Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light

http://www.livescience.com/health/090722-body-glow.html



Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light
By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience
posted: 22 July 2009 09:10 am ET
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.
The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.
Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight — the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body's miniscule light production.

Since this faint light is linked with the body's metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.
"If you can see the glimmer from the body's surface, you could see the whole body condition," said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.
The scientists detailed their findings online July 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Blue Dye May Reduce Spine Injuries

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/28/spinal.injury.blue.dye/index.html


(CNN) -- The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research.


Rats injected with BBG not only regained their mobility but temporarily turned blue.


Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp.

The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue.

The results of the study, published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," build on research conducted by the same center five years ago.

In August 2004, scientists revealed how Adenosine triphosphate, which is known as ATP and described as the "energy currency of life," surges to the spinal cord soon after injury occurs.

Researchers found that the sudden influx of ATP killed off healthy cells, making the initial injury far worse. But when they injected oxidized ATP into the injury, it was found to block the effect of ATP, allowing the injured rats to recover and walk again.

"While we achieved great results when oxidized ATP was injected directly into the spinal cord, this method would not be practical for use with spinal cord-injured patients," said lead researcher Maiken Nedergaard, professor of Neurosurgery and director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

"First, no one wants to put a needle into a spinal cord that has just been severely injured, so we knew we needed to find another way to quickly deliver an agent that would stop ATP from killing healthy motor neurons. Second, the compound we initially used, oxidized ATP, cannot be injected into the bloodstream because of its dangerous side effects."

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Back in 2004, Nedergaard's team discovered that the spinal cord was rich in a molecule called P2X7, which is also known as "the death receptor" for its ability to allow ATP to latch onto motor neurons and send the signals which eventually kill them.

Nedergaard knew that BBG could thwart the function of P2X7, and its similarity to a blue food dye approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1982 gave her the confidence to test it intravenously.

It worked. The rats given BBG immediately after their injury could walk again with a limp. Those that didn't receive a dose never regained their mobility.

Nedergaard told CNN that there is currently no standard treatment for patients with spinal injury when they reach the hospital emergency room.

"Right now we only treat 15 percent of the patients we receive with steroids and many hospitals question if that even works for that 15 percent; it's a very moderate benefit to only a subset of patients. So right now 85 percent of patients are untreated," she said.

Nedergaard said the research team isn't claiming that BBG can cure spinal injuries, instead that it offers a potential improvement in patients' condition.

"Even a moderate improvement in functional performance of the patient is a big, big event for these patients," she said. "They can control their bladder. If they can just take small steps instead of sitting in a wheelchair all the time, it's a tremendous benefit for these patients," she added.

The dose must be administered immediately after the injury, before additional tissue dies as a result of the initial injury.

Researchers are currently pulling together an application to be lodged with the FDA to stage the first clinical trials of BBG on human patients.

"Our hope is that this work will lead to a practical, safe agent that can be given to patients shortly after injury, for the purpose of decreasing the secondary damage that we have to otherwise expect," said Steven Goldman, Chair of the University of Rochester Department of Neurology.

Scientists Reprogram Clearly Defined Adult Cells Into Pluripotent Stem Cells -- Directly And Without Viruses

Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/
090707131824.htm
Scientists Reprogram Clearly Defined Adult Cells Into Pluripotent Stem Cells -- Directly And Without Viruses


These are unipotent germline stem cells (fluorescent green) in the sperm duct of a mouse testis. (Credit: Image: MPI Münster / Kinarm Ko)
ScienceDaily (July 8, 2009) — Kinarm Ko and Hans Schöler's team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster have succeeded for the first time in culturing a clearly defined cell type from the testis of adult mice and converting these cells into pluripotent stem cells without introduced genes, viruses or reprogramming proteins. These stem cells have the capacity to generate all types of body tissue. The culture conditions alone were the crucial factor behind the success of the reprogramming process.

The testis is a sensitive organ and an astonishing one at that. Even at the age of 70, 80 or 85, men have cells that constantly produce new sperm. Therefore, they can conceive embryos and become fathers at almost any age - assuming they can find a sufficiently young female partner. Based on this, researchers have long assumed that cells from the testis have a similar potential as in embryonic stem cells: that is, a pluripotency that enables them to form over 200 of the body's cell types.

In fact, a number of researchers have recently stumbled on the multiple talents in the male gonads of humans and mice. It all began with the work of Takashi Shinohara's team in 2004. The Japanese scientists discovered that, like embryonic stem cells, certain cells in the testis of newborn mice are able to develop into different kinds of tissue. In 2006, scientists working with Gerd Hasenfuß and Wolfgang Engel in Göttigen reported that such adaptable cells can also be found in adult male mice. Additionally, Thomas Skutella and his colleagues at the University of Tübingen recently made headlines when they cultured comparable cells from human testis tissue.

A bewildering variety of cells

"At first glance, it would appear that it has long been established that pluripotent cells exist in the testis of adult humans and mice," says Schöler. "However, it is often unclear as to exactly which cells are being referred to in the literature and what these cells can actually do." (See *Background Information)

This is not only due to the fact that the testis contains a multitude of different cells. Scientists who dismantle tissue in the laboratory must carefully separate and analyse the cells to establish which cell type they have under the microscope. The question of potency is a controversial one among stem cell researchers, as binding benchmarks have yet to be defined. What some scientists would define as "pluripotent" is just about deemed "multi-potent", that is, as having a limited capacity for differentiation, by others.

Greater certainty can be provided by carrying out the relevant tests. These include, among other things, a test to establish whether, after injection into early embryos, the cells are able to contribute to the development of the new organism and gamete formation, and to pass on their genes to further generations. However, not every team carries out all of these tests and important questions are left unanswered, even in articles published in renowned journals.

Stable original cell line

With their work, Ko and his colleagues wanted to establish clarity from the outset. To this end, they started by culturing a precisely defined type of cell, so-called germline stem cells (GSCs), from the testis of adult mice. In their natural environment, these cells can only do one thing: constantly generate new sperm. Moreover, their own reproduction is an extremely rare occurrence. Only two or three of them will be found among the 10,000 cells in the testis tissue of a mouse. However, they can be isolated individually and reproduced as cell lines with stable characteristics. Under the usual cell culturing conditions, they retain their unipotency for weeks and years. Consequently, all they can do is reproduce or form sperm.

What nobody had guessed until now, however, was that a simple trick is enough to incite these cells to reprogramme. If the cells are distributed on new petri dishes, some of them revert to an embryonic state once they are given sufficient space and time. "Each time we filled around 8000 cells into the individual wells of the cell culture plates, some of the cells reprogrammed themselves after two weeks," reports Ko. And when the switch in these germline-derived pluripotent stem cells (gPS) has been reversed, they start to reproduce rapidly.

The researchers have proven that the "reignition" of the cells has actually taken place with the aid of numerous tests. Not only can the reprogrammed cells be used to generate heart, nerve or endothelial cells, as is the case with embryonic stem cells, the scientists can also use them to produce mice with mixed genotypes, known as chimeras, from the new gPs, and thus demonstrate that cells obtained from the testis can pass their genes on to the next generation.

Whether this process can also be applied to humans remains an open question. There is much to suggest, however, that gPS cells exceed all previously artificially reprogrammed cells in terms of the simplicity of their production and their safety.

Journal reference:

Ko et al. Induction of Pluripotency in Adult Unipotent Germline Stem Cells. Cell Stem Cell, 2009; 5 (1): 87 DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2009.05.025
Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (2009, July 8). Scientists Reprogram Clearly Defined Adult Cells Into Pluripotent Stem Cells -- Directly And Without Viruses. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 8, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/07/090707131824.htm