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Omega-3 supplements have been shown to reduce the risk of falls and frailty in older people.Credit: Brian Jackson/Alamy
Omega-3 and vitamin D supplements, taken over the course of years, might slow biological ageing, according to a new study. Results of a trial of people aged over 70 showed that a combination of the two supplements daily and 30 minutes of exercise three times a week over three years reduced biological ageing — ageing measured at a molecular level — by three to four months. The reduction sounds small, but can translate to important public-health benefits such as a reduction in the prevalence of some age-related health conditions, says clinician-scientist Heike Bischoff-Ferrari.
Reference: Nature Aging paper
Scientists have unveiled a ‘mini’ version of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology that can fit inside an adeno-associated virus (AAV), a vector often used to deliver gene therapy. The CRISPR machinery, particularly the 1,300 amino acid-strong Cas9 enzyme, is bulky, which can make it difficult to transport in the body. The scaled down version swaps Cas9 out for ‘NanoCas’, a DNA-snipping enzyme made of around 900 fewer amino acids. The team found that, packaged inside an AAV, the mini CRISPR successfully reached and edited genes in liver and heart tissue in mice, and skeletal muscle and heart tissue in macaque monkeys.
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
US science in chaos
The National Science Foundation, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, funds about 25% of basic US academic research.Credit: JHVEPhoto/Alamy
News
Around 10,000 research grants disbursed by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) are being re-reviewed in case they are in breach of controversial executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. Programme officers have been charged with examining grants from each others’ divisions to seek out content related to foreign assistance, climate science, domestic energy, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), according to documents seen by Nature. Keywords that can cause a grant to be flagged include “women”, “institutional” and “disability”, reports The Washington Post. Critics say that the move could be illegal because grant funds are appropriated by the US Congress, which also mandates the NSF to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science. Meanwhile, NSF employees tell Nature that they’re as confused as everyone else. “It’s really frightening and ridiculous,” says one.
News
The Trump administration’s throttling of foreign assistance has critically wounded many health programmes and clinical trials around the world, reports The New York Times. It describes how researchers and programme managers “broke down in tears as they described the rapid destruction of decades of work”. Efforts by the administration to exempt “lifesaving humanitarian assistance” from its funding freeze have fallen flat as programmes say they must wait for written confirmation of their status. “You could open the funding floodgates again tomorrow and you will still have children dying months from now because of this pause,” said one malaria scientist.
The New York Times | 8 min read
Opinion
Gretchen Goldman, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was one of scores of US government researchers who have contributed to the country’s progress — progress that could be undone by the Trump administration, she argues. “Many people in these jobs will watch their hard-won work get dismantled before their eyes. An unlucky few will be tasked with dismantling it themselves,” she writes. “But despair is not an option.” Scientific-integrity policies that protect federal scientists from political interference will be key to ensuring that science continues to serve the US public, she says.
Features & opinion
The further humanity goes into space, the more stuff we’ll need to take, which becomes both a practical and financial problem. One idea is not to ship things at all, and instead use microbes to make the materials missions need as they go, and to recycle waste. On Earth, microbes can synthesize medications, produce structural material from waste and provide crops with nutrients. But to use them in space, scientists have to work out how these species will behave in a totally new environment. “Doing microbiology in space is 100% nothing like what you’ve done in your lab,” says microbiologist Cheryl Nickerson. “It’s not even close.”
Romance and relationships are central to the human experience — but they can make getting funding harder than usual, say scientists in the field. “The federal agencies are often worried about the word ‘sex’,” says evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia. There can also be wry downsides to working in a field that almost everyone’s interested in. A coffee invite from a distinguished colleague prompted thoughts of a fruitful collaboration for Garcia, but “within two minutes, she took out her phone, turned it to face me and said, ‘Can you help me with my dating profile?’”
Infographic of the week
Source: Mura Technology
Later this year, operations will begin in a chemical plant that can, in theory, take any kind of plastic waste and break it down into chemicals that are similar to those extracted from crude oil. With further processing, these chemicals can be turned back into fresh plastic. If it works, the process could represent ‘circular manufacturing’, in which plastic is used and reprocessed over and over again — potentially curbing the world’s dependence on fossil resources to make virgin plastics. (Nature | 15 min read)
