By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

A painkiller as powerful as morphine, but without most of the side-effects, has been found in the deadly venom of the black mamba, say French scientists.

The predator, which uses neurotoxins to paralyse and kill small animals, is one of the fastest and most dangerous snakes in Africa.

However, tests on mice, reported in the journal Nature, showed its venom also contained a potent painkiller.

They admit to being completely baffled about why the mamba would produce it.

The researchers looked at venom from 50 species before they found the black mamba’s pain-killing proteins - called mambalgins.

Continue reading the main story

Deadly venom

Venomous species inflict poisonous wounds by stinging, scratching or biting their victims and injecting the toxin.

Some snakes are venomous creatures which loom large in the public consciousness, but nature also throws up some surprising species with toxic bites

Dr Eric Lingueglia, from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology near Nice, told the BBC: “When it was tested in mice, the analgesia was as strong as morphine, but you don’t have most of the side-effects.”

Morphine acts on the opioid pathway in the brain. It can cut pain, but it is also addictive and causes headaches, difficulty thinking, vomiting and muscle twitching. The researchers say mambalgins tackle pain through a completely different route, which should produce few side-effects.

He said the way pain worked was very similar in mice and people, so he hoped to develop painkillers that could be used in the clinic. Tests on human cells in the laboratory have also showed the mambalgins have similar chemical effects in people.

But he added: “It is the very first stage, of course, and it is difficult to tell if it will be a painkiller in humans or not. A lot more work still needs to be done in animals.”

Mamba magic

Dr Nicholas Casewell, an expert in snake venom at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, has recently highlighted the potential of venom as a drug source.

Commenting on this study he said: “It’s very exciting, it’s a really great example of drugs from venom, we’re talking about an entirely new class of analgesics.”

Dr Lingueglia said it was “really surprising” that black mamba venom would contain such a powerful painkiller.

Dr Casewell agreed that it was “really, really odd”. He suggested the analgesic effect may work in combination “with other toxins that prevent the prey from getting away” or may just affect different animals, such as birds, differently to mice.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Dr Roger Knaggs said: “We are witnessing the discovery of a novel mechanism of action which is not a feature of any existing painkillers.”

He cautioned that the mambalgins worked by injections into the spine so would need “significant development” before they could be used in people.

Scientists learn camouflage techniques from cuttlefish

Engineers at the University of Bristol in the UK have created soft materials that mimic the cuttlefish’s colour-changing skin, leading to the design of “smart clothing,” which would take camouflage to a new level.

What allows the cuttlefish to blend into nearly any background – whether it is by turning a light tan when swimming along the sandy seafloor or displaying crude black and white squares on its skin when placed in a tank with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern – are millions of specialised cells packed under its skin called chromatophores. These contain miniature sacs full of black, brown, yellow or other coloured pigment.

As the cuttlefish’s brain instructs the skin to change colour, muscles surrounding the sacs quickly contract, stretching the sacs and letting the pigment inside extend across a larger surface area, thus changing the colour and pattern of the skin. Cuttlefish are able to transform in this way at lightning speed to evade predators, sneak up on prey or attract mates.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680557/cuttlefish-clothing-could-create-cutting-edge-camouflage

Click here for more

ucsdhealthsciences:

A coral reef infested with cyanobacteria (dark). Photo courtesy of Jennifer Smith.
           
Seaweed may be a drug out of place

In the pristine waters of Pu’uhonua o H’onauau National Historical Park off the Kona coast of Hawaii, a kind of seaweed consisting of blue-green cyanobacteria is considered a pest and bane to indigenous corals, which are smothered and killed by the rubbery, bulbous bacterial colonies.           

But almost nothing nasty in nature is without its upside, a fact underscored again in findings by researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, who found that the cyanobacterium – Leptolyngbya crossbyana – produces chemical compounds that may provide the basis for new anti-inflammatory medicines and anti-bacterial treatments.             

Writing in the journal Chemistry & Biology, Hyukjae Choi, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of William Gerwick and colleagues report that L. crossbyana secretes natural products known as honaucins, chemical compounds that control how and where the tiny algae grows and spreads.           

If researchers can translate that natural talent into therapeutic drugs or treatments, they might be able to prevent at least some types of bacterial infections in humans or treat inflammation-related conditions like acne and arthritis.              

“I think this finding is a nice illustration of how we need to look more deeply in our environment because even nuisance pests, as it turns out, are not just pests,” said Gerwick. “It’s a long road to go from this early-stage discovery to application in the clinic but it’s the only road if we want new and more efficacious medicines.”           

You can read the entire UC San Diego news release here.

Again brought to my attention via Patrick Burgoyne. With over 1.1 million people in the world who don’t have access to clean drinking water, water-borne pathogens are a huge problem for the environment and for human health. Fortunately a clever little design has come to the rescue in the form of the Lifestraw The cigar-sized plastic tool is both a feat of engineering and an inexpensive way to deliver potable water to those who need it.Lifestraw delivers the most basic needs and purifies water from potential pathogens like typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea, becoming one of the icons of humanitarian product design- by the time the water hits your lips, it’s completely safe and potable. The Lifestraw is one of the highlights of the Cooper Hewitt’s Design for the Other 90% exhibition, which highlights products, architecture, and technology that benefits under-privileged demographics across the globe.

joshbyard:

Japanese Researchers Develop Artificial Synapse

Japanese researchers developed a tiny device that has a gap bridged by a copper filament under a voltage pulse stimulation. This results in a change in conductance which is time-dependant — a change in strength that’s nearly identical to the one found in biological synaptic systems. The inorganic synapses could thus be controlled by changes in interval, amplitude, and width of an input voltage pulse stimulation.

Why this is exciting is that the device is essentially mimicking the major features of human cognition, what the researchers refer to as the “emulation of synaptic plasticity”, including what goes on in short-term and long-term memory. Not only that, it responds to the presence of air and temperature changes, which indicates that it has the potential to perceive the environment much like the human brain.

The researchers are hoping that their newfound insight could help in the development of artificial neural networks, but it’s clear that their system, which operates at a microscopic level, could also be used to treat the human brain. The day may be coming when failing synaptic systems could be patched with a device similar to this one, in which biological function is offloaded to a synthetic one.

 (Synthetic synapse could take us one step closer to an artificial brain)

(via io9 ht Futurist-Foresight ht thenewenlightenmentage)