Scientists at Lund University, Sweden showed that it is possible to prevent type 2 diabetes in mice by inhibiting a protein known as VDAC1. This inhibitor might be employed in treating this disease in humans [1].

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) develops after years of prediabetes during which high glucose (glucotoxicity) impairs insulin secretion. We report that the ATP conducting mitochondrial outer membrane voltage dependent anion channel-1 (VDAC1) is upregulated in islets from T2D and non-diabetic organ donors under glucotoxic conditions. This is caused by a glucotoxicity-induced transcriptional program, triggered during years of prediabetes with suboptimal blood glucose control. Metformin counteracts VDAC1 induction. VDAC1 overexpression causes its mistargeting to the plasma membrane of the insulin secreting β cells with loss of the crucial metabolic coupling factor ATP. VDAC1 antibodies and inhibitors prevent ATP loss. Through direct inhibition of VDAC1 conductance, metformin, like specific VDAC1 inhibitors and antibodies, restores the impaired generation of ATP and glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in T2D islets.

In a lab at Johns Hopkins University, little bits of human eyes are growin in a dish. When one thinks of an eye, they likely think of the full bulbous form — the lens, an iris; the vitreous body. These retinal organoids are not that. Technically, they’re retinas grown from human stem cells — globs of the white tissue that lines the very back of the eye. While growing eye globs is a technical marvel in itself, their creation has a compounded purpose. Scientists generated them to understand why we can even see color and to learn how we can help people who can’t.

“As a scientist, I think that you have to have a passion for what you’re doing and a connection to your organism,” organoid-creator and Johns Hopkins University graduate student Kiara Eldred tells Inverse. “I cared for the organoids every day in the beginning and then every other day as they got older. In the lab, my co-authors and I all kind of refer to them as our babies because we have to care for them all the time.”

In a study published Thursday in Science, Eldred and her team reveal why these retinas are so important. Humans have three types of color-detecting cells that sense red, green, or blue light. But the mechanisms behind why this is hasn’t been fully understood. Here, the team discovered that blue cells are made first, and then red and green cells later. Learning the timing of these cell formations was a novel finding — and made sense, considering we and other primates have something called trichromatic color vision.

Heads up, hunting enthusiasts: The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is warning hunters in the state to be wary of bovine tuberculosis in deer, a disease that’s transmissible to humans, WSMH-News reported.

The “serious contagious disease” is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium bovis, according to Purdue University. It’s spread “primarily through the exchange of respiratory secretions between infected and uninfected animals,” such as coughing or sneezing, according to the Michigan DNR.

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