Salk researchers find that timing calorie intake synchronizes circadian rhythms across multiple systems in mice. Numerous studies have shown health benefits of time-restricted eating including increase in life span in laboratory studies, making practices like intermittent fasting a hot topic in the wellness industry. However, exactly how it affects the body on the molecular level, and how those changes interact across multiple organ systems, has not been well understood. Now, Salk scientists show in mice how time-restricted eating influences gene…
Researchers hope that ionocaloric cooling could someday help replace refrigerants with high global warming potential and provide safe, efficient cooling and heating for homes. Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named “ionocaloric cooling,” is described in a paper published Dec. 23…
Researchers uncover how embryonic cells sense their mechanical environment to collectively form tissues. Building tissues and organs is one of the most complex and important tasks that cells must accomplish during embryogenesis. Individual cells do not make these decisions; rather, building tissue is a collective task that requires cells to constantly communicate with each other. Different communication methods exist, including chemical cues, similar to a cell’s sense of smell, and also mechanical cues, the cell’s sense of touch. Researchers in…
Grafting and mobile CRISPR for genome editing in plants. A ground-breaking twist to the CRISPR tool – aka “genetic scissors” – is being put to use to edit plant genomes by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, signalling a methodology change. The discovery that was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Biotechnology could simplify and speed up the development of novel, genetically stable commercial crop varieties by combining grafting with a ‘mobile’ CRISPR tool. An…
Unprecedented views of the interior of cells and other nanoscale structures are now possible thanks to innovations in expansion microscopy. The advancements could help provide future insight into neuroscience, pathology, and many other biological and medical fields. In the paper “Magnify is a universal molecular anchoring strategy for expansion microscopy,” published Jan. 2 in the journal Nature Biotechnology, collaborators from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Brown University describe new protocols for dubbed Magnify. “Magnify can be a…
A new method can illuminate the identities and activities of cells throughout an organ or a tumor at unprecedented resolution, according to a study co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and the New York Genome Center. The method, described Jan. 2 in a paper in Nature Biotechnology, records gene activity patterns and the presence of key proteins in cells across tissue samples, while retaining information about the cells’ precise locations. This enables the creation of complex, data-rich “maps”…
Ammonia (NH3) is a substantial important fertilizer and chemical for human society, however, its production by the traditional Haber-Bosch process consumes substantial fossil fuel energy and produces massive carbon dioxide emissions. Powered by renewable energy, electrocatalytic reduction of nitrogen (N2) to NH3 under eco-friendly and mild conditions provides a highly attractive solution to carbon neutrality. Despite recent significant progress, electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (eNRR) still suffers from limited selectivity and activity. This is due to the super-stability of N≡N triple…
Electrochemical CO2 reduction is an effective way to realize the artificial carbon cycle and has attracted more and more attention in recent years. Cu is the only metallic catalyst that can realize CO2 deep reduction to various carbonaceous products, but it suffers from low selectivity. Surface modification is an effective strategy to alter electrochemical CO2 reduction behaviors. Electrochemical CO2 reduction involves multi-step proton-coupled electron transfer processes, so regulating proton transfer has a substantial effect on CO2 reduction pathways. Inspired by…
An enzyme that defends human cells against viruses can help drive cancer evolution towards greater malignancy by causing myriad mutations in cancer cells, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding suggests that the enzyme may be a potential target for future cancer treatments. In the new study, published Dec. 8 in Cancer Research, scientists used a preclinical model of bladder cancer to investigate the role of the enzyme called APOBEC3G in promoting the disease…
… if we can first learn its rules. UC San Diego study reveals critical insights into the complex biology of tissue-specific T cells, paving the way for a new branch of precision therapeutics. Recent pressure to maximize vaccine efficacy has stirred up many new discoveries within immunology, revealing numerous paradigms with untapped therapeutic potential. One growing branch of research is focused on tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM cells), a type of immune cell that provides long-lasting protection against pathogens attacking…
Researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a new technology, called optical tweezer-assisted pool-screening and single-cell isolation (OPSI) system, which achieves 99.7% purity of sorting target cells, with all done in real-time. The study was published in Lab on a Chip on Nov. 29. Current cell-sorting methods cannot effectively sort cells of various sizes while maintaining their viability for future testing. Compared with the currently used methods,…
A Japanese research group has become the first to reveal that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear’s organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives a new insight into how hearing works from the perspective of cell self-organization and will also enable various hearing loss disorders to be better understood. The research group included Assistant Professor TOGASHI Hideru of Kobe University’s Graduate School of Medicine and Dr. KATSUNUMA Sayaka of Hyogo Prefectural Kobe Children’s Hospital….
Grasses have “respiratory pores” (called stomata) that open and close to regulate the uptake of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis on the one hand and water loss through transpiration on the other. Unlike many other plants, stomata in grasses form lateral “helper cells”. Thanks to these cells, the stomata of grasses can open and close more quickly, which optimizes plant-atmosphere gas exchange and thus saves water. For the current study, Prof. Dr. Michael Raissig, Dr. Heike Lindner and co-author Roxane Spiegelhalder…
UC Riverside mouse study could lead to novel therapies for people living with PTSD. A remote fear memory is a memory of traumatic events that occurred in the distant past — a few months to decades ago. A University of California, Riverside, mouse study published in Nature Neuroscience has now spelled out the fundamental mechanisms by which the brain consolidates remote fear memories. The study demonstrates that remote fear memories formed in the distant past are permanently stored in connections between memory…
Inflammation and overactivation of the immune system in the brain can cause loss of synapses and the death of neurons, leading to neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases. In Schizophrenia, increased levels of the immune protein C4 have been measured in patients’ brains and increasing C4 levels due to variations in copy number are associated with an increased risk for developing Schizophrenia. Therapies lowering C4 levels in the brain and reducing inflammation may benefit Schizophrenia patients but are currently not available. Brain…
Pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and pneumococcus can cause severe pneumonia. If the airways then fill with fluid, the patient risks developing acute respiratory distress syndrome. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now discovered the molecular mechanisms that trigger fluid accumulation in the lungs. This also led them to discover a potential new therapy: A cystic fibrosis drug proved effective in their laboratory experiments, raising hope that this could be used to treat pneumonia regardless of the pathogen that caused it. The study has…
Feedback
