Canada’s Spartan Bioscience has developed a near “plug-and-play” genotyping device that allows nurses and others to quickly screen patients at the bedside, perhaps while they are undergoing the stent ...placement procedure. The University of Ottawa Heart Institute researchers conducted a proof-of-principle trial for the device and found that the bedside test is effective at quickly identifying carriers of the drug-processing variant and can be performed by nurses with minimal training. Patients who receive a stent implant after a heart attack or as a preventive measure are at risk for serious adverse events if their bodies cannot process a commonly prescribed anti-platelet drug into its active form.
The researchers had no actual genome-sequence data for the twins, but instead had data on the long-term incidences of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and other common conditions among the more than ...50,000 pairs. Other effects, such as diet, exercise, and the varying strength of the effects of particular genetic sequences, can all play a role in whether or not a genetic predisposition leads to an actual malady. ...we all pay for each other’s medical care, either because we are in an insurance plan or we are in Medicare, so it’s in nobody’s interest to indiscriminately apply technology and new modalities to people who don’t need them and won’t benefit from them.”
...the microbes produced three times as much fuel. The researchers augmented a previously reported strain of engineered E. coli that creates biodiesel from two biological building blocks—fatty acids ...and ethanol. The sensor-regulator system improves the engineered bacteria in two ways, says Keasling: the metabolic pathways are better balanced so that one precursor isn’t overproduced relative to the other, and the modified bacteria are more stable because the biofuel production isn’t robbing the cell of the ability to grow.
Nonsuicidal self‐injury is especially common in adolescents and young adults. Self‐injury may be related to shame or guilt—two moral emotions—as these differentially predict other maladaptive ...behaviors. Using a college sample, we examined not only how shame‐proneness, guilt‐proneness, and internalizing emotional tendencies related to self‐injury, but also whether these moral emotions moderate the relation between internalizing tendencies and self‐injury. High shame‐proneness was associated with higher frequencies of self‐injury. High guilt‐proneness was associated with less self‐injury, although this effect was mitigated at higher levels of internalizing tendencies. These results suggest shame‐proneness is a risk factor for self‐injury, while guilt‐proneness is protective.
