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Category: biotech/medical – Page 35

Not all organs age alike: AI unveils the molecular impact of menopause across the female body

Despite affecting half of the world’s population, menopause has historically been understudied and misunderstood, both in biomedical research and clinical practice. However, with the increase in life expectancy, the number of women in the postmenopausal stage continues to grow and, in 2021, those over 50 already represented 26% of the world’s population, according to the WHO.

Its effects go far beyond the reproductive system and are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular, metabolic, neurodegenerative, and bone diseases. Nevertheless, few studies analyzed in depth how this process affects the female reproductive system as a whole, beyond the ovaries.

In this context, a new study by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center—Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), published in Nature Aging, presents the first large-scale atlas of female reproductive system aging, providing a new vision of how this process impacts health.

Tackling the active antibiotic-resistant bacteria in soils

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in soils.

Soil antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) originate from diverse anthropogenic inputs and undergo complex ecological and evolutionary processes that determine their persistence and mobility in terrestrial ecosystems.

Advanced monitoring strategies combining high-throughput DNA-based and single-cell functional techniques enable precise profiling of total and active ARGs in soil matrices.

A tiered risk assessment framework is proposed, integrating ARG mobility, host pathogenicity, and human exposure to support decision-making in One Health contexts.

Multi-barrier mitigation strategies – including source control and ecological bioremediation – offer scalable and synergistic solutions to reduce the risk of dissemination of soil ARGs. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-in-soils

Soils are critical reservoirs of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), serving as interfaces among human, animal, plant, and environmental microbiomes. While many studies have profiled soil ARGs, most rely on DNA-based methods that cannot distinguish total from metabolically active ARB, limiting risk assessment and mitigation. This review outlines soil ARG sources, their mobility, and potential transmission to plants and the food chain. We highlight advances in community-and single-cell-level approaches for characterizing active ARB and explore emerging mitigation strategies such as advanced waste treatment and bioremediation. This review aims to bridge the gap between ARG pollution and its risk mitigation, contributing to a comprehensive framework for tackling active ARB in soils.

Continue reading “Tackling the active antibiotic-resistant bacteria in soils” | >

Mechanical circulatory support for patients with infarct-related cardiogenic shock: a state-of-the-art review

In this episode of the Heart podcast, Digital Media Editor @jhfrudd is joined by Prof. Jacob Eifer Moller from Odense, Denmark. They discuss his review paper on mechanical circulatory support, along with supporting guidelines and papers in this area.

Podcast: https://bit.ly/46fB0vO

Paper: https://bit.ly/4pkR1t5

In this episode of the Heart podcast, Digital Media Editor, Professor James Rudd, is joined by Prof. Jacob Eifer Moller from Odense, Denmark. They discuss his review paper on mechanical circulatory support and some of the supporting guidelines and papers in this area. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a positive review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us to reach more people — thanks! Link to published paper: https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2025/01/15/heartjnl-2024-324883

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Continue reading “Mechanical circulatory support for patients with infarct-related cardiogenic shock: a state-of-the-art review” | >

Language mapped to a high‐resolution brain atlas for surgical evaluation of epilepsy patients

Interactive language maps translated into the Yale Brain Atlas can help standardize multimodal communication and individualize patient care.

Objective We created composite maps of language function from extraoperative stimulation literature and transformed them to the Yale Brain Atlas (YBA), which offers precise cortical localization with 690 one cm2 parcels, based on the MNI152 template and anatomical landmarks. This allowed comparison to similarly transformed direct cortical stimulation (DCS) maps created from medically intractable epilepsy patients studied intracranially at Yale University and selected fMRI activation data. Our goal was to create anatomically precise boundaries of language function and support individualized planning for intracranial EEG (icEEG) studies and/or surgical resection.

Scientists redesign CAR-T cells to fight more than cancer

This review examines how CAR-T cell therapy is expanding beyond blood cancers into solid tumors, autoimmune diseases, chronic viral infections, and next-generation immune-cell platforms. It highlights promising engineering advances, including universal CAR-T cells, in vivo delivery, CAR-NK cells, and safety switches, while emphasizing unresolved challenges in durability, safety, scalability, and global access.

Hidden stripe pattern lets microscopes auto-focus across 400 times deeper range

Anyone who has ever used a microscope knows that it takes time to bring a sample into sharp focus. Each time you move the slide, the image blurs, and you have to stop and carefully turn a knob to bring everything back into clear view. For scientists and clinicians, even if the motion is semi-automated, that time quickly adds up as they work with dozens or hundreds of samples.

Now a team of scientists at Caltech has developed an inexpensive, robust fix for this problem that involves little more than a couple of LED lights and some physics-based processing. They describe the new autofocus technique, which they call Digital Defocus Aberration Interference (DAbI), in a paper published in Nature Communications.

The lead authors of the paper are graduate students Haowen Zhou, Ph.D., and Shi “Josh” Zhao, who completed the work in the lab of Changhuei Yang, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Medical Engineering at Caltech and a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator.

Light can now be shaped in empty space, and it could simplify sensing and boost data links

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have uncovered a hidden property of light that allows it to twist, spin and behave differently—without mirrors, materials or special lenses. In a breakthrough that could transform medical testing, data transmission and future quantum technologies, researchers from the UK and South Africa have shown that light can be “programmed” simply by exploiting its natural geometry.

The discovery overturns decades of scientific thinking and reveals that light can develop chiral behavior—meaning it can act like a left or right hand—while traveling freely through space. This, the team says, could ultimately lead to a world where light carries information, probes biology, manipulates matter and protects quantum signals. The research is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

Ancient DNA Study Reveals Human Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought

New research challenges long-standing assumptions about human evolution, revealing that natural selection has been more active—and more recent—than once believed. A sweeping analysis of ancient DNA from nearly 16,000 people is reshaping how scientists understand human evolution. By tracking genet

Caveolin-1 deficiency Improved Glucose Metabolism via Modulation of β-cell Autophagy on High-Fat-Diet Mice

New in JBC press.

Lipotoxicity caused β-cell mass decrease and impaired β-cell function in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We previously reported that caveolin-1 (Cav-1) deficiency protected pancreatic β cells against palmitate (PA)-induced apoptosis and dysfunction in both NIT-1 cells and isolated islets. In this study, we firstly established inducible β-cell-specific Cav-1 knockout (iβ-Cav1 KO) mice model. Next, we investigated whether Cav-1 depletion in vitro or in vivo affected β-cell function and survival through the regulation of autophagy under lipotoxicity.

Tapping your genome with AI and quantum computing could deliver on the promise of personalized medicine — but practical and ethical hurdles remain

Combining AI with quantum computing could enable doctors and researchers to analyze the human body at an unprecedented molecular level, unlocking breakthroughs in personalized medicine. Yet significant quantum technology hurdles remain before this vision becomes reality.

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