Recent comments in /f/science

bane_killgrind t1_j9e4d6k wrote

Reply to According to a new study, researchers propose a novel theory about how the molecules of life may have developed a preferred chirality, or “handedness.” Understanding more about how the concept influences our living beings could help scientists develop drugs to fight molecular disease, like cancer. by Impossible_Cookie596

So this concept of chirality isn't adequately explained, so I'm going to give a shot at that.

Most of the visualizations we have of molecules are flat, and so they offer an incomplete picture of how they exist in real life and the texture they have. Some long molecule is likely to be bent or rotated along certain bonds because of the individual charges of the atomic components that it's made up by.

Some forces attract, and other forces repel, a position that balances those forces could be straight or very bendy.

Let's pretend a sheet of paper is some molecule. It has a side A and a side B. The stiff surface of the paper offers an internal repelling force and the edges have an attractive force. If you cut a triangle out of the sheet, (a different shape is a different molecule) the attraction in the edges pulls the cutout into a cone. But now we need to ask, is side A the outside of the cone or is side B? It could be either, and the way to describe this distinction between two otherwise identical molecules is it's chirality.

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blackluck64 t1_j9e418z wrote

Reply to comment by dumnezero in Climate change and the projected savannization of the Brazilian Amazon threaten most land-based mammals that live there, new research shows. The “savannization” here refers to when lush rainforest gives way to a drier, open landscape that resembles savanna but is actually degraded forest. by MistWeaver80

In time the entire planet will exist to support just one species. We'll end up killing off most of our only companions on possibly the only inhabitable planet for complex life in the galaxy. And most people seem just fine with that.

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basmwklz OP t1_j9e2xnv wrote

Reply to Extensive accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates during natural aging and senescence (2023) by basmwklz

Abstract: >Accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates is a hallmark event in many age-related protein misfolding disorders, including some of the most prevalent and insidious neurodegenerative diseases. Misfolded protein aggregates produce progressive cell damage, organ dysfunction, and clinical changes, which are common also in natural aging. Thus, we hypothesized that aging is associated to the widespread and progressive misfolding and aggregation of many proteins in various tissues. In this study, we analyzed whether proteins misfold, aggregate, and accumulate during normal aging in three different biological systems, namely senescent cells, Caenorhabditis elegans, and mouse tissues collected at different times from youth to old age. Our results show a significant accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates in aged samples as compared to young materials. Indeed, aged samples have between 1.3 and 2.5-fold (depending on the biological system) higher amount of insoluble proteins than young samples. These insoluble proteins exhibit the typical characteristics of disease-associated aggregates, including insolubility in detergents, protease resistance, and staining with amyloid-binding dye as well as accumulation in aggresomes. We identified the main proteins accumulating in the aging brain using proteomic studies. These results show that the aged brain contain large amounts of misfolded and likely non-functional species of many proteins, whose soluble versions participate in cellular pathways that play fundamental roles in preserving basic functions, such as protein quality control, synapsis, and metabolism. Our findings reveal a putative role for protein misfolding and aggregation in aging.

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AutoModerator t1_j9e2u36 wrote

Reply to Extensive accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates during natural aging and senescence (2023) by basmwklz

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

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AutoModerator t1_j9e0hzx wrote

Reply to An international team of researchers has published a study showing that the destruction of key hydrothermal vents by deep-sea mining could have knock-on impacts on vent fields hundreds of kilometers away. by GeoGeoGeoGeo

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

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ddlbot t1_j9dyrn1 wrote

Reply to comment by ctrovato in Quantifying organellar ultrastructure in cryo-electron tomography using a surface morphometrics pipeline | Journal of Cell Biology by chromoscience

me too, i asked ChatGPT to summarize it...

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The article discusses the challenges of quantifying ultrastructural features of pleomorphic organelles in three dimensions using cellular cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and proposes a semiautomated workflow to segment organellar membranes and reconstruct their underlying surface geometry in cryo-ET. The authors also developed an open-source suite of ultrastructural quantifications, integrated into a single pipeline called the surface morphometrics pipeline, which enables rapid modeling of complex membrane structures and allows detailed mapping of inter- and intramembrane spacing, curvedness, and orientation. The authors demonstrate the advantages of this approach by combining cryo-ET with cryo-fluorescence microscopy to correlate bulk mitochondrial network morphology with membrane ultrastructure of individual mitochondria in the presence and absence of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Using their pipeline, the authors demonstrate ER stress promotes adaptive remodeling of ultrastructural features of mitochondria and suggest that changes in membrane ultrastructure correlate to mitochondrial network morphologies. Overall, the pipeline offers opportunities for quantifying changes in membrane ultrastructure on a single-cell level using cryo-ET, opening new opportunities to define changes in ultrastructural features induced by diverse types of cellular perturbations

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so i said "Explain like i'm Five"

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>Scientists want to see how tiny parts inside cells look like in 3D to understand how cells work. They use a fancy machine called cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) to take pictures of these tiny parts. But it's hard to understand what the pictures mean. So, the scientists came up with a way to make the pictures easier to understand. They made a computer program that helps them to see the parts better and to compare them with other cells. They used this program to study mitochondria, tiny parts that make energy for cells. They found that when cells are stressed, mitochondria change their shape and structure to adapt to the stress. They hope that this program will help them learn more about how cells work and how they respond to different conditions.

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Gotanyfunkopops t1_j9dyok1 wrote

Reply to comment by JoaoBinda in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

My wife is a physician and we have tested frequently for it since the onset, and nope, neither of us have caught it. My wife is super careful, even now she still wears face shields and N95. I work from home and we still wear masks when we go out, so that helps too. We actually haven’t been sick with cold or flu in three years either.

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laveshnk t1_j9dwsja wrote

Reply to comment by leonffs in Stroke survivor moves her hand for first time in a decade after groundbreaking treatment by TheTelegraph

My uncle had a similar stroke in his early fiftys. He was this wonderful old man who could only move his finger, so we attached a bell to his wheelchair arm. Unfortunately he was killed in a bomblast in his very own nursing home.

I can still remember sound of the dings he used to make.

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WAPE t1_j9dvvkp wrote

Reply to comment by ParabellumJohn in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

Neither is your point though. It’s not related to anything. Your point is made up and not based on anything scientific

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