In this study, researchers led by the University of Tsukuba investigated the effects of TG on memory and spatial learning (acquiring, retaining, structuring, and applying information related to the surrounding physical environment) from both a cognitive and molecular biology perspective in an integrated manner using a senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) model.

Following oral administration of TG to SAMP8 mice for 30 days, the Morris water maze test indicated a significant improvement in spatial learning and memory performance compared with SAMP8 mice that did not receive TG. Next, the researchers performed whole-genome transcriptomic analysis of the hippocampus to explore the underlying molecular mechanisms. They found that signaling pathways related to nervous system development, mitochondrial function, ATP synthesis, inflammation, autophagy, and neurotransmitter release were significantly modulated in the TG group.

Furthermore, the research team found that TG suppressed neuroinflammation by negatively regulating signaling factor Traf6-mediated activation of the transcription factor NF-κB. Additionally, quantitative protein analysis confirmed that the levels of inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-6 were significantly decreased and the levels of neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin were significantly increased in the hippocampus. These findings suggest the efficacy of TG in preventing and improving age-related spatial learning memory impairment.

This work was supported by DyDo DRINCO and Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST grant number JPMJPF2017)

The Universe is teeming with galaxies — immense collections of stars and gas — and as we peer deep into the cosmos, we see them near and far. Because the light has spent more time reaching us, the farther away a galaxy is, we are essentially looking back through time, allowing us to construct a visual narrative of their evolution throughout the history of the Universe.

Observations have shown us that galaxies through the last 12 billion years — that is, 5/6 of the age of the Universe — have been living their life in a form of equilibrium: There appears to be a fundamental, tight relation between on one hand how many stars they have formed, and on the other hand how many heavy elements they have formed. In this context, “heavy elements,” means everything heavier than hydrogen and helium.

This relation makes sense, because the Universe consisted originally only of these two lightest elements. All heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron, was created later by the stars.

James Webb peers deeper

The very first galaxies should therefore be “unpolluted” by heavy elements. But until recently we haven’t been able to look so far back in time. In addition to being far away, the reason is that the longer light travels through space, the redder it becomes. For the most distant galaxies you have to look all the way into the infrared part of the spectrum, and only with the launch of James Webb did we have a telescope big and sensitive enough to see so far.

And the space telescope did not disappoint: Several has James Webb broken its own record for the most distant galaxy, and now it finally seems that we are reaching the epoch where some of the very first galaxies were created.

In a new study, published today in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, af team of astronomers from the Danish research center Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute and DTU Space in Copenhagen, has discovered what seems indeed to be some of the very first galaxies which are still in the process of being formed.

“Until recently it has been near-impossible to study how the first galaxies are formed in the early Universe, since we simply haven’t had the adequate instrumentation. This has now changed completely with the launch of James Webb,” says Kasper Elm Heintz, leader of the study and assistant professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center.

Fundamental relation breaks down

The relationship between the total stellar mass of the galaxy and the amount of heavy elements is a bit more complex than that. How fast the galaxy produces new stars also has something to say. But if you correct for that, you get a beautiful, linear relationship: The more massive the galaxy, the more heavy elements.

But this relation is now being challenged by the latest observations.

“When we analyzed the light from 16 of these first galaxies, we saw that they had significantly less heavy elements, compared to what you’d expect from their stellar masses and the amount of new stars they produced,” says Kasper Elm Heintz.

In fact the galaxies turned out to have, on average, four times less amounts of heavy elements that in the later Universe. These results are in stark contrast to the current model where galaxies evolve in a form of equilibrium throughout most of the history of the Universe.

Predicted by theories

The result is not entirely surprising though. Theoretical models of galaxy formation, based on detailed computer programs, do predict something similar. But now we’ve seen it!

The explanation, as proposed by the autors in the article, is simply that we are witnessing galaxies in the process of being created. Gravity has gathered the first clumps of gas, which have begun to form stars.

If the galaxies then lived their lives undisturbed, the stars would quickly enrich them with heavy elements. But in between the galaxies at that time were large amounts of fresh, unpolluted gas, streaming down to the galaxies faster than the stars can keep up.

“The result gives us the first insight into the earliest stages of galaxy formation which appear to be more intimately connected with the gas in between the galaxies than we thought.

This is one of the first James Webb observations on this topic, so we’re still waiting to see what the larger, more comprehensive observations that are currently being carried out can tell us.

There is no doubt that we will shortly have a much clearer understanding of how galaxies and the first structures began their formation during the first billion years after the Big Bang,” Kasper Elm Heintz concludes.

The study is published in Nature Astronomy.

Global warming is causing problems for birds in Sweden and elsewhere. Warmer springs mean that caterpillars hatch, grow and pupate earlier compared with just a few decades ago. This has consequences for birds that cannot eat caterpillars that have entered the pupal stage. Therefore, when the food supply runs out at an ever earlier time in the spring, more and more chicks starve during the breeding season. This is a big problem for migratory birds that spend winters in Africa, as they do not know how early spring arrives in Sweden. Could the problem be solved if the migratory birds simply came home and started breeding earlier?

“It seems that our non-migratory birds are doing this to a certain extent. But, of course, they are present and can feel how early spring will come. We thought that perhaps the migratory birds could fly further north until they find a place with suitable well-developed caterpillars,” says Jan-Åke Nilsson, biology researcher at Lund University in Sweden.

To test this in practice, the researchers decided to help some Pied Flycatchers along the way. The biologists caught Pied Flycatchers that had arrived prior to breeding in the Netherlands. The birds were then driven during the night to Vombs Fure, an area of pine forest outside Lund in Skåne, where they were released. The peak of caterpillar availability in Skåne is about two weeks later than in the Netherlands — a distance of around 600 kilometres that a Pied Flycatcher could cover in just two nights.

“The birds that were given a lift from the Netherlands to Skåne synchronised very well with the food peak! As they started to breed about 10 days earlier the “Swedish” Pied Flycatchers they had a dramatically better breeding success than the Swedish ones as well as a better success than the Pied Flycatchers that remained in the Netherlands,” says Jan-Åke Nilsson.

In addition, it was shown that the chicks of the Dutch Pied Flycatchers that had received migration assistance did not stop in the Netherlands when they returned after their first spring migration. Instead, they continued on to the area of pine forest outside Lund where they were born. Furthermore, they arrived earlier than the Swedish Pied Flycatchers and thereby had more well-fed chicks at Vombs Fure the year after the researchers gave the Pied Flycatchers a helping hand to find Skåne.

“The number of small birds, particularly migratory birds, has decreased drastically throughout Europe. By flying a little further north, these birds, at least in principle, could synchronise with their food resources and there is hope that robust populations of small birds can be maintained, even though springs are arriving ever earlier,” concludes Jan-Åke Nilsson.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers including those at The University of Manchester and University of Victoria in Canada discovered that galaxies like our own Milky Way dominate throughout the universe and are surprisingly common.

These galaxies go far back in the Universe’s history with many of these galaxies forming 10 billion years ago or longer.

The Milky Way is a typical ‘disk’ galaxy, which a shape similar to a pancake or compact disk, rotating about its centre and often containing spiral arms. These galaxies are thought to be the most common in the nearby Universe and might be the types of galaxies where life can develop given the nature of their formation history.

However, astronomers previously considered that these types of galaxies were too fragile to exist in the early Universe when galaxy mergers were more common, destroying what we thought was their delicate shapes.

The new discovery, published today in the Astrophysical Journal, finds that these ‘disk’ galaxies are ten times more common than what astronomers believed based on previous observations with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Christopher Conselice, Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at The University of Manchester, said: “Using the Hubble Space Telescope we thought that disk galaxies were almost non-existent until the Universe was about six billion years old, these new JWST results push the time these Milky Way-like galaxies form to almost the beginning of the Universe.”

The research completely overturns the existing understanding of how scientists think our Universe evolves, and the scientists say new ideas need to be considered.

Lead author, Leonardo Ferreira from the University of Victoria, said: “For over 30 years it was thought that these disk galaxies were rare in the early Universe due to the common violent encounters that galaxies undergo. The fact that JWST finds so many is another sign of the power of this instrument and that the structures of galaxies form earlier in the Universe, much earlier in fact, than anyone had anticipated. “

It was once thought that disk galaxies such as the Milky Way were relatively rare through cosmic history, and that they only formed after the Universe was already middle aged.

Previously, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope believed that galaxies had mostly irregular and peculiar structures that resemble mergers. However, the superior abilities of JWST now allows us to see the true structure of these galaxies for the first time.

The researchers say that this is yet another sign that ‘structure’ in the Universe forms much quicker than anyone had anticipated.

Professor Conselice continues: “These JWST results show that disk galaxies like our own Milky Way, are the most common type of galaxy in the Universe. This implies that most stars exist and form within these galaxies which is changing our complete understanding of how galaxy formation occurs. These results also suggest important questions about dark matter in the early Universe which we know very little about.”

“Based on our results astronomers must rethink our understanding of the formation of the first galaxies and how galaxy evolution occurred over the past 10 billion years.”

Researchers from the University of Helsinki and the Folkhälsan Research Center, together with their international partners, have identified the genetic background of dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease that enlarges the heart muscle, in dogs and humans.

Based on a dataset encompassing more than 500 Dobermanns, the disease was associated with two nearby genomic loci, where changes were identified in genes that affect the functioning, energy metabolism and structure of the heart muscle. The study revealed that these same risk genes cause heart muscle disease in human patients.

A variety of factors can cause cardiomyopathy, but genetics play a significant role. Although dozens of genes underlying cardiomyopathy in humans have been identified, the hereditary nature and genetic background of the disease in dogs have remained unclear.

“The situation with Dobermanns is serious in terms of both their health and breeding. The disease has been studied from various angles for decades without significant gene discoveries. Better diagnostic tools are needed, particularly in early diagnostics. Our new research might improve the situation,” says Professor Hannes Lohi, the principal investigator in the project.

The study has significant implications for veterinary medicine, providing a basis for developing a new genetic test for early diagnostics and breeding.

Two novel risk genes identified in an extensive European cohort

Various research data collected over decades on more than 500 Dobermanns from across Europe were combined for the research. The dogs in the study cohort were categorised into five different groups:

• Dogs with only dilated cardiomyopathy
• Dogs with only arrhythmia
• Dogs with dilated cardiomyopathy and arrhythmia
• Dogs with congestive heart failure
• Healthy dogs aged at least six years as a control subcohort

With the help of genetic mapping, two adjacent gene loci in chromosome 5 were associated with dilated cardiomyopathy. Among the numerous genes in the loci, two, namely RNF207 and PRKAA2, demonstrated structural variation, which could have a detrimental effect on the functioning of the genes and cause heart failure.

“The genetic mapping we conducted produced important observations. Until now, it has been unclear whether Dobermanns with differing symptoms have the same disease. The genes we identified are only associated with a dilated heart and affected cardiac function. Arrhythmia appears to be a genetically distinct disease. Our dataset was insufficient to identify genes causing arrhythmia only. We also observed that several genes affect cardiac function and identified a model of two genes that increase the disease risk,” explains Professor Lohi.

Gene discovery in dogs associated with cardiac muscle disorders in humans

The significance of the gene discovery in dogs was investigated in human patients diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy using Dutch, English (UK Biobank) and Finnish (FinnGen) cohorts. Fifteen potentially harmful and predisposing variants in the same RNF207 and PRKAA2 genes, which had been identified in dogs, were discovered in humans.

“The identical genetic background suggests that, to a degree, similar problems with the functioning of the heart muscle lead to dilated cardiomyopathy in both humans and dogs. A deeper understanding of the pathogenetic mechanisms is important, and Dobermanns represent a natural model organism for further research,” Lohi states.

A genetic test for breeding

The DNA markers associated with the disease found in the study may be a step toward a genetic test, but it is important to confirm its clinical significance before such tests are offered.

“We discovered how the variants of the two genes together increase the disease risk. However, a pilot is needed to combine genetic and health data to monitor how frequently individuals who belong to the at-risk group develop the disease for varying genetic reasons. Then, we can obtain a more accurate estimate of how the gene discoveries should be ideally interpreted and utilised. In any case, this is a hope-inspiring finding because, in the past, we lacked such tools,” Lohi describes.

The new gene discoveries enable new research hypotheses

For the consistent synchronised pumping of the heart, the heart muscle cells must interact with each other. Unlike in skeletal muscles, in the cell membrane of the heart muscle are finger-like discs that conduct the undulation required for pumping.

“Our study revealed that the RNF207 gene is expressed exactly in these discs. Earlier research has shown that RNF207 plays an important role in heart muscle contraction. The absence of these discs has also earlier been linked with cardiomyopathy. The other gene identified, PKAA2, serves as an energy sensor in the heart muscle, and its malfunction can reduce cardiac efficiency. Further research is required to understand the pathogenic mechanism, but we are in a good position to continue. A while ago, the disease was a total mystery, but now we have opened a view to its cellular-level secrets,” Professor Lohi concludes.

The research was funded by, among others, the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, and many other funders from different countries.

The study is part of Professor Hannes Lohi’s canine gene research project, and the related article was published in the journal Genome Medicine.

A team of plant scientists at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) would like to turn this science fiction into reality using light-based messaging to ‘talk’ to plants.

Early lab experiments with tobacco (Nicotiana benthamiana) have demonstrated that they can activate the plant’s natural defence mechanism (immune response) using light as a stimulus (messenger).

Light serves as a universal means of daily human communication, for example the signalling at traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, or the open-closed status of a shop.

Alexander Jones’ research team is using light as a messenger in the development of tools that enable plants to communicate with humans and humans to communicate with plants.

The University of Cambridge team previously engineered a series of biosensors using fluorescent light to visually communicate in real-time what is happening at the cellular level in plants, revealing the dynamics of critical plant hormones. These biosensors can tell us how plants are reacting to environmental stresses — plants ‘talking’ to humans.

Their latest research published in PLOS Biology, describes a new tool called Highlighter, which uses specific light conditions to activate the expression of a target gene in plants, for example to trigger their defence mechanisms — humans ‘talking’ to plants.

The concept of humans being able to communicate with plants on a meaningful level has long captured the imagination of people. If such a capability was possible, it could revolutionise agriculture and our relationship with plants.

“If we could warn plants of an impending disease outbreak or pest attack, plants could then activate their natural defence mechanisms to prevent widespread damage,” Dr Jones said. “We could also inform plants about approaching extreme weather events, such as heatwaves or drought, allowing them to adjust their growth patterns or conserve water. This could lead to more efficient and sustainable farming practices and reduce the need for chemicals.”

Bo Larsen, who engineered Highlighter while at SLCU, has taken us a major step closer to this goal of ‘talking’ to plants by engineering a light-controlled gene expression system (optogenetics system) from a prokaryotic system into a eukaryotic system that is tailored for plants.

Optogenetics can bring light to biomolecular processes in plants

To understand cellular activity biologists need to be able to control biomolecular processes at the cellular level. Optogenetics is a scientific technique that uses a light stimulus to activate or deactivate a specific process. “Light stimuli are cheap, reversible, non-toxic and can be delivered with high-resolution,” Dr Jones said.

To do this, scientists engineer light-sensitive proteins (photoreceptors) to control a target process and then deliver these optogenetic ‘actuators’ to the cells they want to control.

Optogenetics has revolutionised many fields including neuroscience where biologists can isolate functions of individual neurons.

However, optogenetics has been difficult to apply to plants. This is because plants already contain lots of photoreceptors and need a wide spectrum of light to grow. Switching from dark to light also activates native plant photoreceptors and a myriad of cellular systems.

Exacerbating this problem is the fact that many of the best performing optogenetic actuators use genetic parts from plants, meaning they could cross-talk with native photoreceptors if used in plants.

The story behind the research

Dr Jones, looking for an optogenetic gene expression switch that could be applied under normal horticultural light conditions without impacting on endogenous plant physiology and development, sought advice from J. Clark Lagarias, from UC Davis, who is an expert in phytochrome and cyanobacteriochrome light-switches.

He suggested repurposing the prokaryotic CcaS-CcaR optogenetic system, which was originally sourced from photosynthetic microbes and uses the ratio of green (on) — red (off) light signals. By modulating the spectrum of white light plants need to grow, genes could be turned on or off using a minimally invasive stimulus.

But when developing Highlighter into a eukaryotic optogenetic system, Dr Larsen detected an unexpected blue-off behaviour. Could the conversion have altered the green-red spectral properties of the CcaS photoreceptor?

Working together with Alex Jones, Ines Camacho and Richard Clarke from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), they detected that the new system was still able to use green and red light just like the original system. But the spectroscopic analysis at NPL also showed evidence of an independent blue-light sensing. Co-author Roberto Hofmann noticed that, in addition to the red-green sensing domain, CcaS had a domain with homology to blue-light photosensors called phototropins. It seems the engineering efforts had inadvertently unlocked a latent CcaS blue sensing behaviour, providing an alternate way to control CcaS-CcaR activity.

Highlighter is an optogenetic tool for plants

When deployed in plants, Highlighter uses minimally invasive light signals for activation and inactivation, and is unaffected by the light-dark cycling in growth chambers.

The current Highlighter system is inactive under blue light conditions and active in the dark and under white light, green light and, mysteriously, red light conditions. Further work is planned to progress development of Highlighter, but the team has already demonstrated optogenetic control over plant immunity, pigment production and a yellow fluorescent protein, the latter at cellular resolution.

“Highlighter is an important step forward in the development of optogenetics tools in plants and its high-resolution gene control could be applied to study a large range of fundamental plant biology questions,” Dr Jones added. “A growing toolbox for plants, with diverse optical properties, also opens exciting opportunities for crop improvement. For example, in the future we could use one light condition to trigger an immune response, and then a different light condition to precisely time a particular trait, such as flowering or ripening.”

In a study in the Journal of Cataracts & Refractive Surgery, researchers from the University of Rochester created computational eye models that included the corneas of post-LASIK surgery patients and studied how standard intraocular lenses and lenses designed to increase depth of focus performed in operated eyes. Susana Marcos, the David R. Williams Director of the Center for Visual Science and the Nicholas George Professor of Optics and of Ophthalmology at Rochester, says the computational models that use anatomical information of the patient’s eye provide surgeons with important guidance on the expected optical quality post-operatively.

“Currently the only pre-operative data used to select the lens is essentially the length and curvature of the cornea,” says Marcos, a coauthor of the study. “This new technology allows us to reconstruct the eye in three dimensions, providing us the entire topography of the cornea and crystalline lens, where the intraocular lens is implanted. When you have all this three-dimensional information, you’re in a much better position to select the lens that will produce the best image at the retinal plane.”

The future of optical coherence tomography

Marcos and her collaborators from the Center for Visual Science, as well as Rochester’s Flaum Eye Institute and Goergen Institute for Data Science, are conducting a larger study to quantify in three dimensions the eye images using the optical coherence tomography quantification tools they’ve developed to find broader trends. They are using machine-learning algorithms to find relationships between pre- and post-operation data, providing parameters that can inform the best outcomes.

Additionally, they have developed technology that can help patients see for themselves what different lens options will look like.

“What we see is not strictly the image that is project on the retina,” says Marcos. “There is all the visual processing and perception that comes in. When surgeons are planning the surgery, it is very difficult for them to convey to the patients how they are going to see. A computational, personalized eye model tells which lens is the best fit for the patient’s eye anatomy, but patients want to see for themselves.”

With an optical bench, the researchers use technology originally developed for astronomy, such as adaptive optics mirrors and spatial light modulators, to manipulate the optics of the eye as an intraocular lens would. The approach allows Marcos and her collaborators to perform fundamental experiments and collaborate with industry partners to test new products. Marcos also helped develop a commercial headset version of the instrumentation called SimVis Gekko that allows patients to see the world around them as if they had had the surgery.

In addition to studying techniques to help treat cataracts, the researchers are applying their methods to study other major eye conditions, including presbyopia and myopia.

The authors argue that we could transform arid ecosystems into efficient carbon-capture systems with improved soil health, enhanced photosynthetic efficiency, and larger root biomass by engineering ideal combinations of plants, soil microbes, and soil type to facilitate a naturally occurring biogeochemical process called the oxalate-carbonate pathway to create below-ground carbon sinks.

“Re-greening deserts by restoration of ecosystem functions, including carbon sequestration, should be the preferential approach,” writes the research team, led by senior author and plant scientist Heribert Hirt of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. “The advantage of reclaiming arid regions for re-greening and carbon sequestration is that they do not compete with lands used in agriculture and food production.”

The method takes advantage of arid-adapted plants that produce oxalates — ions containing carbon and oxygen that might ring a bell if you’re unlucky enough to suffer from kidney stones or gout. Some soil microbes use oxalates as their sole carbon source, and in doing so, they excrete carbonate molecules into the soil. Carbonate usually breaks down quickly, but if these plant-microbe systems are grown in alkaline- and calcium-rich soils, the carbonate reacts with calcium to form stable deposits of calcium carbonate.

Carbon naturally cycles between the atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems, but human actions have resulted in the accumulation of excess CO₂ in the atmosphere. Even if we can reduce CO₂ emissions, the researchers write that the .” ..climate effects of elevated CO₂ will remain irreversible for at least 1,000 years unless CO₂ can be sequestered from the atmosphere.”

Trees are considered an ideal system for carbon capture, but reforestation competes directly with agriculture for arable land. In contrast, arid lands, which constitute approximately one-third of terrestrial surfaces, are not utilized for agriculture.

Currently, arid ecosystems support very little plant life, with the lack of water being the biggest limiting factor. However, some plants have adapted to arid life by evolving different mechanisms for coping with the lack of water and extreme temperatures. Some arid-adapted plants have special root systems for reaching deep into the soil to tap hidden water sources while others use different forms of photosynthesis that allow them to minimize water loss during the hottest parts of the day. Yet others, so-called “oxalogenic” plants, produce large amounts of oxalates that they can convert into water during times of drought. Some of the carbon from these oxalates is deposited below-ground as carbon deposits when oxalogenic plants are grown under certain conditions, and it’s this mechanism that the authors want to exploit for carbon sequestration.

“Overall, in this form of carbon sequestration, one out of every sixteen photosynthetically fixed carbon atoms might be sequestered into carbonates,” the authors write.

Amplifying this naturally occurring biogeochemical process in arid lands could convert these currently unproductive and degraded ecosystems into carbon sinks with healthier soil and plants, the authors say. They suggest beginning with “fertility islands” — small pockets of re-greened habitat from which the plants and microbes can spread to form a carpet of vegetation.

The authors estimate that these approaches could result in significant increases in both plant and soil carbon sequestration in less than ten years. However, they note that the success and speed of the proposed method will depend on the rate of plant growth (which tends to be slow under water-scarce conditions) and .” ..will also depend on the financial and political means to apply this technology in various arid countries.”

This work was supported by grants from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.