

Stop the ban on blood donation of gay men

your bulldog isn’t being quirky it’s actively trying not to die every 10 seconds

Like humans, these big-brained birds may owe their smarts to long childhoods

Human beings typically don’t leave the nest until well into our teenage years—a relatively rare strategy among animals. But corvids—a group of birds that includes jays, ravens, and crows—also spend a lot of time under their parents’ wings. Now, in a parallel to humans, researchers have found that ongoing tutelage by patient parents may explain how corvids have managed to achieve their smarts.

i got to work with some HeLa cells today!

as cool of an experience as this was and as interesting as these things are, it’s always important to acknowledge the bad along with the good. Henrietta Lacks’ cells revolutionized so many areas of research, but she deserved so much better.

working with these cells today just really reminded me of the duality of many scientific developments. many things have come with great cost and harm and i think that’s something important to keep in mind.

if you aren’t familiar with the story of Henrietta Lacks, i highly recommend looking her up. there’s a book about her live (the immortal life of henrietta lacks) that’s very illuminating.

How SARS-CoV-2 Hijacks Human Cells to Evade Immune System

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered one way in which SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, hijacks human cell machinery to blunt the immune response, allowing it to establish infection, replicate and cause disease.

In short, the virus’ genome gets tagged with a special marker by a human enzyme that tells the immune system to stand down, while at the same time ramping up production of the surface proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses as a “doorknob” to enter cells.

The study, published April 22, 2021 in Cell Reports, helps lay the groundwork for new anti-viral immunotherapies — treatments that work by boosting a patient’s immune system, rather than directly killing the virus.

“It’s very smart of this virus to use host machinery to simultaneously go into stealth mode and get inside more cells,” said Tariq Rana, PhD, professor and chief of the Division of Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center. “The more we know about how the virus establishes itself in the body, the better equipped we are to disrupt it.”

In human cells, genes (DNA) are transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins, the molecules that make up the majority of cells. But it’s not always so straightforward. Cells can chemically modify RNA to influence protein production. One of these modifications is the addition of methyl groups to adenosine, one of the building blocks that make up RNA. Known as N6-methyladenosine (m6A), this modification is common in humans and other organisms, including viruses.

In contrast to humans, the entire genomes of some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, are made up of RNA instead of DNA. And rather than carry around the machinery to translate that into proteins, the coronavirus gets human cells to do the work.

Rana and his team previously discovered that m6A plays an important role in HIV and Zika virus infections. In their latest study, the researchers discovered that the human enzyme METTL3 adds methyl groups to introduce m6A in SARS-CoV-2’s RNA. That modification prevents the virus’ RNA from triggering inflammatory molecules known as cytokines. To the team’s surprise, METTL3’s activity also led to increased expression of pro-viral genes — those that encode proteins needed for SARS-CoV-2 replication and survival, such as ACE2, the cell surface receptor that the virus uses to enter human cells.

“It remains to be seen why our cells help the virus out like this,” Rana said.

“How SARS-CoV-2 Hijacks Human Cells to Evade Immune System“

you can read the study here

just learned that humans might have evolved smaller pupils and irises/more whites of our eyes so that it's easier for other humans to tell where we're looking as a way of communicating sudden threats. and now i'm thinking of every time i have been frantically giving my friend a Look to get out of an uncomfortable situation (or been on the receiving end). still using it to communicate sudden threats only this time his name is kyle