Toggle light / dark theme

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Identification of Nuclear Genetic Loci Linked to Clinical Features of the m.3243AG Mitochondrial DNA Variant

Background and ObjectivesMitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) disorders exhibit striking clinical variability that is poorly explained by known factors such as variant heteroplasmy, age, or sex. Nuclear genetic modifiers likely play a significant role in this…

Dual Stem Cell Treatment Restores Vision in First Human Trial

A dual stem cell scaffold improved vision and eye surface scores in a small first-in-human trial for aniridia-related keratopathy.

For people with ARK (aniridia-related keratopathy), progressive damage to the eye’s surface can gradually cloud the cornea and severely reduce vision. In a first-in-human clinical trial at Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College London (UCL), a stem cell treatment improved vision in patients with this previously untreatable rare genetic condition. The findings were published in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Aniridia is an eye surface disorder involving limbal stem cells, which are located at the boundary between the sclera (white of the eye) and cornea (the clear area at the front of the eye). Usually caused by an inherited genetic abnormality affecting eye development, the condition can result in profound vision loss.

Heart capillaries may build natural bypasses for blood flow after heart attacks

The heart powers a busy highway of arteries and vessels, providing a constant to-and-fro passage for blood. During a heart attack, this passage becomes blocked, usually when a blood clot forms on plaque in a coronary artery and cuts off blood flow to the heart muscle. A study published in Science found that the heart tries to save itself by growing new natural bypass channels to bring blood and oxygen back to damaged tissue.

For a long time, the prevailing theory was that new backup vessels, also known as coronary collateral arteries, grew when cells from existing arteries broke away and assembled into new arteries. The researchers designed genetic tools with fluorescent markers that glow in different colors depending on whether they contact the smooth muscle cells (SMCs) of mature arteries or the bare surface of capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels.

When injected into mice, the tools revealed that capillaries, rather than existing arteries, did most of the heavy lifting in forming new coronary collateral arteries after a heart attack. Capillaries changed their identity and grew into larger, fully mature arteries through a process called capillary arterialization.

Lunar Regolith Unlocks 100-Million-Year Supernova History

Researchers have developed a model that accounts for chaotic lunar impact gardening, enabling scientists to use lunar regolith to trace supernova history back over 100 million years.


What can lunar regolith (often mistakenly called “soil”) teach scientists about the universe’s history? This is what a recent study published in Physical Review Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how lunar regolith could be used to study supernova explosions. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for studying the cosmos aside from telescopic observations and data.

For the study, the researchers addressed a longstanding conundrum in lunar science called “impact gardening”, which involves the natural mixing of the lunar regolith during impact strikes, even micrometeorites. As a result, using the lunar regolith to study phenomena like the solar or cosmic radiation becomes scrambles since this mixture contains “information” from a variety of time periods. However, the researchers introduced a new model using Apollo lunar regolith samples by reducing the gardening “noise” within the sample.

In the end, the researchers successfully identified the depth of Iron-60, Plutonium-244, Iodine-129, Hafnium-182, and Curium-247, which are known fingerprints of supernova explosions. The team compared this new model with known supernova impacts on Earth and used that data to create a forward-looking model to ascertain how the lunar regolith would store this information.

/* */