By directly targeting RNA, UC San Diego researchers were able to eliminate toxic protein buildup that causes the progressive neurodegenerative condition while not significantly disrupting other human genes. Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurological disorder that causes progressive loss of movement, coordination and cognitive function. It is caused by a mutation in a single gene called huntingtin or HTT. More than 200,000 people worldwide live with the genetic condition, approximately 30,000 in the United States. More than a quarter of…

Scientists find out what stem cell networks look like and where they came from. An ancient fish called a ‘living fossil’ has helped researchers understand the basics of stem cells. This will further stem cell research and be a step in the direction of creating artificial organs. A beating heart. A complicated organ that pumps blood around the body of animals and humans. Not exactly something you associate with a Petri dish in a laboratory. But that may change in…

International expert committee led by Professor Arndt Vogel updates ESMO treatment guidelines for biliary tract cancer. Biliary tract cancers (BTC) are cancers of the bile ducts and gallbladder. BCTs are rare and account for less than one percent of malignant neoplasms in humans. Overall, BCT have a poor prognosis. Five years after diagnosis, only 10 to 20 percent of those affected are still alive. However, advances in medicine and research offer hope, which have led to the updating of the…

Ribosomes, the tiny protein-producing factories within cells, are ubiquitous and look largely identical across the tree of life. Those that keep bacteria chugging along are, structurally, not much different from the ribosomes churning out proteins in our own human cells. But even two organisms with similar ribosomes may display significant structural differences in the RNA and protein components of their mitoribosomes. Specialized ribosomes within the mitochondria (the energy producing entities within our cells), mitoribosomes help the mitochondria produce proteins that…

Biofilms, complex communities of bacteria, abound around us: on the surface of cheese where they give off flavors and aromas, in streams where they form the slimy substance on rocks, on our teeth where they form plaque. Living in a biofilm provides numerous advantages to bacteria: things like resource sharing, shelter from predators, and increased resistance to toxic compounds such as antibiotics. But having the option to leave the biofilm when environmental conditions deteriorate can be a plus for bacteria,…

Centre for Clinical Studies (ZKS) brings findings from science into practical application. Hannover Medical School (MHH) is one of Germany’s leading institutions in vaccine research. Before new vaccines are launched on the market, they have to undergo extensive clinical testing. The requirements for a clinical trial are high, the bureaucratic effort for planning and implementation is immense. Because this can hardly be done alongside the actual research work, the MHH has set up the Centre for Clinical Studies (ZKS). Here,…

To perform coordinated movements, we rely on special sensory neurons in our muscles and joints. Without them, the brain wouldn’t know what the rest of our body was doing. A team led by Niccolò Zampieri has studied their molecular markers to better understand how they work and describes the results in Nature Communications. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch: We’re all familiar with the five senses that allow us to experience our surroundings. Equally important but much less well known is…

A team led by Prof. Frank Glorius at the University of Münster presents a new, direct way to produce unsymmetrically constructed vicinal diamines. These structures are relevant for the function of biologically active molecules, natural products and pharmaceuticals. Among the most common structures relevant to the function of biologically active molecules, natural products and drugs are so-called vicinal diamines – in particular, unsymmetrically constructed diamines. Vicinal diamines contain two functional atomic groups responsible for the substance properties, each with a…

Method offers new approach to treating neurological conditions such as epilepsy. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and MIT have developed a new method to target diseased neurons in the brain and change their long-term behavior using light, paving the way for potential new treatments for neurological conditions such as epilepsy and autism. The research is published in Science Advances. “We envision that this technology will provide new opportunities for high spatiotemporal resolution control of…

TU Freiberg explains basics of aerosol formation at the vocal folds. Very small exhaled droplets, so-called aerosol particles, play an important role in the airborne transmission of pathogens such as the corona virus. Researchers in the field of fluid mechanics used a model to investigate how exactly the small droplets are formed in the larynx when speaking or singing. The team now reports its results in the current issue of Physics of Fluids by AIP Publishing. The findings can now…

Modern eukaryotic cells contain numerous so-called organelles, which once used to be independent bacteria. In order to understand how these bacteria were integrated into the cells in the course of evolution and how they are controlled, a research team from the Institute of Microbial Cell Biology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has examined the single-celled flagellate Angomonas deanei, which contains a bacterium that was taken up relatively recently. In the journal Current Biology, the biologists now describe how certain…

USC researchers Megan McCain and postdoc Megan Rexius-Hall have engineered a microscale model that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction and might one day serve as a testbed for new personalized heart drugs. Researchers at the University of Southern California Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a “heart attack on a chip,” a device that could one day serve as a testbed to develop new heart drugs and even personalized medicines. “Our device replicates some key features…

… and help COVID-19 patients. Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), together with colleagues from Germany and the UK, have found that a commonly used liver drug also affects infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It causes the number of ACE-2 receptors on the cells to decrease, which makes it harder for the virus to enter the cells. The researchers were able to demonstrate this in various cultured organoids in the laboratory, as well as in living…

When shopping in the supermarket, consumers must be able to rely on food labels. However, are they always correct? In the joint project QSPEC, the AMO GmbH, the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH), the Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH), the TOPTICA Photonics AG, the AMOtronics UG and the German Institute of Food Technology (DIL) want to develop a new analysis method that uses quantum mechanical effects to test food for its ingredients and origin more cost-effectively. Fraud in the labeling of…

For the first cell to develop into an entire organism, genes, RNA molecules and proteins have to work together in a complex way. At first, this process is indirectly controlled by the mother. At a certain point in time, the protein GRIF-1 ensures that the offspring cut themselves off from this influence and start their own course of development. A research team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) details how this process works in the journal “Science Advances”. When a…

New method lets researchers detect proteins in close proximity in single cells. Today, most methods to determine the proteins inside a cell rely on a crude census—scientists usually grind a large group of cells up before characterizing their genetic material. But just as a population of 100 single people differs in many ways from a population of 20 five-person households, this kind of description fails to capture information about how proteins are interacting and clumping together into functional groups. Now,…