Specific type of DNA could be a target of future cancer therapies
Research published in Nature Genetics on Oct.14, by Yale Cancer Center researchers at Yale School of Medicine, found a higher concentration of a specific kind of DNA — extrachromosomal or ecDNA — in more aggressive and advanced cancers that could mark them as targets for future therapies.
Using data available from The Cancer Genome Atlas, the International Cancer Genomics Consortium, the Hartwig Medical Foundation, and the Glioma Longitudinal Analysis Consortium, the researchers considered more than 8,000 tumor samples, divided between newly diagnosed untreated tumors and those that had been through previous treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, and others. They found significantly higher amounts of ecDNA in tumors from previously treated patients, leading to the theory that ecDNA might give a survival advantage to those tumors.
“Our research suggests that ecDNA helps tumors become more aggressive,” said senior author of the paper, Roel Verhaak, the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine and member of Yale Cancer Center. “EcDNA has a distinct mechanism and plays an important role, not just for breast or lung cancer, but across many cancer types.”
The origin of most meteorites finally revealed
Understanding where shooting stars and meteorites come from is a question that scientists have been trying to answer since ancient times.
Until recently, only 6% of meteorite falls had been linked to their source.
A team led by scientists from CNRS, ESO, and Charles University has notably shown that 70% of all meteorite falls come from just three young asteroid families.
An international team led by three researchers from the CNRS1, the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Europe), and Charles University (Czech Republic) has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions that occurred in the main asteroid belt 5.8, 7.5, and about 40 million years ago. The team also revealed the sources of other types of meteorites; with this research, the origin of more than 90% of meteorites has now been identified. This discovery is detailed in three papers, a first published on 13 September 2024 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and two new papers to be published on 16 October 2024 in Nature.
New instrument uses radar to measure what the eye can’t see
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Nicolas Rasmont assembling his radar inferometry instrument in the lab.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a new instrument to measure the density of the dust that kicks up when spacecraft thrusters interact with planetary surfaces as it lands. Because cameras and other optical equipment are blinded by dense dust clouds, the new instrument uses millimeter-wave radar in a new way to accurately measure the dust and debris.
“Other measurement techniques exist, but our instrument addresses a sort of ‘missing middle.’ It is applicable to particle clouds which are too dense for optical measurements but too thin for state-of-the-art opaque multiphase techniques like X-rays or MRI. It is also capable of several thousands of measurements per second,” said Nicolas Rasmont, Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. “Our instrument uses a radar to generate waves with a wavelength of 3.8 mm, just over an eighth of an inch. The wave travels through a cloud of particles, then is reflected, then captured back by our instrument to detect the presence of the particles.”
