Center for Immunopathobiology, Preventive and Diagnostic Medicine - CIPDM

29/01/2020

24/01/2020

A new coronavirus, a mysterious SARS-like disease, has spread around China and three other Asian countries since first emerging in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

20/08/2019

Are you a business guru wanting to know more about synthetic biology? Or an academic hoping to begin your first business? Fear not, here is a list of 15 biotech-relevant online courses to help you scratch that curiosity itch. The internet has radically changed education. While we carried around pile...

17/08/2019

Bartonella spp. bacteria can be found around the globe and are the causative agents of multiple human diseases. The most well-known infection is called cat-scratch disease, which causes mild lymphadenopathy and fever. As our knowledge of these bacteria grows, new presentations of the disease have be...

13/08/2019

"If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say".

Throughout her career, Barbara McClintock studied the cytogenetics of maize, making discoveries so far beyond the understanding of the time that other scientists essentially ignored her work for more than a decade. But she persisted, trusting herself and the evidence under her microscope

[McClintock and the Origins of Cytogenetics]
Barbara McClintock began her scientific career at Cornell University, where she pioneered the study of a cytogenetics-a new field in the 1930s-using maize as a model organism. Indeed, the marriage of cytology and genetics became official in 1931, when McClintock and graduate student Harriet Creighton provided the first experimental proof that genes were physically positioned on chromosomes by describing the crossing-over phenomenon and genetic recombination. Although Thomas Hunt Morgan was the first person to suggest the link between genetic traits and the exchange of genetic aterial by chromosomes, 20 years elapsed before his ideas were scientifically proven, largely due to limitations in cytological and experimental techniques. McClintock's own innovative cytogenetic techniques allowed her to confirm Morgan's ideas, and these techniques are numbered among her greatest contributions to science.

[McClintock and the Theory of Epigenetics]
Beyond her discovery of TEs and her revolutionary cytogenetic research techniques, Barbara McClintock was also the first scientist to correctly speculate on the basic concept of epigenetics-or heritable changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes to DNA sequences. Mainly, she recognized that genes can be expressed and silenced during mitosis in genetically identical cells. McClintock proposed this theory before the molecular structure of DNA and more than 40 years before the concept of epigenetics was formally studied, thereby further cementing her reputation as an innovator in her field.

-------------------------------
Reference:
1. Pray, L & Zhaurova, K. 2008. Barbara McClintock and the Discovery of Jumping Genes (Transposons). Barbara McClintock and the discovery of jumping genes (transposons). Nature Education 1(1):169
2. https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/barbara-mcclintock

18/07/2019

The African Swine Fever is affecting economy, trade, food safety, and food prices all around the world.

06/07/2019

Now it’s happen

Climate change and human sprawl have triggered a pandemic

24/06/2019

Black Death in Europe, possible recurrence in the new world?

Plague is a that affects people and other mammals. It is caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. People usually get after being bitten by a rodent flea that is carrying the plague bacterium or by handling an animal infected with plague. Plague is infamous for killing millions of people in Europe during the Middle Ages. Today, modern antibiotics are effective in treating plague. Without prompt treatment, the disease can cause serious illness or death. Presently, human plague infections continue to occur in the western United States, but significantly more cases occur in parts of Africa and Asia.

Today, most human plague cases are bubonic, caused by spillover of infected fleas from rodent epizootics, or pneumonic, caused by inhalation of infectious droplets. However, little is known about the historical spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic (14–19th centuries), including the Black Death, which led to high mortality and recurrent epidemics for hundreds of years. Several studies have suggested that human ectoparasite vectors, such as human fleas (Pulex irritans) or body lice (Pediculus humanus humanus), caused the rapidly spreading epidemics.

This photomicrograph of a Wright stained blood sample, which had been extracted from a plague victim, revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, whose bipolar ends were darkly stained.

Credit :📷 CDC Public Health Image Library (phil.cdc.gov) & Cell press



Reference:
1. www.cdc.gov/plague/
2. Rascovan, N., et al. 2018. Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline. Cell. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.005
3. Dean, K.R, et al. 2018. Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 ( #6): 1304–1309. doi:10.1073/pnas.1715640115.

19/06/2019

The is altered not only in functional bowel disorders such as IBS but in mood disorders such as , disorders such as spectrum disorder and in metabolic disorders.
-
Our mind, our food and our mood, is there any positive or negative correlations?
-
There are documented association of alterations in gut–brain interactions with functional bowel disorders, chronic abdominal pain syndromes and even eating disorders has become increasingly clear in the past few years.
-
Modulation of function is associated with alterations in the stress response and overall behaviour in both animal models and in humans. A high comorbidity exists between stress-related mental symptoms such as anxiety and IBS, a fact that has provided the greatest impetus for research into the importance of the gut–brain axis.
-
Over 50% of patients with IBS have comorbid depression or anxiety. Modulation of the gut–brain axis is increasingly being proposed as an appropriate target for the development of novel treatments for a wide variety of disorders that range from depression and anxiety to IBS, obesity and neurodevelopmental disorders.
-
The gut microbiota interact with the host through immune, neuroendocrine and neural pathways. These pathways are components of the brain–gut–microbiota axis and preclinical evidence suggests that the microbiota can recruit this bidirectional communication network to modulate brain development, function and even behaviour. Preliminary studies have shown differences in the composition of the gut microbiota in patients with depression compared with healthy individuals.