In a new study, scientists show that intracellular changes to receptor conformation alter how agonists bind to and activate a biologically important #GPCR# from outside the cell through an “inside out” mechanism. @UCPH_health #Biochemistry#

Eating 85 percent dark chocolate every day for three weeks lowered negative moods in a randomized trial, and the people who ate it ended up with more varied gut bacteria. The 70 percent chocolate had no clear effect on mood. Seoul National University researchers split 48 healthy adults aged 20 to 30 into three groups. One group ate 30 grams a day of 85 percent dark chocolate, about a third of a standard 100-gram bar. Another ate 30 grams of 70 percent chocolate, and the third ate none. The study appeared in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. Mood was tracked with a standard questionnaire that measures good and bad feelings, such as feeling upset, nervous, or irritable. After three weeks, bad feelings dropped in the 85 percent group, and the 70 percent group showed no clear change. Stool samples from the 85 percent group showed a wider variety of gut bacteria than the no-chocolate group. One type, Blautia obeum, went up, and another, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, went down. People whose gut bacteria became more varied, and whose Blautia obeum rose the most, had the biggest drops in bad mood. Dark chocolate may work like food for certain gut bacteria, the researchers suggest, and those bacteria could affect mood through the connection between the gut and the brain. Each group had only 14 to 18 people, and the link between bacteria and mood is a correlation. In this trial, the darker chocolate lowered bad moods within three weeks, and the milder one left mood about where it started.

It is a matter of immense happiness that in the 37th International Biology Olympiad held in Vilnius, Lithuania, all four Indian team members secured medals, including one Gold. Proud of Bhavyaa Gunwal, Soumil Maity, Nishit Kalani and Anmol Kumar for their success at the Olympiad. They have shown immense knowledge of subjects like Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Animal Physiology, Animal Morphology and Systematics as well as Plant Computational Biology. I am certain that this success will encourage several more youngsters.

A discovery from Montana feels like it belongs in a science fiction script — but this one is entirely real. Scientists have confirmed that a 46-million-year-old mosquito fossil still contains traces of ancient blood inside its abdomen. The specimen was originally unearthed in the 1980s from the Kishenehn Formation in Montana by geology student Kurt Constenius. For decades, it sat unnoticed in a basement collection. It wasn’t until retired biochemist Dale Greenwalt, working with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, examined the fossil that its true significance was recognized. Using advanced chemical techniques, researchers detected preserved heme — an iron-containing molecule found in blood. While any hope of recovering dinosaur DNA remains firmly in the realm of fiction (DNA does not survive intact for tens of millions of years), the presence of blood components is still extraordinary. It marks the oldest direct evidence that mosquitoes were already feeding on vertebrate blood during the Eocene epoch. The fossil also highlights how unique the preservation conditions were in Montana’s Kishenehn Formation. Fine lake sediments and low-oxygen conditions allowed delicate biological structures — even chemical traces — to survive for millions of years. Beyond the headline-grabbing “Jurassic Park” comparisons, this discovery provides valuable insight into ancient ecosystems. It confirms that complex host-parasite relationships were already established 46 million years ago, offering a rare biochemical snapshot of life in the deep past. Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History