Question

PLEASE SUMMARIZE THE 4 (numbered 1-4) ARTICLES TO 4 SENTENCES FOR EACH NUMBER. THANKS.

1.

Medications have to be safe for mothers-to-be and for their unborn children. Before the authorities will approve a new drug, it must be tested in animal trials on pregnant rodents and, as a rule, pregnant rabbits. Scientists in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel have now developed a test that allows them to examine a drug's embryotoxicity in cell cultures instead of animals.

The new test does not yet replace the animal trials that are legally required as part of the medication approval process. However, as the new procedure is simple, fast, and inexpensive, researchers will be able to use it in the future to test a large number of drug candidates at an early stage of the development process. Substances that are harmful to embryos will thus be detected early in the drug development process and not only in embryotoxicity studies in animal trials. Because they are so expensive, animal tests are not conducted until much later in the drug development process with only carefully preselected potential drug candidates. As the new test weeds out unsuccessful drug candidates earlier, it may help cutting costs and reducing the number of animal experiments.

2.

Proteins are the building blocks of life and our cells make them based on instructions from our DNA. These instructions that have to be transported from the cell nucleus, which holds the DNA, to the cytoplasm where proteins are made.

The research, led by Professor Stuart Wilson from the University of Sheffield's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, revealed how our cells know when these instructions, known as mRNA, are ready to be transported. The findings will help our understanding of some cancers and conditions such as motor neuron disease, which are linked to faults in protein production.

The research is published today in Molecular Cell.

Professor Stuart Wilson, lead researcher from the University of Sheffield, explained: "If the mRNA is transported before the processing is complete, then it is a disaster for the cell, which can't make proteins and ultimately dies. Faults in this process are behind many human diseases. So it's vitally important, not just that the processing is done correctly, but the cell knows when this is complete."

The team, from the Sheffield Institute for Nucleic Acids, found that molecules known as 'export factors' -- which help transport the mRNA -- also signal to the cell when the processing is complete by moving their position on the mRNA.

Scientists have long argued over the position of export factors -- whether they sit at the beginning of the mRNA or centrally, where the protein-making instructions have been spliced together.

Professor Wilson, working with his co-researchers Dr Nicolas Viphakone and Dr Ian Sudbery, found that in fact, both views are correct. The export factors initially sit at the beginning of the mRNA while the processing takes place, then once it is complete, they move further in, sitting at points where splicing has taken place, to signal that transport can begin.

3.

LSTM's Professor Russell Stothard is senior author on a new paper in which researchers from the UK and Malawi have described the unusual occurrence of novel schistosome hybrids infecting children along the Shire River Valley.

The findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, are particularly important because they show that these human schistosomes have the potential for abrupt changes in their genetic constitution through genetic interactions with schistosomes in livestock. Its consequences alter the basic biology of the schistosome considerably, confounding perhaps current control strategies aimed exclusively at people.

Urogenital schistosomiasis was typically considered to be caused by Schistosoma haematobium alone. Recent work in West Africa, however, has shown that schistosomes usually found in cattle, such as Schistosoma bovis, interact and introgress their genes with S. haematobium. Such hybrid schistosomes have been shown in animal models to change significantly in their ability to cause infection and disease, for example, through increased production of eggs and enabling the schistosome to utilise a wider range of intermediate snail host species. This can increase its geographical range of endemic transmission.

Lead author Dr Bonnie Webster from the Natural History Museum, who has a longstanding collaboration with LSTM's Professor Stothard, said: "Due to advanced molecular methods, hybridisation between animal and human schistosome species is being frequently reported in West Africa but our data presented here, a first from Central Africa, demonstrate its wider nature across continental Africa."

Professor Stothard, who has been working in Malawi since joining the LSTM in 2011, stated that: "We now need to conduct more in-depth molecular analyses and whole genome studies on these hybrid forms to investigate all possible inter-species combinations." Taken as a whole, a new appraisal of urogenital schistosomiasis in Malawi is warranted which should adopt a OneHealth approach that brings veterinary and medical perspectives into a closer union.

4.

At least a quarter of the world's approximately 8,000 known species of amphibian are recognized as threatened and at risk of extinction. But due to a lack of data on many amphibian species, only about 44 percent of amphibians have up-to-date assessments on their risk of extinction, compared to nearly 100 percent of both birds and mammals. Now, researchers reporting May 6 in the journal Current Biology have used known ecological, geographical, and evolutionary attributes of these data-deficient species to model their extinction risk -- and their assessment suggests that at least another 1,000 species are threatened.

"We found that more than 1,000 data-deficient amphibians are threatened with extinction, and nearly 500 are Endangered or Critically Endangered, mainly in South America and Southeast Asia," said Pamela González-del-Pliego of the University of Sheffield and Yale University. "Urgent conservation actions are needed to avert the loss of these species."

The lack of information on these species results from high rates of new species description together with a lag in assessment rates in the last 15 years, she explains. All told, about 2,200 amphibian species had been deemed data deficient. Their extinction risk status simply wasn't known.

To make predictions about the status of those data-deficient species, González-del-Pliego and her colleagues applied what they call a trait-based spatio-phylogenetic statistical framework. In other words, they used what is known about the ecology, geography, and evolutionary attributes of these species, together with those attributes' known relationship to extinction risk, to predict whether each of those little-known species was likely to be threatened with extinction and which were not.

Overall, their calculations suggest that half of the ~2,200 data-deficient species are threatened with extinction, primarily in the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. About 500 species are likely Endangered or Critically Endangered, they report. Three may be extinct already.

Their findings suggest that some of the most vulnerable species may also be the most poorly known. But there is a positive side to the new findings, the researchers note: at least in some parts of the world, efforts to protect species known to be under threat might benefit threatened but data-deficient species as well.

"In the Neotropics, the species that we know are threatened have very similar geographical distributions compared to the data-deficient species predicted to be threatened," González-del-Pliego said. "Therefore, if we try and conserve the areas where current threatened species are, we will be protecting the data-deficient species as well."

The same cannot be said of amphibians living in Southeast Asia and Central Africa, however, due to poor overlap in the distribution of data-deficient and known threatened species. The bottom line, González-del-Pliego says, it that the "percentage of threatened amphibians is much higher than we previously knew."

She says that the new predictive evidence should now be used to make informed decisions about which species and regions to target. "We need to move quickly to consider amphibians as a high conservation priority and integrate data-deficient species into conservation strategies," González-del-Pliego said.

Answer 1

1) As the new test weeds out unsuccessful drug candidates earlier, it may help cutting costs and reducing the number of animal experiments.

2) Proteins are the building blocks of life and our cells make them based on instructions from our DNA and the instructions are transported from the cell nucleus to the cytoplasm for protein translation. Thus, these findings will help our understanding of some cancers and conditions such as motor neuron disease, which are linked to faults in protein production.

3) Such hybrid schistosomes have been shown in animal models to change significantly in their ability to cause infection and disease, for example, through increased production of eggs and enabling the schistosome to utilise a wider range of intermediate snail host species.

4) Therefore, if we try and conserve the areas where current threatened species are, we will be protecting the data-deficient species as well. The same cannot be said of amphibians living in Southeast Asia and Central Africa due to poor overlap in the distribution of data-deficient and known threatened species.