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We tend to think that health risks are proportional to the number of cigarettes smoked. Bad calculation, for addictologists. © Illustrative photo: Ouest-France archives
By Sylvain DELAGE West-France
Astronomy enthusiasts will be able to help advance science. Telescope maker Unistellar and the nonprofit SETI Science Institute have launched a campaign to identify exoplanets similar to Jupiter and offer everyone to come and help them, reports the media Space Monday, October 3, 2022.
All “citizen” astronomers with a telescope can participate. The idea is to give NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) a boost. This satellite identifies celestial objects via the transit method: if the light coming from a star suddenly dims, it means that a foreign body has just passed in front of it.
An experience already made in the past
It should then be checked whether it is a exoplanet or another element, such as another low mass star for example. For this, long observations and the analysis of an impressive amount of data are necessary. This is extensive work but it is bearing fruit: nearly 4,000 exoplanets have already been identified using this method, notes Slate .
A call had already been made to amateur astronomers to identify the exoplanets of the TOI 1812 system. The experiment is therefore repeated, Unistellar and the SETI institute being convinced by the success encountered in the past. “Citizen astronomers around the world are uniting to help humanity discover new planets trillions of miles awaysummarized the director of space sciences of Unistellar. It’s just amazing. »
It’s a disease “weird”, “unbelievable”, but also “devastating”including patients with “suffering terribly”. Frenchman Emmanuel Mignot devoted his career to the study of narcolepsyuntil the cause is found and to shed some light on one of the great mysteries of biology: sleep.
Drugs under development
His discovery, at the heart of the meanders of our brain, has earned him the award today with a major American prize, the Breakthrough Prize, alongside the Japanese Masashi Yanagisawa, who came to similar conclusions at the same time.
Thanks to this research, drugs that promise to revolutionize the treatment of narcolepsy and other sleep disorders are now being developed.
Narcoleptics – about one in 2,000 people – can’t help but suddenly fall asleep in the middle of the day. Some are also affected by sudden temporary paralysis (cataplexy).
“I’m quite proud, because what I discovered is making a huge difference for my patients. It’s the best reward you can get.” confides to AFP this professor at Stanford University, in California, where narcoleptics from all over the world come to consult him.
30 years ago, a young graduate in medicine and science, Emmanuel Mignot decided to go to the United States during his military service, in order to study the functioning of a drug then used against narcolepsy.
At the time, this disease was “virtually unknown” et “no one studied it”, he recalls. But he is “became completely fascinated”.
“I said to myself, this disease is incredible, people fall asleep all the time, we have no idea why, and if we could find the cause of it, we could understand something new about sleep” , explains the 63-year-old researcher.
Missing key
Stanford then has narcoleptic dogs, and he sets out to find the gene producing the disease in them.
A titanic undertaking, because genome sequencing techniques were primitive at the time. “Everyone told me I was crazy” remembers Mr. Mignot, who now lives with a narcoleptic dog, Watson, whom he adopted. “I thought it was going to take a few years, and it took 10 years. »
Finally, in 1999, the finding: a receptor located on the brain cells of narcoleptic dogs is abnormal.
This receptor is like a lock, which only reacts in the presence of the right key: a molecule, discovered at the same time by the Japanese Masashi Yanagisawa, who named it orexin (also sometimes called hypocretin). It is a neurotransmitter, produced in the hypothalamus, at the base of the brain, by a very small population of neurons.
Immediately, Emmanuel Mignot carried out the first tests in humans. And the results are breathtaking: orexin levels in the brains of narcoleptic patients are zero.
However, in normal times, this molecule is produced in large quantities throughout the day, especially in the evening, making it possible to fight against accumulated fatigue.
The path of action of the disease is therefore similar: in dogs, the lock is broken, but in humans, the key is missing. Which also explains why the disease can be inherited in dogs, not humans.
“You don’t make a discovery like that twice in your life. One finds the cause of a disease, marvels the Frenchman. “The advantage is that the key, we can redo it. »
“miraculous” treatment
For the moment, most patients are treated with a combination of anesthetics to make them sleep soundly at night, and amphetamines to wake them up during the day.
But by giving an orexin-mimicking drug in trials, the results are “truly miraculous”, says Mr. Mignot. Patients then have “different eyes” they are “just awake, calm”, a real « transformation. »
The challenge today remains to develop the formulation delivering the right dose at the right time. Several companies, including the Japanese Takeda, are working on the subject, and drugs could be authorized in the coming years.
Applications for other diseases are also possible: for example for depressed patients having difficulty getting up, or in a coma and difficult to wake up, says the researcher.
Not all questions are answered. Emmanuel Mignot is now trying to prove that narcolepsy is triggered by the flu virus.
According to him, the immune system, responsible for defending us against infections, can begin to confuse the neurons producing orexin with certain flu viruses, and end up attacking them. However, once dead, these neurons cannot renew themselves, and patients will no longer be able to produce orexin for their lifetime.
Wider, “I became interested in how the immune system works in the brain”he says, a domain “exploding”.
As for the mystery of sleep, even if he has elucidated one of its major mechanisms, the researcher still admits to being fascinated: “What does sleep do that is so important that we need to do it every day? »he asks himself. “It’s true that we still don’t understand. »
Two and a half years later the start of the Covid-19 pandemicscientists from Washington State University published, Wednesday, September 21, 2022, the results of their research on a virus of the same familydiscovered on bats in Russia, which would be able to infect humans and escapes antibodies and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.
Called Khosta-2, it belongs to the category of « sarbecovirus » – the same sub-category of coronavirus as Covid-19, with which it presents “disturbing features”according to this study published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
« Our research demonstrates once again that sarbecoviruses circulating in wildlife outside of Asia – even in places like western Russia where the Khosta-2 virus was discovered – also pose a health threat. worldwide and the ongoing vaccination campaigns against SARS-CoV-2 said Michael Letko, virologist and study author.
According to him, this discovery highlights the need to develop new vaccines that do not only target known variants of Covid-19, such as Omicron, but which protect against all sarbecoviruses.
Most sarbecoviruses are unable to infect humans
Of the hundreds of sarbecoviruses discovered in recent years, most have been found in Asian bats and are not capable of infecting human cells.
The Khosta-1 and Khosta-2 viruses were discovered near Russia’s Sochi National Park in 2020, and initially appeared not to pose a threat to humans, according to the study authors.
“Genetically, these strange Russian viruses looked like some others that had been discovered elsewhere in the world, but because they didn’t look like SARS-CoV-2, nobody thought there was really anything to worry about”explained Michael Letko. « But when we looked at them more closely, we were really surprised to find that they could infect human cells. It changes our understanding of these viruses a bit, where they come from and which regions are affected. he added.
Good news nonetheless. If Khosta-2 did manage to infect humans, it does not appear to have any genes that could cause serious disease in humans. A data which could however evolve if the virus were to circulate on a large scale and mix with SARS-CoV-2 genes.
It is in a tense context between Russia and the United States, against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, that the Soyuz rocket will take off this Wednesday, September 21 in the direction of Station spatiale internationale (ISS). On board, two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will take off aboard a Soyuz MS-22 from Kazakhstan at 3:54 p.m. (French time). The trip is expected to take three hours before Soyuz docks with the ISS. They will remain on board the station for six months.
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Astronaut Frank Rubio is set to launch on his first mission to the @Space_Station aboard a Soyuz rocket on Wed, Sept. 21 with crew members Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. Live coverage begins at 9am ET (13:00 UTC), liftoff at 9:54am ET (13:54 UTC): https://t.co/PHGCtPqoFF pic.twitter.com/uh6lxdW8JN
— NASA (@NASA) September 17, 2022
Conduct of the mission
Their colleagues already on board the ISS, including three Russians and three Americans, will be there to welcome them. This is the second flight for Sergey Prokopyev and the first for Frank Rubio and Dmitri Petelin.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts have already rubbed shoulders in space. To believe that the conflict had no impact in space.
On son site, NASA says that a week after the astronauts arrive, the three cosmonauts who have been living in space since March 18 will board their Soyuz MS-21 team ship and return to Earth. The trio spent their day Tuesday packing up cargo and personal gear for storage inside Soyuz and conditioning their bodies for return to Earth’s gravity.
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A Soyuz rocket will launch three new crewmates to the station at 9:54am ET on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Exp 67 crew studies biology, botany, physics, and robotics. https://t.co/EZ3nCpSnOP
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) September 20, 2022
ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will take over as station commander from Artemyev ahead of her departure at the traditional change of command ceremony next week. The leadership change will be seen live on NASA TV, the agency’s app, and its website on September 28.
Search operations
Search operations aboard the station are still ongoing. Astronauts conduct the experiments themselves, supported by scientists who also conduct studies remotely, from ground control centers.
Tuesday’s space science program saw astronauts busy all day exploring biology, botany, physics and robotics.
Another flight to the ISS is scheduled for October 3, as part of a joint mission between NASA and Roscosmos, this time aboard a Space X Crew Dragon capsule. A Russian cosmonaut, two American astronauts and a Japanese will take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Muco d’Émeraude association, Saint-Meloir-des-Ondes (Ille-et-Vilaine), continues the fight against cystic fibrosis. As a reminder, it is a hereditary genetic disease characterized by the thickening of the secretions of several organs, mainly the lungs and the pancreas, which alters their functioning.
Last spring, after being sown, pumpkins were planted in land provided by a Melorian. René-Claude Turcas, the president of Muco d’Émeraude announces that a very good harvest is in sight. These pumpkins and pumpkins will, as in past years, be sold the weekend before Halloween for the benefit of Vaincre la mucoviscidose”.
A garage sale on Sunday
Before this sale, Muco d’Émeraude is present in the gallery of the Madeleine shopping center until Sunday, September 18. That day, the association organizes a big garage sale in the parking lot of the shopping center. Traders join them and offer €500 worth of purchase vouchers to be won in the raffle planned for the benefit of research against cystic fibrosis.
The Virades of Hope at the end of September
Another meeting, already planned, on September 25 for the Virades de l’espoir, the great national day for the fight against cystic fibrosis. It will be held in the car park of the Vallée Verte complex in Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes.
On this occasion, Muco d’Émeraude launches a challenge to the children. They are asked to draw a picture of what cystic fibrosis means to them. They will be able to bring it on September 25 during the Virades in the Green Valley. In exchange, they will receive a surprise. The drawings will then be pasted on a large fresco which will be unrolled as it progresses. This fresco will represent lungs, the Virades being made with the aim of giving breath for those who do not have one”,
explains René-Claude Turcas.
