Research Articles

An interesting study on the use of selenium and antibiotic resistance.  Metals and metalloids have long been recognized for their disinfecting qualities, and as such have been used in food preservation, water disinfection, cleaning products, and for wound treatment. The researchers screened metals for their antimicrobial efficacy and found selenium, a metalloid, to be promising. In addition to potential antimicrobial uses, selenium also happens to be a micronutrient important in immune system functioning, nucleic acid synthesis, as well as other physiological processes. The researchers first determined the minimum amount of selenium needed to inhibit the bacteria's virulence, or ability to cause disease. With this approach, Venkitanarayanan says the bacteria are still able to grow, but are not able to infect the host as effectively. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 121724.htm

Starve them out Nolan’s chosen strategy uses metals essential to an organism’s survival. “Humans have three to five grams of iron inside our bodies, which is critically important for our health,” she says. “Many kinds of bacteria also need this iron, but it’s hard for them to find it.” During infection, microbes and hosts compete for iron and other metals, and this contest has provided Nolan with ideas for new therapies. In a series of studies, she has investigated the metal-acquisition systems in such pathogenic bacteria as  Escherichia coli  and  Salmonella . Inside the infected host, these bacteria fabricate molecules called siderophores, which are set loose in the environment outside of cells. “Siderophores scavenge iron from the host, and deliver it to the bacterial cell,” says Nolan. The human immune system fights back through a metal-withholding response, which includes unleashing proteins that can capture certain iron-bearing siderophores. In short, as Nola...

Georgetown University neuroscientists say they have identified how people can have a "crash in visual processing" -- a bottleneck of feedforward and feedback signals that can cause us not to be consciously aware of stimuli that our brain recognized. In the  Journal of Vision , investigators describe what can occur when the brain is asked to process more information than it can handle. The phenomenon, which they dub a "crash in visual processing," happens when the neurons busy processing one image are tasked with processing another too quickly, and then either one or both images do not reach conscious awareness. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191023121839.htm