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Scientists make DNA breakthrough which could identify why some people are more affected by Covid-19
Scientists from the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University have developed a method that allows them to see, with far greater accuracy, how DNA forms large scale structures within a cell nucleus.
This breakthrough will improve understanding of how differences in DNA sequences can lead to increased risks of developing many different diseases.
The method, which is around 1000 times more accurate than existing techniques, enables scientists to measure the contacts between different pieces of DNA, which are a million base pairs apart to the nearest base pair. This is the equivalent of being able to measure contacts in the DNA fibre that are 1km apart to the nearest millimetre.
Scientists at the University of Oxford, U.K., use a precise new surface plasmon resonance method to measure very low affinities of T cell receptor binding to self and non-self peptides presented on MHC to show that TCRs are not prefect in their ability to distinguish between healthy and infected cells, as was earlier believed. These new results open new possibilities for treating autoimmune diseases and cancer.
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When it comes to distinguishing a healthy cell from an infected one that needs to be destroyed, the immune system s killer T cells sometimes make mistakes.
This discovery, described today in
eLife, upends a long-held belief among scientists that T cells were nearly perfect at discriminating friend from foe. The results may point to new ways to treat autoimmune diseases that cause the immune system to attack the body, or lead to improvements in cutting-edge cancer treatments.
It is widely believed that T cells can discriminate perfectly between infected cells and healthy ones based on how tightly they are able to bind to molecules called antigens on the surface of each. They bind tightly to antigens derived from viruses or bacteria, but less tightly to our own antigens on normal cells. But recent studies by scientists looking at autoimmune diseases suggest that T cells can attack otherwise normal cells if they express unusually large numbers of our own antigens, even tho
Oxford and Cambridge Universities have been blasted for spending £10,000 on controversial unconscious and implicit biased training.
The elite institutions spent the eye-watering total teaching staff to understand how our biases influence the decisions we make , new figures show.
Oxford has spent £1,000 per year on implicit bias training since it was first introduced in August 2015.
But Cambridge spent a staggering £5,000 setting up its course for staff between 2016 and 2017, a Freedom of Information request revealed.
The Free Speech Union slammed the expensive ideological snake oil spoon fed by people who would have struggled to get into Cambridge themselves .
It comes after a landmark review into racial inequality urged for unconscious bias training to be scrapped for workers and replaced with more effective practices.