Greenlandic ice is teeming with life, both on the surface and underneath. There are microscopic organisms that until recently science had no idea existed. There is even evidence to suggest that the tiny creatures colour the ice and make it melt faster. There are no plants, and only very few animals: people rarely come here. The large glaciers in Greenland have long been perceived as ice deserts. Gigantic ice sheets where conditions for life are extremely harsh. But now, it…

A previously unknown form of hydrogel formation has been elucidated: chemists found unusual interactions between polymers. Hydrogels? Many people use these substances without knowing it. As superabsorbents in nappies, for example, hydrogels absorb a lot of liquid. In the process, the initially dry material becomes Jelly-like, but it does not wet. Some people place the swellable material on their eyeballs – soft contact lenses are also just hydrogels. The same goes for jelly and other everyday materials. Hydrogels also play…

Surgeons with Keck Medicine of USC launch clinical trial to enroll first-ever bladder transplant patient after multiple successful research procedures. No one has ever performed a bladder transplant in humans. But that may be about to change. Urologists with Keck Medicine of USC have launched a clinical trial to perform the world’s first human bladder transplant. The trial is actively screening potential participants for this first-ever type of transplantation. During the procedure, the patient’s diseased bladder will be removed and…

An intrinsic limitation in AFM imaging is that only the surface topography can be acquired, and the AFM tip is too large to resolve details below the nanometer scale. To facilitate the interpretation and understanding of HS-AFM observations, post-experimental analysis and computational methods play an increasingly important role. In their review paper published in the Current Opinion in Structural Biology journal Holger Flechsig (NanoLSI, Computational Science), and Toshio Ando (Distinguished Professor at NanoLSI) provide an overview of developments in this topical…

Multiple myeloma is a rare blood cancer caused by the uncontrolled multiplication of abnormal plasma cells. These plasma cells are a special type of white blood cells that play an important role in the immune system by producing essential antibodies in the bone marrow and lymph nodes. Despite an increasing number of approved drugs and treatment approaches such as immunotherapy becoming available, the disease is still not curable. The average life expectancy of patients after diagnosis is only five years….

An ERK-dependent molecular switch antagonizes fibrosis and promotes regeneration. Injury response after a deep skin wound, myocardial infarction, stroke, spinal cord injury or lung infection mostly yields fibrotic tissue, resulting in permanent scars and organ function failure. It is estimated that around 50% of people die from a disease that involves scarring. Currently, there are no treatments for restoring loss of organ function due to an injury or a pathological condition. Understanding the molecular mechanisms driving fibrosis and regeneration in…

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most common form of pancreatic cancer. It’s also one of the deadliest. More than 90% of PDAC patients die within five years of diagnosis. Usually, by the time the cancer is identified, it has already spread. “PDAC is often found too late for treatments like chemotherapy and surgery to be very effective,” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Adrian Krainer says. “But if we can clearly understand the underlying genetic mechanisms of PDAC, this might lead…

The technology, which mimics the body’s natural clotting process, could help keep severely injured people alive until they are treated at a hospital. MIT engineers have designed a two-component system that can be injected into the body and help form blood clots at the sites of internal injury. These materials, which mimic the way that the body naturally forms clots, could offer a way to keep people with severe internal injuries alive until they can reach a hospital. In a…

The new diagnostic, which is based on analysis of urine samples, could also be designed to reveal whether a tumor has metastasized. MIT engineers have designed a new nanoparticle sensor that could enable early diagnosis of cancer with a simple urine test. The sensors, which can detect many different cancerous proteins, could also be used to distinguish the type of a tumor or how it is responding to treatment. The nanoparticles are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed…

Typically T cells of the immune system respond to a specific feature (antigen) of a microbe, thereby generating protective immunity. As reported in the journal Immunity, an international team of scientists have discovered an exception to this rule. Namely, a group of divergent bacterial pathogens, including pneumococci, all share a small highly conserved protein sequence, which is both presented and recognized by human T cells in a conserved population-wide manner. The study set out to understand immune mechanisms that protect…

Graz University of Technology Researchers Produce Pseudouridine through Biocatalytic Synthesis, The new and patented method for the production of the important mRNA vaccine component pseudouridine is more efficient, sustainable and cost-effective than the previously used chemical synthesis. Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering at TU Graz and the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) have developed a novel method for the production of central components of mRNA vaccines and applied for a patent. In an article published…

The printer generates vaccine-filled microneedle patches that can be stored long-term at room temperature and applied to the skin. Getting vaccines to people who need them isn’t always easy. Many vaccines require cold storage, making it difficult to ship them to remote areas that don’t have the necessary infrastructure. MIT researchers have come up with a possible solution to this problem: a mobile vaccine printer that could be scaled up to produce hundreds of vaccine doses in a day. This…

“We have developed a technique in our laboratories that allows us to obtain an antibiogram within 2-4 hours – instead of the current 24 hours for the most common germs and one month for tuberculosis,” says Dr Sandor Kasas at EPFL. Professor Ronnie Willaert at Vrije Universiteit Brussel adds: “Our technique is not only faster but also simpler and much cheaper than all those existing now.” Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to…

How gene interactions shape the evolution of cell-to-cell variation. Biological cells, whether free-living or part of a multicellular organism, have to perform hundreds of functions to survive, such as perceiving their environment, uptaking and metabolising nutrients, regenerating decayed parts, reproducing themselves, and many more. The information on how to perform these functions is carried by genes and practically realised through a process called “gene expression”, through which gene products are made. Gene products work together in what is often represented…

– the role of long-chain fatty acids in cellular respiration. Cellular respiration is a complex and highly regulated process that allows cells to draw energy from nutrition. An international team of scientists in Finland, Germany and Poland have investigated the important role of long-chain fatty acids in guiding this process. The findings, published in the Nature Communications journal, will shed light on the understanding of mitochondrial function that involve disruptions in cellular energy metabolism. They are tiny and highly efficient…

Max Planck and Harvard research teams develop DeMAG, a new method shared as an open-source web server (demag.org) to help interpret mutations in disease genes and improve clinical decision-making. Despite the increasing use of genomic sequencing in clinical practice, interpreting rare genetic mutations, even among well-studied disease genes, remains difficult. Current predictive models are useful for interpreting those mutations, but they are prone to misclassify those that do not cause diseases, contributing to false positives. Researchers from the Max Planck…