#2 - Body Cell Mapping, The End of The World and Evolving Europeans
The new technology leading the future of disease treatment, an overview of COP26 and evolving polygenic traits found from European humans.
👋 Welcome back to the newsletter, thank you for subscribing and reading! If you enjoy this issue and find any value, please let us know and share with family and friends!
🧬Mapping the Way To The Future?
Spatial Transcriptomics Is Mapping The Way To The Future of Biology…
So what is spatial transcriptomics? Essentially this is an umbrella term for a range of methods designed to assign cell types to their location within in organism. The transcriptome is the full range of mRNA in the body, similar to genome and proteome for the genetic and protein make up respectively.
The human body is made of roughly 30 trillion cells with a wide variety of specialisation and organisation. The human body and the organisation within is influenced by a variety of factors both internally and externally and vary drastically organism to organism. One of the main issues in terms of disease research and treatment is technology always being one step behind. Winning Nature’s method of the year award in 2020 this technique is the use of highly advanced imaging methods combined with intricate biological and chemical mapping.
As many of you know, cells specialise during the developmental process into their desired cell type. This is based off spatial and environmental cues. These cues therefore bring about change to the phenotype of the organism through altering the expression of their genome which often leads to varied transcription patterns and resultantly amino acid order within proteins. This can have a significant knock on effect through the body. Throughout a biological tissue is a diverse array of cell types that all coexist to bring about responses. Therefore when disease strikes, specific and specialised areas such as the liver organ can be drastically effected by diseases such as cirrhosis.
Some of the areas that scientists struggle in is both identification and detailed understanding and whilst high levels of progress have been made, we still know a relatively low % of what is really going on. Hence the need for a metaphorical cell map which is especially pertinent for lesser known and complex diseases. Spatial transcriptomics is believed by many to be the future of the “cell map” and proven to be a key tool in this atlas-ing strategy.
Spatial transcriptomics requires a colossal volume of information to which reshape and structure to become understandable by humans. This means that technologies that can acquire high volume information and a single molecule scale at an extremely fast pace are a necessity. Due to the high demand for such advanced methods in technology that is not yet ready, some of the required criteria are often sacrificed. However, advancements in the field promise to improve our capture of transcriptomic data on a large scale as well as becoming more accessible for the larger scientific community. Some of the areas being advanced are:
Multiplexing - More mRNA per experiment
Resolution - Single cell/ subcellular resolution to provide further analysis.
Sensitivity - Locating cells with lowly expressing genes.
Sample area - The ability to analyse larger sections of tissue or organ.
The future of spatial transcriptomics is very exciting with applications in the real world being almost limitless. With the growth and development of new technology and information, who knows where it could go!
🌡️ Journey to The End of The World…
COP26 - What Is It, What Does It Mean and What Happened?
Firstly for any that don’t know… What is COP? COP stands for Conference of the Parties and refers to the climate change summit attended to those who signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change back in 1994.
As you may be able to guess, the ultimate goal of the convention is to bring about change that stabilises greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and reduces the effect humans have on the globe. At COP21 the Paris agreements were signed that set the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with the aim to actively pursue the goal of keeping emissions below 1.5.
It is worth stating that unsurprisingly following a political event, many parties were unhappy. This was mainly centred around the lack of stronger agreements by some global powerhouses to reduce emissions and set more ambitious pledges.
Roughly 100 countries agreed to reduce methane emissions. This represents roughly 70% of the worlds economy. If upheld this would be a highly influential outcome as methane is 23x more potent than carbon dioxide and released from the tundra ecosystem as a result of global warming positive feedback loops.
33 States as well as 11 carmakers pledged to accelerate the transition to 100% zero-emission car and van sales by the date of 2040 globally.
77 Signatories including 46 countries, pledged to slowly phase out coal-fired generation in the coming decades. This is a more ambiguous agreement with few statistical markers.
Key brands such as Amazon, Ikea, Michelin, Unilever and Patagonia were among important companies to commit to buying only carbon free freight from 2040.
More than 30 financial institutions with a combined asset worth of $8.7 trillion pledged to eliminate investment in activities linked to deforestation.
Over 20 countries and five development banks are committed to end public financing of oversees fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.
Evolving Around Us?
How Genetic Evolution Has Been Occurring in Europeans For The Last Few Thousand Years.
Evidence has been found that suggests natural selection based off of evolutionary changes has occurred for the past 2 to 3 thousand years. The study attached below, showed the comparison of data between the current residents of the UK and those living a few thousand years ago.
One interesting point regarding this story is the fact that relatively few studies are done on evolution in the modern day. Due to a fixed mindset most research begins significantly before you had the ability to read this on a phone. Understanding the patterns of natural selection in humans can provide valuable insight into the biological processes at play, as well as representative data of environmental and abiotic changes in the environment. As a result some researchers designed a study to test the effects of natural selection over more recent times.
Through the use of data from the UK Biobank as well as obtaining information from similar genetic material based organisations from across Europe the team chose just under 1000 traits to test from. 870 traits were identified with certain genes being related to the traceable phenotype characteristics. Whilst quantifying the “change” in humans over a few thousand years is a complex task an overall pattern can be seen by the compared data. 87% of the selected traits showed evidence polygenic change and evolution in action. Some of these traits included skin colour, dietary traits and body measurements. The reason that natural selection is seen as a driving factor here is due to the three traits being at a near constant selection pressure leading to changes in the genotype and phenotype. However, skin pigmentation changes were expected due to changes in concentration and exposure of UV light.
Some changes are believed to be due to the results of climate change with one example being consumption of vitamin D, heat regulation and body measurements. Polygenic adaptation can result from different forms of selection such as negative selection, balancing selection or a rise in a selectively advantageous allele.
Pearson correlation coefficients, a simple correlation “test” were used to determine selection pressures at the time as well as mating success. Through the use of analytical tests to try and quantify and compare the broad data the teams working with research groups in China were able to complete the task and show significant signs of changes in polygenic traits.
Weekly Topics
As always, take some things with a pinch of salt and be analytical! 🧂
🏞️ Environmental
Amazon sees worst forestation in 15 years
Increasingly frequent wild fires following human induced climate change
The production of the future - hydrogen fuel
🐼 Conservation
Environment groups lashing out at government over proposed national park rule changes
Jaguars face major threat from forest fires in the Amazon
Water voles released in Yorkshire to help natural populations
🦠 Disease and Illness
Environmental bacteria produce specialised metabolites that are potent antibiotics and therapeutics
“Dancing Molecules” - Cure spinal cord injuries
Red blood cells activate the innate immune response system
😷 COVID
AI predicts which animals are most likely to spread corona virus
New clues to the biology of long COVID
Rodents could be asymptomatic carriers of the virus
🧪 Biochemistry
Why drinking water needs HIV monitoring
Study reveals mechanism by which vitamin D reduces inflammation caused by the immune system
The biochemistry analysers marker reaches $5,429 million
🔬 Evolution
There may be way more tropical birds than we ever thought
Convergent animal algorithms challenging Darwinism
Sea squirts teach new lessons in evolution
🧬 Genetics
Whole genome sequencing could save the NHS millions
New genetic research explaining the reason we look the way that we do
New ceratosaur species unearthed in Brazil
📷 Weekly Camera Roll
Here we have 5 images with linked caption. If the picture interests you enough, click and keep reading!
Thank you for reading another issue of the biosnip newsletter! Please consider sharing!