First helicopter crash on Mars... investigated

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In this newsletter

• Bacteria’s radiation survival skills uncovered

• AI could help make the first virtual human cell

• First helicopter crash on Mars…. investigated

• Quantum entanglement powers this engine

Bacteria’s radiation survival skills uncovered

It is rare for scientists to personify organisms they study especially when they are microscopic. But “Conan the Bacterium” is extraordinary and can endure radiation levels that would easily wipe out other organisms on Earth. This is why Deinococcus radiodurans has been dubbed Conan, after the legendary character. 

But researchers were not sure what really made Conan so resilient so a team at Northwestern University and the Uniformed Services University (USU) dug deeper to find out and came across a collection of simple metabolites that are key. 

The team studied MDP, a synthetic antioxidant inspired by Conan’s resilience and found that its components — manganese ions, phosphate and a small peptide — form a ternary complex. This complex is a powerful protectant from radiation damage and mops up the oxygen radicals before they can damage proteins in the bacterial cell. 

This discovery could lead to the design of new synthetic antioxidants that could also protect astronauts from intense cosmic radiation during deep-space missions. Another application would be preparing for radiation emergencies and producing radiation-inactivated vaccines.

The revelation was published in the PNAS paper. 

AI could help make the first virtual human cell

Forget writing your emails or stealing your job, a team of researchers from Stanford University believe that AI is advanced enough to create the first-ever virtual human cell.

This cell would have the capability to accurately represent and simulate how human biomolecules, cells, and ultimately, tissues and organs behave. Such a synthetic cell model would allow a deeper understanding of the complex interplay of chemical, electrical, mechanical, and other forces and processes that make healthy human cells work. It would also reveal the root causes of diseases that lead to cell dysfunction or death.

Research would be able to experiment on such a cell in silico - on a computer rather than actual cells and and speed up the search for new therapies, pharmaceuticals, and even cures for diseases. 

The technology could help microbiologists predict the effects of novel viruses on host organisms or allow physicians to test treatments on "digital twins" of their patients, leading to cost-effective and safe personalized medicine. 

The researchers shared their blueprint on how to do so in this Cell paper.    

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First helicopter crash on Mars…. investigated

Nearly a year has passed since the Ingenuity helicopter broke a blade, ending the airborne ventures of the first powered, controlled aircraft to take flight on another planet. It arrived on the Red Planet as a technology demonstrator but ultimately operated for nearly three years, performing 72 flights. 

In January this year, the helicopter climbed to 40 feet (12 meters) above the Martian surface but after 32 seconds, the chopper was back on the ground and communications stopped.

After analyzing photographs taken during the ill-fated flight, a NASA team has now confirmed that in-flight navigation errors caused high horizontal velocities at touchdown. A crash landing that likely made Ingenuity pitch and roll on a sandy Martian slope. It snapped the rotor blades, with one blade completely separating from the helicopter.

Ingenuity can no longer fly, but it still delivers weather and avionics data to the Perseverance rover on a weekly basis. NASA engineers are using Ingenuity’s relatively cheap cost and surprising durability as a blueprint to build a future Mars helicopter that could be 20 times heavier than Ingenuity and fly up to two miles (3 km) in a day, about 4.6 times farther than Ingenuity’s longest flight.

NASA provided the details in this report.  

Quantum entanglement powers this engine

A team of scientists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST),  the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau , and the University of Stuttgart, have designed an engine that can run without using petrol or diesel but quantum entanglement. 

In regular engines, a piston moves after fuel is burnt and air expands. In the quantum engine, movement comes from changing how particles behave. Some particles belong to a group called bosons, others to a group called fermions. 

At very low temperatures, bosons settle into states of lower energy than fermions do. This difference in energy is key to a working engine as bosons can be converted into fermions and back to get work done. 

More than powering cars or airplanes, the research mainly helps us think differently about how to use energy and instead of burning resources tapping their atomic states. 

The research findings were published in the journal Nature. 

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Until next time,
Adya