Liver Cancer Risk Influenced By Blood Selenium Levels

The risk of developing liver cancer may be significantly higher for people who have low levels of the nutrient selenium in their blood, suggests a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Selenium is a trace mineral present in soil, animal products, and plant-based foods, including seafood, Brazil nuts, organ meats, milk, and eggs.

The selenium content of food varies greatly, as it depends on how much of the element is in the plants animals consume, as well as how much is in the soil in which plants grow.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), selenium is essential for human health, with beneficial roles for reproduction, the immune system, and DNA synthesis.

Studies have also shown that selenium has antioxidant properties, meaning it can protect against oxidative stress - the process by which uncharged molecules called free radicals damage cells.

Read more: Liver Cancer Risk Influenced By Blood Selenium Levels

Low blood selenium levels may put people at greater risk of liver cancer.

Source: medicalnewstoday

Human sperm created from mature skin cells for infertility solution

Scientists in Spain say they have created human sperm from skin cells, which could eventually lead to a treatment for infertility.

The researchers said they were working to find a solution for the roughly 15 per cent of couples worldwide who are unable to have children and whose only option is to use donated gametes (sperm or eggs).

"What to do when someone who wants to have a child lacks gametes?" asked Dr Carlos Simon, scientific director of the Valencian Infertility Institute, Spain's first medical institution fully dedicated to assisted reproduction.

"This is the problem we want to address: to be able to create gametes in people who do not have them."

The result of their research, which was carried out with Stanford University in the United States, was published on Tuesday in Scientific Reports, the online journal of Nature.

Read more: Human sperm created from mature skin cells for infertility solution

Infertile sperm cells were created by adding genes to skin cells

Source: ABC News Breakfast

Antibiotics not promote resistance through gene conjugation.

The exponential rise of antibiotic drug resistance is a considerable threat to global public health. Researchers are continually searching for the underlying mechanisms that promote this resistant phenotype. Some evidence exists to suggest that antibiotic use encourages the spread of bacterial resistance through genetic swapping. However, new research suggests that these examples are outliers and not indicative of the majority of bacterial populations.

Researchers at Duke University suggest that differential birth and death rates of microbes and not DNA donation are to blame. The results have implications for designing antibiotic protocols to avoid the spread of antibacterial resistance. 

"The entire field knows there's a huge problem of overusing antibiotics," noted senior study author Lingchong You, Ph.D., associate professor of engineering at Duke University. "It is incredibly tempting to assume that antibiotics are promoting the spread of resistance by increasing the rate at which bacteria share resistant genes with each other, but our research shows they often aren't."

Investigators have known for decades that bacteria can swap genetic elements through a process called conjugation, which allows helpful genes to spread quickly between individuals and even between species. Because the number of resistant bacteria rises when antibiotics fail to kill them, many researchers have assumed that the drugs increased the amount of genetic swapping taking place. The Duke researchers, however, hypothesized that the antibiotics were killing off the two "parent" lineages and allowing a newly resistant strain to thrive instead.

Read more: Antibiotics not promote resistance through gene conjugation.

Source: biologyexams4u