… protecting eyes from viral infections. The cornea – the transparent protective outer layer of the eye critical to helping us see – produces a delicate and limited immune response to fight infections without damaging our vision, according to a ground-breaking new study from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute). Published today in Cell Reports, the study has shown long-living memory T cells that patrol and fight viral infections are present in the cornea, upending current…

LMU scientists have shown that small aggregates function as temporary RNA repositories, which are regulated by neural activity. Cells constantly have to adapt the level of activity of certain genes to specific requirements. This applies particularly to neurons, where synapses have to be repeatedly re-formed, re-wired, and restructured. For these processes – without which learning and remembering, for example, would not be possible – messenger molecules (mRNAs) deliver protein blueprints to the right place at the right time. In regulating…

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for extracting hydrogen gas from liquid carriers which is faster, less expensive and more energy efficient than previous approaches. “Hydrogen is widely viewed as a sustainable energy source for transportation, but there are some technical obstacles that need to be overcome before it can be viewed as a practical alternative to existing technologies,” says Milad Abolhasani, corresponding author of a paper on the new technique and an associate professor…

Watching corals breathe: Researchers develop a new method to simultaneously measure flow and oxygen. The surface of a coral is rugged. Its hard skeleton is populated by polyps that stretch their tentacles into the surrounding water to filter out food. But how exactly does the water flow over the coral surface, what eddies and flows develop, and what does this mean for the oxygen supply around the coral and its associated algae? Until now, there was no answer to these…

A new study from the University of Southampton has discovered that ‘crown-like structures’ surrounding breast tumours in overweight and obese patients could hinder their response to therapy. The findings of this study could potentially be used to improve personalised treatment for patients with HER2 positive overexpressed breast cancer. Adipose tissue, or body fat, is an important component of the healthy human breast and yet high body mass index (BMI) is associated with increased risk of developing breast cancer. Overweight patients also…

Researchers report in unprecedented detail how some of the brain’s immune cells develop, and how to distinguish them from other cells. Thanks to over a century of modern neuroscience, we have made significant strides in our understanding of the brain. Nonetheless, we have only just begun to scratch the surface of how this amazingly complex organ works. Digging deeper into this perplexing puzzle, researchers from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences have now analyzed in unprecedented detail the development and…

Structural color printing creates new pathways for medical diagnostics and miniaturized sensors. Microfluidic devices use tiny spaces to manipulate very small quantities of liquids and gasses by taking advantage of the properties they exhibit at the microscale. They have demonstrated usefulness in applications from inkjet printing to chemical analysis and have great potential in personal medicine, where they can miniaturize many tests that now require a full lab, lending them the name lab-on-a-chip. Researchers at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated…

Novel surface treatment developed at UCLA stops microbes from adhering to medical devices like catheters and stents. A hospital or medical clinic might be the last place you’d expect to pick up a nasty infection, but approximately 1.7 million Americans do each year, resulting in nearly 100,000 deaths from infection-related complications and roughly $30 billion in direct medical costs. The biggest culprits, experts say — accounting for two-thirds of these infections — are medical devices like catheters, stents, heart valves…

Since the discovery of the chloride ion channel ASOR three years ago, researchers have been searching for its biological functions. Now, the team led by Prof. Thomas Jentsch at the FMP and MDC in Berlin discovered that ASOR is essential for the shrinkage of macropinosomes – particularly large vesicles that take up large amounts of extracellular fluid, including ions and proteins, in a non-specific manner. This process is especially important for certain immune and cancer cells. Indeed, under nutrient-poor conditions,…

– Negatively charged Polymer proves effective. A large number of viruses are known to make life difficult for both humans and animals. While broad-spectrum antibiotics can offer protection against a wide variety of bacteria, there are currently no analogous clinically available broad-spectrum antiviral agents. An international research team has now shown that polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) has the potential to be used in the prevention of viral infections – not only in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 and cold viruses, but…

… from Single Cells to Organoids. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT are working on new tools for the preparation and analysis of single cells and cell assemblies. The team developed the “Liftoscope”, a system for cell sorting for subsequent cultivation that can analyze and transfer biomaterials precisely and in a way that is gentle on cells. In addition to this system, further 3D bioprinting methods are increasingly finding their way into biotechnological research: Thanks to the…

… due to hyperpolarized nuclear magnetic resonance. Hyperpolarized nuclear magnetic resonance enables major medical advances in molecular diagnostics, for example for cardiovascular diseases or cancer therapy. Within the framework of the EU collaborative project “MetaboliQs”, seven partners coordinated by Fraunhofer IAF and NVision developed a microscopy method which, for the first time, enables the analysis of metabolic processes at the single cell level by means of diamond-based hyperpolarization. In addition, the consortium successfully demonstrated hyperpolarization using the PHIP method in…

Pitt chemical engineers show how tungsten oxide can be used as a catalyst in sustainable chemical conversions. Engineers rely on catalysts for a vast array of applications from food manufacturing to chemical production, so finding efficient, environmentally friendly catalysts is an important avenue of research. New research led by the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering could lead to the creation of new, sustainable catalysts based on tungsten oxide and similar compounds. The project used computational simulations to understand…

A study shows how the National COVID Cohort Collaborative used XGBoost machine learning models to better define long COVID and identify potential long-COVID patients with a high degree of accuracy. Clinical scientists used machine learning (ML) models to explore de-identified electronic health record (EHR) data in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), a National Institutes of Health-funded national clinical database, to help discern characteristics of people with long-COVID and factors that may help identify such patients using data from medical…

Just as it’s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell’s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell’s surroundings so that biologists can make more meaning of gene expression information. The researchers, led by Professor of Computer Science Ben Raphael, hope the new system will open the door to identifying rare cell…

A USC Stem Cell study in NPJ Regenerative Medicine presents intriguing evidence that large bone injuries might trigger a repair strategy in adults that recapitulates elements of skeletal formation in utero. Key to this repair strategy is a gene with a fittingly heroic name: Sonic hedgehog. In the study, first author Maxwell Serowoky, a PhD student in the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Francesca Mariani, and his colleagues took a close look at how mice are able to regrow large sections of missing rib—an…