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Category: biotech/medical – Page 177

Developing brain cells routinely repair severe DNA damage during migration

Newborn nerve cells must squeeze through crowded, narrow spaces-through dense tissue, past other cells, between fibers-to reach the areas where they form neural circuits in the brain cortex.

In a new study published in Nature, researchers at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (WPI-iCeMS) and their collaborators report that this journey causes widespread DNA damage in neurons, resulting in double-strand breaks where both strands of the double helix are completely severed. While this is the most severe type of DNA damage-capable of causing mutations and cell death-the team surprisingly found that it is a normal, routine feature of brain cortex formation, and a healthy brain quickly repairs it before harm occurs.

“The developing brain appears to have evolved to tolerate and repair the neuronal damage efficiently,” says Professor Mineko Kengaku, of WPI-iCeMS, who led the study. “But understanding the limits of that tolerance-and what happens when repair is incomplete-brings us closer to understanding a range of neurological conditions.”

Is Quantum Information More Fundamental Than Reality? | Vlatko Vedral

What if quantum information is more fundamental than space, time, matter, or even quantum mechanics itself?

Vlatko Vedral explores the implications of a Q-number-based reality for quantum gravity, pre-Big-Bang cosmology, the nature of time, and the possibility that quantum information lies beneath our deepest physical theories.

1:25 Quantum Gravity and Q Numbers.
4:30 Before the Big Bang.
7:42 Time, the Block Universe, and Q Numbers.
11:56 Quantum Mechanics at All Scales.
14:01 The Next Revolution in Physics.

Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian-born British physicist. He is best known for his contributions to quantum information theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum entanglement. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Imperial College London, where he graduated with a PhD.

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Beyond Neuralink: How China’s Bio-Tech Breakthrough Fuels Next-Gen Brain-Computer Interfaces

From ultra-flexible materials redefining brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to record-shattering global out-licensing deals, China’s biopharmaceutical sector is undergoing a profound qualitative transformation. ShanghaiEye takes you inside the Yunfan Future Factory and the cross-discipline innovation hub hosted by Chia Tai Tianqing (CTTQ)—a subsidiary of top-50 global pharma giant Sino Biopharmaceutical—to explore the cutting-edge ecosystem driving the future of global healthcare.

We examine a breakthrough BCI technology developed in Shanghai: an ultra-flexible photoresist material for neural electrode arrays. Ye Tianyang, CEO and Co-Founder of Yunfan Future, explains how this material—engineered to be 1,000 times softer than the rigid alternatives utilized by Western counterparts like Elon Musk’s Neuralink—exponentially reduces tissue damage and immune rejection. With dozens of human clinical trials already successfully completed worldwide, this innovation highlights the immense strength of Shanghai’s local talent pool and medical device supply chain.

The feature also spotlights the strategic roadmap of China’s pharmaceutical leaders. Eric Tse, CEO of Sino Biopharmaceutical and Chairman of CTTQ, breaks down their vision to build an open, interdisciplinary incubator. This global nexus bridges experts, scholars, and upstream and downstream partners, transforming Shanghai into a premier launchpad for international innovative drugs. Furthermore, Mr. Tse discusses the \.

Studying the Neural Circuit Mechanisms of Cognition Using Rodents

Brody is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. His research focuses is on novel quantitative behaviors that allow exploring high-level cognitive questions using powerful emerging tools for studying neural mechanisms in rodents. Brody’s group uses rats to investigate the neural bases of decision making, working memory, and executive control, using a combination of high-throughput semiautomated behavior as well as computational, electrophysiological, pharmacological and optogenetic methods.

Loss of sirtuin 3 disrupts cellular senescence signaling pathways

Cellular senescence is a multifaceted stress response marked by stable proliferative arrest and the secretion of diverse biologically active factors, collectively known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). The senescent phenotype is remarkably variable and subject to various regulatory influences. We previously demonstrated that mitochondrial dysfunction induced by diverse stimuli, including the loss of sirtuin 3 (SIRT3), leads to the hyperactivation of AMPK and p53, culminating in senescence while concurrently suppressing much of the proinflammatory SASP. Here, we extend our findings by revealing that the absence of SIRT3 can suppress segments of the SASP even in the absence of p53. Intriguingly, SIRT3 deficiency renders cells resistant to stimulation by exogenous cytokines, such as interleukin-1.

Stretching the skin can alter how we perceive our fingers

When moving around in their surroundings, humans heavily rely on what is known as proprioception, sometimes referred to as the “sixth sense.” This is the body’s subconscious ability to sense its own position, movements and location in space, via many tiny receptors that respond to mechanical strain located in the muscles, tendons and skin.

Researchers at University of Pisa, the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), and University of Rome Tor Vergata recently carried out a study investigating how artificially stretching the skin while people are moving their fingers influences proprioception. Their findings, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, suggest that precisely deforming the skin while people are flexing their fingers alters how they perceive their hand and finger postures.

“According to common belief, humans have only five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; yet physiology tells us there are more,” Eleonora Fontana, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “An essential, often overlooked ‘sixth sense’ is proprioception—our body’s ability to perceive limb position and movement in space. While much of this information is processed subconsciously, it is central to guiding our everyday movements; in fact, individuals with proprioceptive deficits suffer from severe movement impairments.”

Understanding and targeting erythroid cell metabolism

Red blood cell (RBC) production, or erythropoiesis, serves as a paradigm for studying cellular differentiation in both physiological and pathological contexts. While the transcriptional and epigenetic programs controlling erythropoiesis are well characterized, the metabolic regulation of this complex process remains underexplored. Recent discoveries that pyruvate kinase activators improve outcomes in sickle cell disease and thalassemia underscore the therapeutic potential of targeting metabolism in RBC disorders. However, further progress is limited by an incomplete understanding of the metabolic networks supporting erythropoiesis and RBC function.

A heat sensor for living cells could offer new views of cell metabolism, rapid antibiotic testing

When living cells grow, divide or respond to drugs, they give off tiny amounts of heat that offer information about what the cells are doing. But because these heat signals are so vanishingly small, they have traditionally been impossible to measure directly. Researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a calorimeter—a device that measures the heat transfer between a living system and its environment—that can detect metabolic heat signals on the order of 100 picowatts, or trillionths of a watt, in living cells.

The device is the most sensitive of any comparable bio-calorimeter to date. The new “pico-calorimeter” can track the metabolism of small populations of bacteria in real time, as well as monitor how bacterial growth changes in response to different antibiotics.

The work is from the lab of Joost Vlassak, the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Materials Engineering, and was carried out by Harvard associate Juanjuan Zheng, a former postdoctoral researcher in Vlassak’s lab. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nanomedicine discovery uses salt to overcome major obstacle in gene therapy

Researchers at the University of Houston’s College of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpectedly simple strategy to improve the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapeutics: adding salt. The findings, published in Small, address one of the biggest challenges facing modern gene medicine—getting fragile therapeutic material to the right place inside cells.

“We are introducing salt-loaded lipid nanoparticles as a novel and broadly applicable design principle for gene delivery,” said Fanfei Meng, assistant professor and Presidential Frontier Faculty member in the Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “What makes this exciting is that we can significantly improve delivery efficiency without needing to invent entirely new materials.”

Lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, are tiny fat-based delivery vehicles widely used to transport fragile genetic material into cells. They became widely recognized during the COVID-19 pandemic through mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer. Today, scientists are also using LNPs to develop new treatments for cancer, rare diseases and genetic disorders.