Category Archives: beauty and cosmetics

Nanofibrous fish skins for wrinkle-free skin (New Zealand’s biggest seafood company moves into skincare)

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I am utterly enchanted by this venture employing fish skins and nanotechnology-based processes for a new line of skin care products and, they hope, medical applications,


For those who like text (from a May 21, 2018 Sanford media advisory),

Nanofibre magic turns fish skins into wrinkle busting skin care

Sanford partners with kiwi nanotech experts to help develop a wrinkle-busting skincare product made from Hoki skins.

…

New Zealand’s biggest and oldest seafood company is moving into the future of skincare and medicine by becoming supporting partner to West Auckland nanofibre producer Revolution Fibres, which is launching a potentially game-changing nanotech face mask.

The actiVLayr face masks use collagen extracted from fish skins as a base ingredient which is then combined with elements such as fruit extracts and hyaluronic acid to make a 100 percent natural and sustainably sourced product.

They have achieved stunning results in third party tests which show that the nanofiber masks can reduce wrinkles by up to 31.5%.*

Revolution Fibres CEO Iain Hosie says it is no exaggeration to say the masks could be revolutionary.

“The wayactiVLayr is produced, and the unique application method of placing it onto wet skin like a mask, means ingredients are absorbed quickly and efficiently into the skin to maximise the repair and protection of the skin.”

Sanford is delighted to support the work that Revolution Fibres is doing by supplying hoki fish skins. Hoki is a sustainably caught fish and its skin has some unique properties.

…

Sanford’s General Manager of Innovation, Andrew Stanley, says these properties make it ideal for the actiVLayr technology. “Hoki skins are rich in collagen, which is an essential part of our bodies. But their marine collagen is unique – it has a very low melt point, so when placed on the skin, it can dissolve completely and be absorbed in a way that collagen f rom other animals cannot.”

Sanford’s Chief Customer Officer, Andre Gargiulo, says working with the team at Revolution Fibres is a natural fit, because both company’s think about innovation and sustainability in the same way.

“We hope actiVLayr gets the global attention it deserves, and we’re delighted that our sustainably caught Hoki is part of this fantastic New Zealand product. It’s exactly what we’re all about at Sanford – making the most of the precious resources from the sea, working in a sustainable way and getting the most value out of the goodness we harvest from nature.”

Sanford’s Business Development Manager Adrian Grey says the focus on sustainability and value creation are so important for the seafood company.

“Previously we have been making use of these hoki skins, which is great, but they were being used only for fish meal or pet food products. Being able to supply and support a high tech company that is going to earn increased export revenue for New Zealand is just fantastic. And the product created is completely natural, harvested from a globally certified sustainable fishery.”

Sanford provides the hoki skins and then turns these skins into pure collagen using the science and skills of the team at Plant and Food in Nelson [New Zealand for those of us who associate Nelson with British Columbia]. Revolution Fibres transforms the Sanford product into nanofibre using a technique called electrospinning of which Revolution Fibres are the New Zealand pioneers.

During the electrospinning process natural ingredients known as “bioactives” (such as kiwifruit and grapes) and hyaluronic acid (an ingredient to help the skin retain moisture) are bonded to the nanofibres to create sheets of actiVLayr. When it is exposed to wet skin the nanofibres dissolve rapidly and release the bioactives deep into the skin.

The product is being launched at the China Beauty Fair in Shanghai on May 22 [2018] and will go on sale in China this month followed by Hong Kong and New Zealand later in the year.   Revolution Fibres CEO Iain Hosie says there is big demand for unique delivery systems of natural skin and beauty products such as actiVLayr in Asia, which was the key reason to launch the product in China. But his view of the future is even bigger.

“There are endless uses for actiVLayr and the one we’re most proud of is in the medical area with the ability for drug compounds or medicines to be added to the actiVLayr formula. It will enable a controlled dose to be delivered to a patient with skin lesions, burns or acne.”

Revolution Fibres is presenting at Techweek NZ as part of The Fourth Revolution event on May 25 [2018] in Christchurch which introduces high tech engineers who are building a better place.

*Testing conducted by Easy Care using VISIA Complexion Analysis

The media advisory also includes some ‘fascinating ‘facts’,

1kg of hoki skin produces 400 square meters of nanofibre material

Nanofibres are 1/500th the width of a human hair

Revolution Fibres is the only nanofibre producer in the world to meet aerospace industry standards with its AS9100d quality assurance certification

The marine collagen found in hoki skins is unique because of its relatively low melt point, meaning it can dissolve at a lower temperature which makes it perfect for human use

Revolution Fibres is based in West Auckland and employs 12 people, of which 4 have P hDs in science related to nanotechnology. There are also a number of employees with strong engineering backgrounds to complement the company’s Research & Development expertise

Sanford is New Zealand’s oldest and biggest seafood company. It was founded by Albert Sanford in Auckland in 1904

New Zealand’s hoki fishery is certified as sustainable by the London-based Marine Stewardship Council, which audits fisheries all over the world

You can find Sanford here and Revolution Fibres here.

For some perspective on the business side of things, there’s a May 21, 2018 article by Nikki Mandow for newsroom.co.nz,

…

Revolution Fibres first started talking about the possibility of a collagen nanofibre made from hoki almost a decade ago, as part of a project with Plant & Food’s Seafood Research Centre in Nelson, Hosie [Revolution Fibres CEO Iain Hosie] said, and the company got serious about making a product in 2013.

Previously, the hoki waste skins were used for fish meal and pet food, said Sanford business development manager Adrian Grey.

“Being able to supply and support a high tech company that is going to earn increased export revenue for New Zealand is just fantastic.”

Revolution Fibres also manufactures nanofibres for a number of other uses. These include anti-dust mite pillow coverings, anti-pollution protective face masks, filters for pumps for HRV’s home ventilation systems, and reinforcing material for carbon fibre for fishing rods. The latter product is made from recycled fishing nets collected from South America.

…

He [Revolution Fibres CEO Iain Hosie] said the company could be profitable, but instead has chosen to continue to invest heavily in research and development.

About 75 percent of revenue comes from selling proprietary products, but increasingly Hosie said the company is working on “co-innovation” projects, where Revolution Fibres manufactures bespoke materials for outside companies.

Revolution Fibres completed its first external funding round last year, raising $1.5 million from the US, and it has just completed another round worth approximately $1million. Hosie, one of the founders, still holds around 20 percent of the company.

He said he hopes to keep the intellectual property in New Zealand, although manufacturing of some products is likely to move closer to their markets – China and the US potentially. However, he said actiVLayr manufacture will remain in New Zealand, because that’s where the raw hoki comes from.

I wonder if we’ll see this product in Canada.

One other thing,  I was curious about this ” … the nanofiber masks can reduce wrinkles by up to 31.5%”  and Visia Complexion Analysis, which is a product from Canfield Scientific, a company specializing in imaging.  Here’s some of what Visia can do (from the Visia product page),

Percentile Scores

Percentile Scores

VISIA’s patented comparison to norms analysis uses the world’s largest skin feature database to grade your patient’s skin relative to others of the same age and skin type. Measure spots, wrinkles, texture, pores, UV spots, brown spots, red areas, and porphyrins.

Meaningful Comparisons

Meaningful Comparisons

Compare results side by side for any combination of views, features or time points, including graphs and numerical data. Zoom and pan images in tandem for clear and easy comparisons.

And, there’s my personal favourite (although it has nothing to do with the topic of this posting0,

Eyelash Analysis

Eyelash Analysis

Evaluates the results of lash improvement treatments with numerical assessments and graphic visualizations.

For anyone who wondered about why the press release has both ‘nanofibre’ and ‘nanofiber’, It’s the difference between US and UK spelling. Perhaps the complexion analysis information came from a US company or one that uses US spellings.

L’Oréal introduces new wearable technology (UV sensor) as nail art?

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Downloaded from https://inhabitat.com/tiny-yves-behar-designed-wearable-warns-you-when-youve-had-too-much-sun/uv-sense-by-loreal-and-yves-behar-2

(I should have published this a while ago but I think the content holds up even if it is a bit dated.) What you see on the model’s thumbnail (in the image above) is L’Oréal’s latest wearable tech as Lucy Wang notes in her January 8, 2018 preview article for inhabitat. (Note: The article is posted in a slide show, which offers quite a bit of detail (some of it technical) including this (Note: Links have been removed),

A tiny piece of innovative tech wants to help you stay away from sun-induced skin cancer. Global beauty leader L’Oréal teamed up with prolific designer Yves Behar of fuseproject to create UV Sense, the first battery-free wearable electronic UV sensor. Soon to be unveiled at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show [CES] kicking off tomorrow [January 9, 2018], this innovative technology collects and shares real-time data on individual UV exposure within a wearable so small and thin it fits on a fingernail.

Christina Bonnington in a January 28, 2018 article for Fast Company offers less technical detail while offering many other useful tidbits (Note: Links have been removed),

… in 2016, beauty brand L’Oreal entered the space with another solution: a stretchable UV-sensing skin patch developed by the company’s technology incubator. The My UV Patch was an experiment in giving beauty consumers access to their sun-exposure data. A heart-shaped design on the patch changed colors depending on your sun exposure, which could then be analyzed via photograph in its accompanying app. L’Oreal distributed more than 1 million of the patches to consumers for free and was surprised by the level of engagement and effectiveness of the project: 34 percent of users reported wearing sunscreen more often, and 37 percent tried to stay in the shade more frequently.

Now, L’Oreal has a new wearable device for people like me—people concerned with their long-term sun-exposure risks, people at risk for melanoma, and people who want to know if they should be wearing more sunscreen or reapplying more often. But calling it a device is a bit of a stretch. The UV Sense is a circular, nail-sized sticker that’s little more than a UV sensor and an antenna. Unlike most other wearables, it’s completely batteryless; the sensor is powered by near-field communications and only transmits data when you place your phone near the sensor. Developed in partnership with Northwestern University, UV Sense now boasts the title of world’s smallest wearable.

Guive Balooch, the global vice president of L’Oréal’s technology incubator, said that the company wanted to make sure the sensor was comfortable for longtime wear. My UV Patch, L’Oreal’s first tech-centric UV-sensing product, was a disposable: You wore it for up to three days, then threw it away. The UV Sense, by contrast, lasts as long as any other wearable on the market. And besides just being small, it’s notable for its unique form factor. Its tiny size—about as thick as a credit card and lighter than a Tic Tac—makes it ideal as a stick-on nail applique. “We knew that nail art was booming,” Balooch said. “We thought that could be really interesting.” However, it’s not exclusively a nail sticker—it can just as easily be positioned on a pair of sunglasses or on another accessory you typically wear outdoors, such as a watch. On a nail, the sensor lasts for two weeks, then it needs to be readhered. (“The reason is more for the nail than the sensor,” Balooch said. “The nail is a living part of your body. UV gel or nail art normally lasts about two weeks.”)

…

For anyone who’d like to bear down on the technical detail, there’s Daniel Cooper’s January 7, 2018 article for engadget (Note: Links have been removed),

L’Oreal is working with MC10, a medical technology wearables outfit established by professor John Rogers at Northwestern University. Rogers is famous for developing the “wearable tattoo,” circuit boards no thicker than a band-aid that attach to people’s skin. The eventual goal for such technology is that it will replace the bulky and invasive monitors strapped onto hospital patients.

Interesting, yes? And as the writers note it’s not L’Oréal’s first foray into wearable tech. For anyone interested in the 2016 version, there’s my January 6, 2016 posting about ‘my UV patch”  and its introduction a the 2016 CES.  As for John Rogers, one of my latest postings on him and his work is a May 15, 2015 posting.  You can find more using “John Rogers” as your blog search term.

Australian peacock spiders, photonic nanostructures, and making money

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Researcher Bor-Kai Hsiung’s work has graced this blog before but the topic was tarantulas and their structural colour. This time, it’s all about Australian peacock spiders and their structural colour according to a December 22, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily,

Even if you are arachnophobic, you probably have seen pictures or videos of Australian peacock spiders (Maratus spp.). These tiny spiders are only 1-5 mm long but are famous for their flamboyant courtship displays featuring diverse and intricate body colorations, patterns, and movements.

The spiders extremely large anterior median eyes have excellent color vision and combine with their bright colors to make peacock spiders cute enough to cure most people of their arachnophobia. But these displays aren’t just pretty to look at, they also inspire new ways for humans to produce color in technology.

One species of peacock spider — the rainbow peacock spider (Maratus robinsoni) is particularly neat, because it showcases an intense rainbow iridescent signal in males’ courtship displays to the females. This is the first known instance in nature of males using an entire rainbow of colors to entice females. Dr. Bor-Kai Hsiung led an international team of researchers from the US (UAkron, Cal Tech, UC San Diego, UNL [University of Nebraska-Lincoln]), Belgium (Ghent University), Netherlands (UGroningen), and Australia to discover how rainbow peacock spiders produce this unique multi-color iridescent signal.

A December 22, 2017 Ghent University (Belgium) press release on Alpha Galileo, which originated the news item, provides more technical detail,

Using a diverse array of research techniques, including light and electron microscopy, hyperspectral imaging, imaging scatterometry, nano 3D printing and optical modeling, the team found the origin of this intense rainbow iridescence emerged from specialized abdominal scales of the spiders. These scales have an airfoil-like microscopic 3D contour with nanoscale diffraction grating structures on the surface.

The interaction between the surface nano-diffraction grating and the microscopic curvature of the scales enables separation and isolation of light into its component wavelengths at finer angles and smaller distances than are possible with current manmade engineering technologies.

Inspiration from these super iridescent scales can be used to overcome current limitations in spectral manipulation, and to further reduce the size of optical spectrometers for applications where fine-scale spectral resolution is required in a very small package, notably instruments on space missions, or wearable chemical detection systems. And it could have a wide array of implications to fields ranging from life sciences and biotechnologies to material sciences and engineering.

Here’s a video of an Australian rainbow peacock spider,

Here’s more from the YouTube description published on April 13, 2017 by Peacockspiderman,

Scenes of Maratus robinsoni, a spider Peter Robinson discovered and David Hill and I named it after him in 2012. You can read our description on pages 36-41 in Peckhamia 103.2, which can be downloaded from the Peckhamia website http://peckhamia.com/peckhamia_number…. This is one of the two smallest species of peacock spider (2.5 mm long) and the only spider we know of in which colour changes occur every time it moves, this video was created to document this. Music: ‘Be Still’ by Johannes Bornlöf licensed through my MCN ‘Brave Bison’ from ‘Epidemic Sound’ For licensing inquiries please contact Brave Bison licensing@bravebison.io

The University of California at San Diego also published a December 22, 2017 news release about this work, which covers some of the same ground while providing a few new tidbits of information,

Brightly colored Australian peacock spiders (Maratus spp.) captivate even the most arachnophobic viewers with their flamboyant courtship displays featuring diverse and intricate body colorations, patterns, and movements – all packed into miniature bodies measuring less than five millimeters in size for many species. However, these displays are not just pretty to look at. They also inspire new ways for humans to produce color in technology.

One species of peacock spider – the rainbow peacock spider (Maratus robinsoni) – is particularly impressive, because it showcases an intense rainbow iridescent signal in males’ courtship displays to females. This is the first known instance in nature of males using an entire rainbow of colors to entice females to mate. But how do males make their rainbows? A new study published in Nature Communications looked to answer that question.

Figuring out the answers was inherently interdisciplinary so Bor-Kai Hsiung, a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, assembled an international team that included biologists, physicists and engineers. Starting while he was a Ph.D. student at The University of Akron under the mentorship of Todd Blackledge and Matthew Shawkey, the team included researchers from UA, Scripps Oceanography, California Institute of Technology, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Ghent in Belgium, University of Groningen in Netherlands, and Australia to discover how rainbow peacock spiders produce this unique iridescent signal.

The team investigated the spider’s photonic structures using techniques that included light and electron microscopy, hyperspectral imaging, imaging scatterometry and optical modeling to generate hypotheses about how the spider’s scale generate such intense rainbows. The team then used cutting-edge nano 3D printing to fabricate different prototypes to test and validate their hypotheses. In the end, they found that the intense rainbow iridescence emerged from specialized abdominal scales on the spiders. These scales combine an airfoil-like microscopic 3D contour with nanoscale diffraction grating structures on the surface. It is the interaction between the surface nano-diffraction grating and the microscopic curvature of the scales that enables separation and isolation of light into its component wavelengths at finer angles and smaller distances than are possible with current engineering technologies.

“Who knew that such a small critter would create such an intense iridescence using extremely sophisticated mechanisms that will inspire optical engineers,” said Dimitri Deheyn, Hsuing’s advisor at Scripps Oceanography and a coauthor of the study.

For Hsiung, the finding wasn’t quite so unexpected.

“One of the main questions that I wanted to address in my Ph.D. dissertation was ‘how does nature modulate iridescence?’ From a biomimicry perspective, to fully understand and address a question, one has to take extremes from both ends into consideration. I purposefully chose to study these tiny spiders with intense iridescence after having investigated the non-iridescent blue tarantulas,” said Hsiung.

The mechanism behind these tiny rainbows may inspire new color technology, but would not have been discovered without research combining basic natural history with physics and engineering, the researchers said.

“Nanoscale 3D printing allowed us to experimentally validate our models, which was really exciting,” said Shawkey. “We hope that these techniques will become common in the future.”

“As an engineer, what I found fascinating about these spider structural colors is how these long evolved complex structures can still outperform human engineering,” said Radwanul Hasan Siddique, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and study coauthor. “Even with high-end fabrication techniques, we could not replicate the exact structures. I wonder how the spiders assemble these fancy structural patterns in the first place!”

Inspiration from these super iridescent spider scales can be used to overcome current limitations in spectral manipulation, and to reduce the size of optical spectrometers for applications where fine-scale spectral resolution is required in a very small package, notably instruments on space missions, or wearable chemical detection systems.

In the end, peacock spiders don’t just produce nature’s smallest rainbows.They could also have implications for a wide array of fields ranging from life sciences and biotechnologies to material sciences and engineering.

Before citing the paper and providing a link, here’s a story by Robert F. Service for Science magazine about attempts to capitalize on ‘spider technology’, in this case spider silk,

The hype over spider silk has been building since 1710. That was the year François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire, president of the Royal Society of Sciences in Montpellier, France, wrote to his colleagues, “You will be surpriz’d to hear, that Spiders make a Silk, as beautiful, strong and glossy, as common Silk.” Modern pitches boast that spider silk is five times stronger than steel yet more flexible than rubber. If it could be made into ropes, a macroscale web would be able to snare a jetliner.

The key word is “if.” Researchers first cloned a spider silk gene in 1990, in hopes of incorporating it into other organisms to produce the silk. (Spiders can’t be farmed like silkworms because they are territorial and cannibalistic.) Today, Escherichia coli bacteria, yeasts, plants, silkworms, and even goats have been genetically engineered to churn out spider silk proteins, though the proteins are often shorter and simpler than the spiders’ own. Companies have managed to spin those proteins into enough high-strength thread to produce a few prototype garments, including a running shoe by Adidas and a lightweight parka by The North Face. But so far, companies have struggled to mass produce these supersilks.

Some executives say that may finally be about to change. One Emeryville, California-based startup, Bolt Threads, says it has perfected growing spider silk proteins in yeast and is poised to turn out tons of spider silk thread per year. In Lansing, Michigan, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories says it needs only to finalize negotiations with silkworm farms in Vietnam to produce mass quantities of a combination spider/silkworm silk, which the U.S. Army is now testing for ballistics protection. …

I encourage you to read Service’s article in its entirety if the commercialization prospects for spider silk interest you as it includes gems such as this,

Spider silk proteins are already making their retail debut—but in cosmetics and medical devices, not high-strength fibers. AMSilk grows spider silk proteins in E. coli and dries the purified protein into powders or mixes it into gels, for use as additives for personal care products, such as moisture-retaining skin lotions. The silk proteins supposedly help the lotions form a very smooth, but breathable, layer over the skin. Römer says the company now sells tons of its purified silk protein ingredients every year.

…

Finally, here’s a citation for and a link to the paper about Australian peacock spiders and nanophotonics,

Rainbow peacock spiders inspire miniature super-iridescent optics by Bor-Kai Hsiung, Radwanul Hasan Siddique, Doekele G. Stavenga, Jürgen C. Otto, Michael C. Allen, Ying Liu, Yong-Feng Lu, Dimitri D. Deheyn, Matthew D. Shawkey, & Todd A. Blackledge. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 2278 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02451-x Published online: 22 December 2017

This paper is open access.

As for Bor-Kai Hsiung’s other mentions here:

How tarantulas get blue (December 7, 2015 posting)

Noniridescent photonics inspired by tarantulas (October 19, 2016 posting)

More on the blue tarantula noniridescent photonics (December 28, 2016 posting)

2016 Nobel prize winner introduces anti-aging skincare line

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When last mentioned here (Oct. 6, 2016 posting), J. Fraser Stoddart, along with his French colleague Jean-Pierre Sauvage and his Dutch colleague Bernard “Ben” Feringa, had just been awarded a 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing molecular machines. In what seems like an unusual career move, Stoddart has recently introduced a skin care line. From a December 5, 2017 article by Marc S. Reisch for Chemical and Engineering News (c&en), Note: A link has been removed,

In 2016, J. Fraser Stoddart won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his part in designing a molecular machine. Now as chief technology officer and co-founder of nanotechnology firm PanaceaNano, he has introduced the “Noble” line of antiaging cosmetics including a $524 formula described as an “anti-wrinkle repair” night cream. The firm says the cream contains patented Nobel Prize-winning “organic nano-cubes” loaded with ingredients that reverse skin damage and reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

Other prize-winning chemists have founded companies, but Stoddart’s backing of the anti-aging cosmetic line takes the promotion of a new company by an award-winning scientist to the next level.

The nano-cubes are made of carbohydrate molecules known as cyclodextrins. The cubes, of various sizes and shapes, release ingredients such as vitamins and peptides onto the skin “at predefined times with molecular precision,” according to the Noble skin care website. PanaceaNano co-founder Youssry Botros, former nanotechnology research director at Intel, contends that the metering technology makes the product line “far superior to comparable products in the market today,” However, the nanocubes aren’t molecular machines, for which Stoddart won his Nobel prize.

A November 27, 2017 PanaceaNano news release on Cision PR Newswire provides more details about the skin care line,

The NOBLE skin care breakthrough technology is based on patented Organic Nano-Cube (ONC) molecules, which are made up of hollow cubes that work as molecular reservoirs to store and release skin care active ingredients in an extended release formulation directly onto the skin in a controlled manner, allowing for continuous skin revitalization, renewal and repair over a longer period of time.

Unlike other products, with ONC, you have more than just extended release. ONC molecules provide tunable release profiles that are engineered for delayed and multiple release of different ingredients that each have their own characteristics. ONC molecules are controllable at a smaller nano-scale to better control the individual molecular ingredients. NOBLE is “Skin Care with Molecular Precision” because ONC molecules really control the release of active skin care ingredients at the molecular level, instead of just putting the ingredients in a macroscopic slow-release matrix like other products in the market today.

“This molecular precision enables the NOBLE luxury skin care product line to reduce visible signs of aging more effectively by precisely releasing the anti-aging ingredients for over a longer period. Because of the revolutionary ONC technology, NOBLE has a much longer duration of anti-aging benefit with continuous and steady efficacy, making it far superior to comparable products in the market today,” says Dr. Youssry Botros, PanaceaNano Co-founder and CEO. “Other skin care brands have immediate release formulations whose active ingredients are often depleted immediately. NOBLE products are clinically proven to reverse and slow down skin aging.”

NOBLE skin care products will immediately start working on the skin. Most consumers notice relatively visible results within two weeks, while significant results are observed by most consumers after 10 to 12 weeks.

“It is an exciting moment to witness the birth of commercial products that improve the quality of life of people based on renewable, safe, organic, bio-degradable functional nanomaterials,” stated Sir Fraser.

For additional information, please go to www.noble-skincare.com

Noble/Nobel? Was someone indulging in word play?

According to the Noble skin care product page, costs range from $249. for .5 oz of anti-aging eye cream to $524 for 1.7 oz of anti-wrinkle repair cream, presumably in US dollars. Note: I am not endorsing this product as I have not used it.

For anyone interested in the parent company, PanaceaNano can be found here.

A jellyfish chat on November 28, 2017 at Café Scientifique Vancouver get together

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Café Scientifique Vancouver sent me an announcement (via email) about their upcoming event,

We are pleased to announce our next café which will happen on TUESDAY,
NOVEMBER 28TH at 7:30PM in the back room of YAGGER'S DOWNTOWN (433 W
Pender).

JELLYFISH – FRIEND, FOE, OR FOOD?

Did you know that in addition to stinging swimmers, jellyfish also cause
extensive damage to fisheries and coastal power plants? As threats such
as overfishing, pollution, and climate change alter the marine
environment, recent media reports are proclaiming that jellyfish are
taking over the oceans. Should we hail to our new jellyfish overlords or
do we need to examine the evidence behind these claims? Join Café
Scientifique on Nov. 28, 2017 to learn everything you ever wanted to
know about jellyfish, and find out if jelly burgers are coming soon to a
menu near you.

Our speaker for the evening will be DR. LUCAS BROTZ, a Postdoctoral
Research Fellow with the Sea Around Us at UBC’s Institute for the
Oceans and Fisheries. Lucas has been studying jellyfish for more than a
decade, and has been called “Canada’s foremost jellyfish
researcher” by CBC Nature of Things host Dr. David Suzuki. Lucas has
participated in numerous international scientific collaborations, and
his research has been featured in more than 100 media outlets including
Nature News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He recently
received the Michael A. Bigg award for highly significant student
research as part of the Coastal Ocean Awards at the Vancouver Aquarium.

We hope to see you there!

You can find out more about Lucas Brotz here and about Sea Around Us here.

For anyone who’s curious about the jellyfish ‘issue’, there’s a November 8, 2017 Norwegian University of Science and Technology press release on AlphaGallileo or on EurekAlert, which provides insight into the problems and the possibilities,

Jellyfish could be a resource in producing microplastic filters, fertilizer or fish feed. A new 6 million euro project called GoJelly, funded by the EU and coordinated by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Germany and including partners at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNNU) and SINTEF [headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia; more about SINTEF in its Wikipedia entry], hopes to turn jellyfish from a nuisance into a useful product.

Global climate change and the human impact on marine ecosystems has led to dramatic decreases in the number of fish in the ocean. It has also had an unforseen side effect: because overfishing decreases the numbers of jellyfish competitors, their blooms are on the rise.

The GoJelly project, coordinated by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Germany, would like to transform problematic jellyfish into a resource that can be used to produce microplastic filter, fertilizer or fish feed. The EU has just approved funding of EUR 6 million over 4 years to support the project through its Horizon 2020 programme.

Rising water temperatures, ocean acidification and overfishing seem to favour jellyfish blooms. More and more often, they appear in huge numbers that have already destroyed entire fish farms on European coasts and blocked cooling systems of power stations near the coast. A number of jellyfish species are poisonous, while some tropical species are even among the most toxic animals on earth.

“In Europe alone, the imported American comb jelly has a biomass of one billion tons. While we tend to ignore the jellyfish there must be other solutions,” says Jamileh Javidpour of GEOMAR, initiator and coordinator of the GoJelly project, which is a consortium of 15 scientific institutions from eight countries led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel.

The project will first entail exploring the life cycle of a number of jellyfish species. A lack of knowledge about life cycles makes it is almost impossible to predict when and why a large jellyfish bloom will occur. “This is what we want to change so that large jellyfish swarms can be caught before they reach the coasts,” says Javidpour.

At the same time, the project partners will also try to answer the question of what to do with jellyfish once they have been caught. One idea is to use the jellyfish to battle another, man-made threat.

“Studies have shown that mucus of jellyfish can bind microplastic. Therefore, we want to test whether biofilters can be produced from jellyfish. These biofilters could then be used in sewage treatment plants or in factories where microplastic is produced,” the GoJelly researchers say.

Jellyfish can also be used as fertilizers for agriculture or as aquaculture feed. “Fish in fish farms are currently fed with captured wild fish, which does not reduce the problem of overfishing, but increases it. Jellyfish as feed would be much more sustainable and would protect natural fish stocks,” says the GoJelly team.

Another option is using jellyfish as food for humans. “In some cultures, jellyfish are already on the menu. As long as the end product is no longer slimy, it could also gain greater general acceptance,” said Javidpour. Finally yet importantly, jellyfish contain collagen, a substance very much sought after in the cosmetics industry.

Project partners from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, led by Nicole Aberle-Malzahn, and SINTEF Ocean, led by Rachel Tiller, will analyse how abiotic (hydrography, temperature), biotic (abundance, biomass, ecology, reproduction) and biochemical parameters (stoichiometry, food quality) affect the initiation of jellyfish blooms.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of triggering mechanisms, origin of seed populations and ecological modelling, the researchers hope to be able to make more reliable predictions on jellyfish bloom formation of specific taxa in the GoJelly target areas. This knowledge will allow sustainable harvesting of jellyfish communities from various Northern and Southern European populations.

This harvest will provide a marine biomass of unknown potential that will be explored by researchers at SINTEF Ocean, among others, to explore the possible ways to use the material.

A team from SINTEF Ocean’s strategic program Clean Ocean will also work with European colleagues on developing a filter from the mucus of the jellyfish that will catch microplastics from household products (which have their source in fleece sweaters, breakdown of plastic products or from cosmetics, for example) and prevent these from entering the marine ecosystem.

Finally, SINTEF Ocean will examine the socio-ecological system and games, where they will explore the potentials of an emerging international management regime for a global effort to mitigate the negative effects of microplastics in the oceans.

“Jellyfish can be used for many purposes. We see this as an opportunity to use the potential of the huge biomass drifting right in front of our front door,” Javidpour said.

You can find out more about GoJelly on their Twitter account.

Melting body fat with a microneedle patch

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For many people this may seem like a dream come true but there is a proviso. So far researchers have gotten to the in vivo testing (mice)  with no word about human clinical trials, which means it could be quite a while, assuming human clinical trials go well, before any product comes to market. With that in mind, here’s more from a Sept.15, 2017 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers have devised a medicated skin patch that can turn energy-storing white fat into energy-burning brown fat locally while raising the body’s overall metabolism. The patch could be used to burn off pockets of unwanted fat such as “love handles” and treat metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, according to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the University of North Carolina.

A Sept. 15, 2017 Columbia University Medical Center news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, describes the research further,

Humans have two types of fat. White fat stores excess energy in large triglyceride droplets. Brown fat has smaller droplets and a high number of mitochondria that burn fat to produce heat. Newborns have a relative abundance of brown fat, which protects against exposure to cold temperatures. But by adulthood, most brown fat is lost.

For years, researchers have been searching for therapies that can transform an adult’s white fat into brown fat–a process named browning–which can happen naturally when the body is exposed to cold temperatures–as a treatment for obesity and diabetes.

“There are several clinically available drugs that promote browning, but all must be given as pills or injections,” said study co-leader Li Qiang, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and cell biology at CUMC. “This exposes the whole body to the drugs, which can lead to side effects such as stomach upset, weight gain, and bone fractures. Our skin patch appears to alleviate these complications by delivering most drugs directly to fat tissue.”

To apply the treatment, the drugs are first encased in nanoparticles, each roughly 250 nanometers (nm) in diameter–too small to be seen by the naked eye. (In comparison, a human hair is about 100,000 nm wide.) The nanoparticles are then loaded into a centimeter-square skin patch containing dozens of microscopic needles. When applied to skin, the needles painlessly pierce the skin and gradually release the drug from nanoparticles into underlying tissue.

“The nanoparticles were designed to effectively hold the drug and then gradually collapse, releasing it into nearby tissue in a sustained way instead of spreading the drug throughout the body quickly,” said patch designer and study co-leader Zhen Gu, PhD, associate professor of joint biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.

The new treatment approach was tested in obese mice by loading the nanoparticles with one of two compounds known to promote browning: rosiglitazone (Avandia) or beta-adrenergic receptor agonist (CL 316243) that works well in mice but not in humans. Each mouse was given two patches–one loaded with drug-containing nanoparticles and another without drug–that were placed on either side of the lower abdomen. New patches were applied every three days for a total of four weeks. Control mice were also given two empty patches.

Mice treated with either of the two drugs had a 20 percent reduction in fat on the treated side compared to the untreated side. They also had significantly lower fasting blood glucose levels than untreated mice.

Tests in normal, lean mice revealed that treatment with either of the two drugs increased the animals’ oxygen consumption (a measure of overall metabolic activity) by about 20 percent compared to untreated controls.

Genetic analyses revealed that the treated side contained more genes associated with brown fat than on the untreated side, suggesting that the observed metabolic changes and fat reduction were due to an increase in browning in the treated mice.

“Many people will no doubt be excited to learn that we may be able to offer a noninvasive alternative to liposuction for reducing love handles,” says Dr. Qiang. “What’s much more important is that our patch may provide a safe and effective means of treating obesity and related metabolic disorders such as diabetes.” [emphasis mine]

The patch has not been tested in humans. The researchers are currently studying which drugs, or combination of drugs, work best to promote localized browning and increase overall metabolism.

…

The study was supported by grants from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute and the National Institutes of Health (1UL1TR001111, R00DK97455, and P30DK063608).

Notice the emphasis on health and that the funding does not seem to be from industry (the National Institutes of Health is definitely a federal US agency but I’m not familiar with the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute).

Getting back to the research, here’s an animation featuring the work,

Here’s a link and a citation for the paper,

Locally Induced Adipose Tissue Browning by Microneedle Patch for Obesity Treatment by Yuqi Zhang†, Qiongming Liu, Jicheng Yu†, Shuangjiang Yu, Jinqiang Wang, Li Qiang, and Zhen Gu. ACS Nano, Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b04348 Publication Date (Web): September 15, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

I would imagine that Qiang and his colleagues will find a number of business entities will be lining up to fund their work. While the researchers may be focused primarily on health issues, I imagine business types will be seeing dollar signs (very big ones with many zeroes).

DNA sunscreen: the longer you wear it, the better it gets due to its sacrificial skin

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Using this new sunscreen does mean slathering on salmon sperm, more or lees, (read the Methods section of the academic paper cited later in this post). Considering that you’ve likely eaten (insect parts in chocolate) and slathered on more discomfiting stuff already and this development gives you access to an all natural, highly effective sunscreen, if it ever makes its way out of the laboratory, it might not be so bad. From a July 26, 2017 article by Sarah Knapton for The Telegraph,

Sunscreen made from DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] which acts like a second skin to prevent sun damage is on the horizon.

Scientists in the US have developed a film from the DNA of salmon which gets better at protecting the skin from ultraviolet light the more it is exposed to the Sun.

It also helps lock in moisture beneath the surface which is usually lost during tanning.

…

Exciting, yes? A July 27, 2017 Binghamton University news release (also on EurekAlert but dated July 26, 2017) provides more detail,

…

“Ultraviolet (UV) light can actually damage DNA, and that’s not good for the skin,” said Guy German, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Binghamton University. “We thought, let’s flip it. What happens instead if we actually used DNA as a sacrificial layer? So instead of damaging DNA within the skin, we damage a layer on top of the skin.”

German and a team of researchers developed thin and optically transparent crystalline DNA films and irradiated them with UV light. They found that the more they exposed the film to UV light, the better the film got at absorbing it.

“If you translate that, it means to me that if you use this as a topical cream or sunscreen, the longer that you stay out on the beach, the better it gets at being a sunscreen,” said German.

As an added bonus, the DNA coatings are also hygroscopic, meaning that skin coated with the DNA films can store and hold water much more than uncoated skin. When applied to human skin, they are capable of slowing water evaporation and keeping the tissue hydrated for extended periods of time.

German intends to see next if these materials might be good as a wound covering for hostile environments where 1) you want to be able to see the wound healing without removing the dressing, 2) you want to protect the wound from the sun and 3) you want to keep the wound in a moist environment, known to promote faster wound healing rates.

“Not only do we think this might have applications for sunscreen and moisturizers directly, but if it’s optically transparent and prevents tissue damage from the sun and it’s good at keeping the skin hydrated, we think this might be potentially exploitable as a wound covering for extreme environments,” he said.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Non-ionising UV light increases the optical density of hygroscopic self assembled DNA crystal films by Alexandria E. Gasperini, Susy Sanchez, Amber L. Doiron, Mark Lyles & Guy K. German. Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 6631 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41598-017-06884-8 Published online: 26 July 2017

This paper is open access.

The ultimate natural sunscreen

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For those of us in the northern hemisphere, sunscreen season is on the horizon. While the “ultimate natural sunscreen” researchers from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have developed is a long way from the marketplace, this is encouraging news (from a May 17, 2017 news item on Nanowerk),

Chemists, materials scientists and nanoengineers at UC San Diego have created what may be the ultimate natural sunscreen.

In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Central Science, they report the development of nanoparticles that mimic the behavior of natural melanosomes, melanin-producing cell structures that protect our skin, eyes and other tissues from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation.

“Basically, we succeeded in making a synthetic version of the nanoparticles that our skin uses to produce and store melanin and demonstrated in experiments in skin cells that they mimic the behavior of natural melanosomes,” said Nathan Gianneschi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, materials science and engineering and nanoengineering at UC San Diego, who headed the team of researchers. The achievement has practical applications.

A May 17, 2017 UCSD news release, which originated the news item, delves into the research,

“Defects in melanin production in humans can cause diseases such as vitiligo and albinism that lack effective treatments,” Gianneschi added.

Vitiligo develops when the immune system wrongly attempts to clear normal melanocytes from the skin, effectively stopping the production of melanocytes. Albinism is due to genetic defects that lead to either the absence or a chemical defect in tyrosinase, a copper-containing enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Both of these diseases lack effective treatments and result in a significant risk of skin cancer for patients.

“The widespread prevalence of these melanin-related diseases and an increasing interest in the performance of various polymeric materials related to melanin prompted us to look for novel synthetic routes for preparing melanin-like materials,” Gianneschi said.

UC San Diego Ultimate natural sunscreenThe scientists found that the synthetic nanoparticles were taken up in tissue culture by keratinocytes, the predominant cell type found in the epidermis, the outer layer of skin. Photo by Yuran Huang and Ying Jones/UC San Diego

Melanin particles are produced naturally in many different sizes and shapes by animals—for iridescent feathers in birds or the pigmented eyes and skin of some reptiles. But scientists have discovered that extracting melanins from natural sources is a difficult and potentially more complex process than producing them synthetically.

Gianneschi and his team discovered two years ago that synthetic melanin-like nanoparticles could be developed in a precisely controllable manner to mimic the performance of natural melanins used in bird feathers.

“We hypothesized that synthetic melanin-like nanoparticles would mimic naturally occurring melanosomes and be taken up by keratinocytes, the predominant cell type found in the epidermis, the outer layer of skin,” said Gianneschi.

In healthy humans, melanin is delivered to keratinocytes in the skin after being excreted as melanosomes from melanocytes.

The UC San Diego scientists prepared melanin-like nanoparticles through the spontaneous oxidation of dopamine—developing biocompatible, synthetic analogues of naturally occurring melanosomes. Then they studied their update, transport, distribution and ultraviolet radiation-protective capabilities in human keratinocytes in tissue culture.

The researchers found that these synthetic nanoparticles were not only taken up and distributed normally, like natural melanosomes, within the keratinocytes, they protected the skin cells from DNA damage due to ultraviolet radiation.

“Considering limitations in the treatment of melanin-defective related diseases and the biocompatibility of these synthetic melanin-like nanoparticles in terms of uptake and degradation, these systems have potential as artificial melanosomes for the development of novel therapies, possibly supplementing the biological functions of natural melanins,” the researchers said in their paper.

The other co-authors of the study were Yuran Huang and Ziying Hu of UC San Diego’s Materials Science and Engineering Program, Yiwen Li and Maria Proetto of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Xiujun Yue of the Department of Nanoengineering; and Ying Jones of the Electron Microscopy Core Facility.

The UC San Diego Office of Innovation and Commercialization has filed a patent application on the use of polydopamine-based artificial melanins as an intracellular UV-shield. Companies interested in commercializing this invention should contact Skip Cynar at invent@ucsd.edu

Here’s a link to and a citation fro the paper,

Mimicking Melanosomes: Polydopamine Nanoparticles as Artificial Microparasols by
Yuran Huang, Yiwen Li, Ziying Hu, Xiujun Yue, Maria T. Proetto, Ying Jones, and Nathan C. Gianneschi. ACS Cent. Sci., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.6b00230 Publication Date (Web): May 18, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

This is an open access paper,

Plasmonic ‘Goldfinger’: antifungal nail polish with metallic nanoparticles

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A March 29,.2017 news item on Nanowerk announces a new kind of nanopolish,

Since ancient times, people have used lustrous silver, platinum and gold to make jewelry and other adornments. Researchers have now developed a new way to add the metals to nail polish with minimal additives, resulting in durable, tinted — and potentially antibacterial — nail coloring.

Using metal nanoparticles in clear nail polish makes it durable and colorful without extra additives.
Credit: American Chemical Society

A March 29, 2017 American Chemical Society (ACS) news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, adds a little more detail (Note: A link has been removed),

Nail polish comes in a bewildering array of colors. Current coloring techniques commonly incorporate pigment powders and additives. Scientists have recently started exploring the use of nanoparticles in polishes and have found that they can improve their durability and, in the case of silver nanoparticles, can treat fungal toenail infections. Marcus Lau, Friedrich Waag and Stephan Barcikowski wanted to see if they could come up with a simple way to integrate metal nanoparticles in nail polish.

The researchers started with store-bought bottles of clear, colorless nail polish and added small pieces of silver, gold, platinum or an alloy to them. To break the metals into nanoparticles, they shone a laser on them in short bursts over 15 minutes. Analysis showed that the method resulted in a variety of colored, transparent polishes with a metallic sheen. The researchers also used laser ablation to produce a master batch of metal nanoparticles in ethyl acetate, a polish thinner, which could then be added to individual bottles of polish. This could help boost the amount of production for commercialization. The researchers say the technique could also be used to create coatings for medical devices.

The authors acknowledge funding from the INTERREG-Program Germany-Netherlands.

A transparent nail varnish can be colored simply and directly with laser-generated nanoparticles. This does not only enable coloring of the varnish for cosmetic purposes, but also gives direct access to nanodoped varnishes to be used on any solid surface. Therefore, nanoparticle properties such as plasmonic properties or antibacterial effects can be easily adapted to surfaces for medical or optical purposes. The presented method for integration of metal (gold, platinum, silver, and alloy) nanoparticles into varnishes is straightforward and gives access to nanodoped polishes with optical properties, difficult to be achieved by dispersing powder pigments in the high-viscosity liquids. Courtesy: Industrial and Engineering & Chemistry Research

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Direct Integration of Laser-Generated Nanoparticles into Transparent Nail Polish: The Plasmonic “Goldfinger” by Marcus Lau, Friedrich Waag, and Stephan Barcikowski. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2017, 56 (12), pp 3291–3296 DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.7b00039 Publication Date (Web): March 7, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Findings on oral exposure to nanoscale titanium dioxide

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It’s been a while since I’ve run a piece on health concerns and nanoparticles. The nanoparticles in question are titanium dioxide and the concerns centre on oral exposure to them according to a Jan. 24, 2017 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers from INRA [French National Institute for Agricultural Research] and their partners have studied the effects of oral exposure to titanium dioxide, an additive (E171) commonly used in foodstuffs, especially confectionary. They have shown for the first time that E171 crosses the intestinal barrier in animals and reaches other parts of the body.

Immune system disorders linked to the absorption of the nanoscale fraction of E171 particles were observed. The researchers also showed that chronic oral exposure to the additive spontaneously induced preneoplastic lesions in the colon, a non-malignant stage of carcinogenesis, in 40% of exposed animals.

Moreover, E171 was found to accelerate the development of lesions previously induced for experimental purposes. While the findings show that the additive plays a role in initiating and promoting the early stages of colorectal carcinogenesis, they cannot be extrapolated to humans or more advanced stages of the disease. [emphasis mine]

A Jan. 20, 2017 IINRA press release, which originated the news item,  provides more detail about European use of titanium dioxide as a food additive and about the research,

Present in many products including cosmetics, sunscreens, paint and building materials, titanium dioxide (or TiO2), known as E171 in Europe, is also widely used as an additive in the food industry to whiten or give opacity to products. It is commonly found in sweets, chocolate products, biscuits, chewing gum and food supplements, as well as in toothpaste and pharmaceutical products. Composed of micro- and nanoparticles, E171 is nevertheless not labelled a “nanomaterial”, since it does not contain more than 50% of nanoparticles (in general it contains from 10-40%). The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) evaluated the risk of exposure to titanium dioxide by inhalation (occupational exposure), resulting in a Group 2B classification, reserved for potential carcinogens for humans.

Today, oral exposure to E171 is a concern, especially in children who tend to eat a lot of sweets. INRA researchers studied the product as a whole (that is, its mixed composition of micro- and nanoparticules), and have also evaluated the effect of the nanoscale particle fraction alone, by comparing it to a model nanoparticle.

Titanium dioxide crosses the intestinal barrier and passes into the bloodstream

The researchers exposed rats orally to a dose of 10mg of E171 per kilogram of body weight per day, similar to the exposure humans experience through food consumption (data from European Food Safety Agency, September 20162). They showed for the first time in vivo that titanium dioxide is absorbed by the intestine and passes into the bloodstream. Indeed, the researchers found titanium dioxide particles in the animals’ livers.

Titanium dioxide alters intestinal and systemic immune response

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles were present in the lining of the small intestine and in the colon, and entered the nuclei of the immune cells of Peyer’s patches, which induce immune response in the intestine. The researchers showed an imbalance in immune response, ranging from a defect in the production of cytokines in Peyer’s patches to the development of micro-inflammation in colon mucosa. In the spleen, representative of systemic immunity, exposure to E171 increases the capacity of immune cells to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines when they are activated in vitro.

Chronic oral exposure to titanium dioxide plays a role in initiating and promoting early stages of colorectal carcinogenesis

The researchers exposed rats to regular oral doses of titanium dioxide through drinking water for 100 days. In a group of rats previously treated with an experimental carcinogen, exposure to TiO2 led to an increase in the size of preneoplastic lesions. In a group of healthy rats exposed to E171, four out of eleven spontaneously developed preneoplastic lesions in the intestinal epithelium. Non-exposed animals presented no anomalies at the end of the 100-day study. These results indicate that E171 both initiates and promotes the early stages of colorectal carcinogenesis in animals.

These studies show for the first time that the additive E171 is a source of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the intestine and the entire body, with consequences for both immune function and the development of preneoplastic lesions in the colon. These first findings justify a carcinogenesis study carried out under OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] guidelines to continue observations at a later stage of cancer. They provide new data for evaluating the risks of the E171 additive in humans.

These studies were carried out within the framework of the Nanogut project, financed by the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) within the French national programme for research related to the environment, health and the workplace (PNR EST) and coordinated by INRA. Sarah Bettini’s university thesis contract was financed by the French laboratory of excellence LabEx SERENADE.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Food-grade TiO2 impairs intestinal and systemic immune homeostasis, initiates preneoplastic lesions and promotes aberrant crypt development in the rat colon by Sarah Bettini, Elisa Boutet-Robinet, Christel Cartier, Christine Coméra, Eric Gaultier, Jacques Dupuy, Nathalie Naud, Sylviane Taché, Patrick Grysan, Solenn Reguer, Nathalie Thieriet, Matthieu Réfrégiers, Dominique Thiaudière, Jean-Pierre Cravedi, Marie Carrière, Jean-Nicolas Audinot, Fabrice H. Pierre, Laurence Guzylack-Piriou, & Eric Houdeau. Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 40373 (2017) doi:10.1038/srep40373 Published online: 20 January 2017

This paper is open access.

The research is concerning but they don’t want to draw any conclusions yet, which explains the recommendation for further research.