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AI-powered imaging tracks wound healing under the skin in real time
No matter the size or severity, wounds on human skin are difficult to monitor while they heal. Biopsies disrupt the wound site and are too invasive for routine, repeated monitoring, and most medical imaging devices that could do the job are large, expensive, and booked up with more pressing diagnostics. Clinicians typically resort to visual inspection or quick measurements of the wound’s size over time.
Based on research completed as part of a multi-year collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs, biomedical engineers at Duke University are developing a solution. Using a custom-built optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system together with artificial intelligence (AI) models grounded in a deep understanding of tissue regeneration, researchers have shown they can accurately and objectively measure the progress of wounds healing over time.
Using their new approach, the researchers also show that a hydrogel under development to improve wound healing works better with stiffer mechanical properties. The results are a two-for-one boon in a challenging area for both clinicians and researchers.
Working memory may rely on calcium-tuned synaptic boosts, study suggests
Working memory is a cognitive function that is essential for carrying out everyday activities and temporarily retaining information. This process enables us to understand information, learn and manage responses in a controlled manner—abilities that are often impaired in certain neurodegenerative diseases. Now, a study published in Cell Reports has identified a molecular pathway in the brain that is crucial for the proper functioning of working memory.
The study, conducted using animal models, is led by Francisco José López-Murcia, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona (UBneuro), and a member of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL). The team led by Professor Nils Brose at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences (MPI-NAT, Göttingen, Germany) is also participating in the project.
Stage-specific transcriptomics of a leader cell reveals cell machineries driving collective invasion
Priti Agarwal, Ronen Zaidel-Bar et al. define the stage-specific gene expression programs of a leader cell that drives collective tissue invasion during organ development, identifying membrane trafficking as a central regulator of leader cell behavior.
Migration.
Collective cell invasion underlies organ development, epithelial repair, and cancer metastasis. “Leader cells” remodel ECM, sense guidance cues, reorganize their cytoskeleton, and coordinate follower cells, but the molecular programs enabling these functions remain unclear. Here, we present a stage-specific transcriptomic dataset of the Caenorhabditis elegans gonadal leader cell, the distal tip cell (DTC), which invades basement membrane and guides germ cells to form U-shaped gonadal arms. Comparing invasive larval-stage DTCs with noninvasive adult-stage DTCs defines the molecular signature of an actively invading leader cell in vivo. Our dataset recapitulates known regulators of gonad morphogenesis and reveals numerous uncharacterized genes with potential roles in leader cell activity. Demonstrating dataset utility, we identify vesicular trafficking proteins enriched in invading DTCs and demonstrate their importance for gonad development using endogenous tagging and DTC-specific RNAi. We also catalog diverse DTC-specific knockdown phenotypes. This resource establishes a molecular framework for leader cell activity and a platform to investigate conserved mechanisms of invasive migration.
Ca2+-phospholipid-dependent regulation of Munc13-1 is essential for post-tetanic potentiation at mossy fiber synapses and supports working memory
López-Murcia et al. demonstrate that Ca2+-dependent regulation of the vesicle-priming protein Munc13-1 supports synaptic short-term facilitation and post-tetanic potentiation at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses. Disruption of this regulatory mechanism is associated with impaired working memory formation.
Controlled human influenza infection reveals heterogeneous expulsion of infectious virus into air
Now online! A platform called MIST enables quantification and genotyping of infectious influenza in expelled respiratory particles, revealing diverse, individual-specific viral loads and aerosolized variants that correlate with saliva and nasopharyngeal viral loads and symptoms. Overall, the findings indicate heterogeneity in transmission potential.
Super El Nino? Super Warming is the Main Issue
El Nino strength is important, but the extraordinary, accelerating, warming of global sea surface temperatures is much more important.
See Super El Nino? – https://mailchi.mp/caa/super-el-nino-super-warming-is-the-main-issue
Also available on Substack: https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/super-el-nino-super-warming-is-the
Abstract. Models are converging on prediction of an El Nino beginning this year, peaking in early 2027. After overlooking the possibility of an El Nino this year, some reporting is jumping on a “Super El Nino” bandwagon. El Nino strength and frequency are important, especially the issue of whether these are modified by global warming. However, the more important knowledge that needs to be extracted from near-term global warming concerns interpretation of ongoing, extraordinary, acceleration of ocean surface warming. Impacts of this ocean warming include a factor of two greater warming over land, increased extreme precipitation, and poleward movement of subtropical conditions.
The fundamental advance in the past five years in understanding of global climate change is realization that equilibrium climate sensitivity is substantially larger than the long-standing best estimate of 3°C for doubled CO2. The underestimate was due to an implicit assumption that aerosol climate forcing changed negligibly during the period of rapid linear warming that began about 1970 and on heavy dependence of climate sensitivity assessments on observed warming of the past century. Multiple data sources now indicate that climate sensitivity is 4–5°C, which is consistent with aerosol-cloud modeling that reveals increasing aerosol cooling during the 1970–2005 period of rapid linear warming because of increased global spread of the aerosol sources. This explains why underlying climate sensitivity must be larger to account for the observed temperature rise.
Scientists Create Cancer-Fighting Immune Cells Right in the Body
A new form of in vivo CAR-T therapy kills leukemia, multiple myeloma, and sarcoma in mice, opening the door to a future off-the-shelf cancer treatment without chemotherapy.
For years, one of the most powerful weapons against certain blood cancers, called CAR-T therapy, has required an elaborate process: Doctors extract a patient’s immune cells, ship them to a specialized facility where they’re genetically reprogrammed to fight cancer, then ship them back for infusion into the patient’s bloodstream. This has revolutionized cancer treatment, but the time and expense place it out of reach for thousands of patients.
Now, scientists at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have developed a method to precisely reprogram these cancer-fighting cells directly inside the body, potentially eliminating the barriers that have kept this life-saving therapy out of reach for many patients around the world.
Impressionist sea slugs create their patterns by arranging colorful photonic crystals
Nudibranchs are often referred to as the butterflies of the sea. Nudibranchs live worldwide, primarily in warm, shallow marine regions, and stand out for their flamboyant colors and diverse shapes. A team from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and the University of Cambridge has now discovered how they create their colorful patterns. According to their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the color is produced by nanostructures, each of which creates a specific color impression.
“We were surprised to find that nudibranchs use structural colors,” says Samuel Humphrey, who conducted the research at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. “Biologists had previously assumed that the colors were produced by pigments.” Pigments are chemical compounds and differently colored pigments have different chemical compositions.
In contrast, in structural colors, color is not a chemical property of the material, but it depends on the length scale of nanostructures composing the material. Such nanostructures, also called photonic crystals, are responsible for the coloration of chameleons, as well as many birds and butterflies. In such structures, color is produced by the regular arrangement of materials with different refractive indices.