Nerdy Science Blog

Phyorg.com:

Demi-Lee Brennan was aged nine and seriously ill with liver failure when she received the transplant, doctors at a top Sydney children’s hospital told AFP.

Nine months later they discovered she had changed blood types and that her immune system had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new liver migrated to her bone marrow.

She is now a healthy 15-year-old, Michael Stormon, a hepatologist treating her, told AFP. He said he had given several presentations on the case around the world and had heard of none like it.

Could it be another soul living inside her blood? LOL!

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What does Akirin sounds like to you? Sounds like a Japanese name in some anime right? It is actually a Japanese name, which means “kick my ass”.

ScienceDaily:

A group of scientists headed by Dr. Michael Boutros of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ), collaborating with colleagues of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Strasbourg, made use of this fact: Using the Nobel-prize winning method of RNA interference (RNAi), they switched off individual molecules of the signaling pathway in Drosophila and have thus come across a new member: Akirin, meaning “making things clear” in Japanese.

When they suppressed Akirin production in the immune cells of the flies, these were significantly more susceptible to bacterial infections. And when they knocked down the protein in all body cells, the fly larvae died in an early stage. Colleagues at Japan’s Osaka University investigated the corresponding mouse Akirin: In mice, too, the protein fulfills the same function as in the fruit fly and in man.

Gotcha! “Akirin” actually means “making things clear” in Japanese.

So what is innate immune system? There are two kinds of immune system, which are innate immune system and adaptive immune system. After microbe entering the surface barrier of an organism, for example skin of human, it will trigger the first barrier of immune system. This immune system is called innate immune system. The cells in the innate immune system identify the foreign cells with their antenna-like receptors to detect any foreign structure. Man, it’s complicated to explain (I need to develop a method to explain this immune system thingy).

By the way, there are two responses when this result was published.

Students, “Damn! I will have one more thing to remember in the future!”

Other immunologist, “Holy Cow, there goes another Nobel Prize!”

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ScienceDaily:

Systemic lupus can involve the joints, kidneys, heart, lungs, brain and blood. The disease occurs in about 31 out of every 100,000 people and affects women nine times more frequently than men. Scientists believe that lupus is caused by genetic variants that interact with each other and the environment.

The scientists found evidence of an association with multiple SNPs in three genes: ITGAM, KIAA1542 and PXK, and also at SNP rs10798269, which is not within any known gene. ITGAM is important for both the adherence of immune cells and for cleaning up pathogens. KIAA1542 is important for translating the DNA code into proteins. PXK encodes a molecule that transmits signals and controls complex processes in cells. These scientists also found association in genes previously associated with lupus and other autoimmune diseases.

Guess we need to change our lifestyle to prevent lupus. I read an interesting sentence from somewhere (I can’t remember where), it said like this, “If you won’t die because of heart disease today, you’re likely to die because of cancer.” How true.

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