Mars iron is ideal for building future bases

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 1 week (space.newscientist.com)

FUTURE colonizers of Mars needn't worry about lugging materials from Earth to build their bases - the most widely used building material on Earth, steel, could be manufactured on the Red Planet.

The rover Opportunity has found elemental iron - a key ingredient of steel - peppered across the Martian surface as a result of collisions with iron-rich meteorites. The dry conditions and lack of atmospheric oxygen mean that the stuff has not rusted, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio

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Environmental and genetic modifiers of the progression to fibrosis and cirrhosis in hemochromatosis

sea-maid submitted, created time 8 months 1 week (bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org)

Hemochromatosis is a disease related to a relatively common and easily identifiable genetic defect, but the extent of clinical expression is variable and to a large extent remains unexplained. But this review explores recent developments in knowledge of environmental and genetic modifiers of this process.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: cirrhosis environmental factors genes iron iron loading liver hemochromatosis Hereditary hemochromatosis

Planktos sea cooling project goes belly-up. A blessing (poorly) disguised?

Darkfrog submitted, created time 10 months 3 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

A company called Planktos had planned to reverse global warming. Their method: chuck a lot of iron in the ocean so that plankton blooms absorb CO2. They've run out of funding. Planktos blames a "disinformation campaign."

Frankly, I think the iron oxide was a dumb idea anyway. Just because we have natural plankton blooms occasionally doesn't mean that a huge artificial one wouldn't do more harm than good. Besides, the plankton would just release the carbon again once they died.

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: marine biology iron ecology global warming climate change global climate change politics plankton algal blooms

MIT scholars discover key blood protein

Hecate submitted, created time 1 year 2 months (www.eurekalert.org)

Ah, some blood-based news just weeks before Halloween. It seems that a team led by Dr. Jane-Jane Chen of MIT has uncovered a protein, nicknamed HRI for short, that regulates the body's iron recycling system. This may have consequences for people suffering from protoporphyria.

(You will have to click into the article for the full name. This is good news, but I don't want to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome for it.)

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Iron and Paraquat as Synergistic Environmental Risk Factors in Sporadic Parkinson's Disease Accelerate Age-Related Neurodegeneration

annatto submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.jneurosci.org)

"Extensive epidemiological data in humans and studies in animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD) suggest that sporadic forms of the disorder are not strictly genetic in nature but most likely because of combined environmental exposures over the period of the life-span coupled with increased genetic susceptibilities. Environmental paraquat and neonatal iron exposure have both been separately suggested as potential risk factors for sporadic forms of the disease

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Ferroxidase activity is required for the stability of cell surface ferroportin in cells expressing GPI-ceruloplasmin

daphne submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)

"In the absence of Cp Fpn is rapidly internalized and degraded. Depletion of extracellular Fe(II) by the yeast ferroxidase Fet3p or iron chelators can maintain cell surface Fpn in the absence of Cp. Iron remains bound to Fpn in the absence of multicopper oxidases. Fpn with bound iron is recognized by a ubiquitin ligase, which ubiquitinates Fpn on lysine 253. Mutation of lysine 253 to alanine prevents ubiquitination and maintains Fpn-iron on cell surface in the absence of ferroxidase activity

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Antibiotic-resistant bacteria fizzle in the face of gallium

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.sciam.com)

We may yet get to destroy our civilization by blowing ourselves up , getting hit by an asteroid, or drowning under all the crud we get from the All Buying Stuff Channel: Scientists have found a way to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria!

The trick is to given them the metal gallium, stealth-injected or inhaled by the patient, which they cannot distinguish from iron. The bacteria go about their business, thinking that they are well-nourished when in fact they are becoming as anemic as a dilettante vegan (You real vegans all know how much planning it takes)

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Trojan horse strategy defeats drug-resistant bacteria

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.eurekalert.org)

A new antimicrobial approach can kill bacteria in laboratory experiments and eliminate life-threatening infections in mice by interfering with a key bacterial nutrient, according to research led by a University of Washington scientist. The "Trojan horse" method tricks the bacteria into taking up the metal gallium instead of iron, which is essential for bacteria to grow and thrive.

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Iron does not impair zinc absorption in pregnancy

eudemon submitted, created time 1 year 11 months (www.sciam.com)

High-dose iron supplements do not impair zinc absorption in pregnant women, UK researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Iron supplements do not have an adverse effect on zinc nutrition provided the diet is adequate in zinc, Provided women are consuming a diet that contains sufficient zinc (in terms of both quantity and bioavailability), they can adapt to the increased physiological requirement for zinc and will not need zinc supplements

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