The impact of implementing and sustaining the international guidelines for skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after birth in Uganda.

Skin-to-skin contact between the mother and baby during the first hour after birth has significant benefits for mother, newborn and breastfeeding. However, optimal implementation is highly variable. The 2023 International Guidelines on skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after birth place high confidence in the evidence that immediate, continuous, uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact should be routine for all mothers and all babies over 1000 g, regardless of mode of delivery.

Restoring Mitochondrial Quantity and Quality to Reverse Warburg Effect and Drive Tumor Differentiation.

Reduced mitochondrial quality and quantity in tumors is associated with dedifferentiation and increased malignancy. However, it remains unclear how to restore mitochondrial quantity and quality in tumors, and whether mitochondrial restoration can drive tumor differentiation. Our study shows that restoring mitochondrial function using retinoic acid (RA) to boost mitochondrial biogenesis and a mitochondrial uncoupler to enhance respiration synergistically drives neuroblastoma differentiation and inhibits proliferation.

Safety and efficacy of a feed additive consisting of ponceau 4R for its use in baits for freshwater fish (GIFAP).

Following a request from the European Commission, EFSA was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on the safety and efficacy of ponceau 4R as sensory additives (functional group: (a) colourants: (i) substances that add or restore colour in feedingstuffs). The additive is already authorised for use with cats and dogs and ornamental fish. The additive is intended to be incorporated in freshwater fishing baits up to a maximum of 15 mg/kg in complementary feed in order to colour them.

AlphaFold2 enables accurate deorphanization of ligands to single-pass receptors.

Secreted proteins play crucial roles in paracrine and endocrine signaling; however, identifying ligand-receptor interactions remains challenging. Here, we benchmarked AlphaFold2 (AF2) as a screening approach to identify extracellular ligands to single-pass transmembrane receptors. Key to the approach is the optimization of AF2 input and output for screening ligands against receptors to predict the most probable ligand-receptor interactions.

A β-hydroxybutyrate shunt pathway generates anti-obesity ketone metabolites.

β-Hydroxybutyrate (BHB) is an abundant ketone body. To date, all known pathways of BHB metabolism involve the interconversion of BHB and primary energy intermediates. Here, we identify a previously undescribed BHB secondary metabolic pathway via CNDP2-dependent enzymatic conjugation of BHB and free amino acids.