✔️ The A&P Professor Science & Education Updates - Issue #94

The dance of two-steps-forward one-step-back continues.

Several treatments near FDA approval while another, for myotubular myopathy, has claimed the lives of four young children in a clinical trial and the brain degeneration of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD, of Lorenzo’s Oil fame), continues in three of four boys given gene therapy in 2009. Earlier intervention and/or a different delivery system may be necessary; timing and dose are critical.

Still, gene therapy efforts are alive and well. On October 21, 2021, the FDA, NIH, 10 pharmaceutical companies and 5 non-profits announced joining forces “to accelerate development of gene therapies for the 30 million Americans who suffer from a rare disease.”

Experts say a worrisome combination of mutations could make the variant more transmissible and allow it to evade immune protection.

The theory goes that some type of animal, potentially rodents, was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus sometime in mid-2020.

Vaccine-makers are already adapting vaccines to fight the omicron coronavirus variant, but it will probably already have swept the world by the time these arrive

“Dealing with naive people is never the same as even if you have some memory. It’s never like square one,” one expert said.

The idea of what constitutes consciousness is split between the functional and the experiential

Human geneticists have mostly abandoned the word “race” when describing populations in their papers, according to a new study of research published in a leading genetics journal. That’s in line with the current scientific understanding that race is a social construct, and a welcome departure from research that in the past has often conflated genetic variation and racial categories, says Vence Bonham, a social scientist at the National Human Genome Research Institute who led the study.

But alternative terms that have gained popularity, such as “ancestry” and “ethnicity,” can have ambiguous meanings or aren’t defined by genetics, suggesting researchers are still struggling to find the words to accurately describe groups delineated by their DNA, according to the study.

The most prevalent challenges identified by students were those related to the loss of access to cadaver-based learning, including difficulty identifying and visualizing structures in three dimensions, and the loss of context and sensorial cues. Flexibility in taking examinations and learning the material at their own pace were recognized as positive outcomes of the ERT transition.

Collection of resources to help faculty move from on-campus to remote teaching. Book, podcasts, seminars, and more!