Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 3

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

Log in for authorized contributors

Multi-Species Basal Ganglia Cellular Atlas Unveiled

The mammalian brain is a bustling hub of intricate webs of billions of neurons connected by a network of neural highways with signals racing along winding routes. Researchers have sought to understand the nitty gritty details of this complex organ for a while.

With this target, scientists from a number of institutes launched the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) a few years ago. “The main goal of this was to leverage single cell genomics technologies to profile millions of cells in the mammalian brain,” said Hongkui Zeng, an investigator at the Allen Institute.

Now, in a step toward that direction, Zeng and hundreds of other researchers from dozens of institutes across nine countries joined forces to unveil a multi-species cellular atlas of the basal ganglia: structures at the base of the forebrain. The findings, which were published today in a package of 26 studies in Cell Press journals, represent the most detailed library of basal ganglia to date, offering a resource to better understand brain cell characteristics and how diseases affect these.

European survey reveals 900m galaxies — and possibly secrets of ‘dark universe’

Prof Andy Taylor, of the University of Edinburgh, who leads the UK science ground segment for the mission, said while there were bigger surveys, none had the detail and the information content of Euclid. By contrast the Hubble telescope has produced images of incredible resolution, but does not cover as large an area of the sky.

“The technological leap that’s Euclid is that we can keep that high resolution, but now we can basically map huge volumes of the sky, huge volumes of the universe,” Taylor said.

Now, the first major Euclid data release has landed, offering researchers an unprecedented view of the cosmos. “It’s the biggest high-resolution image of the universe we’ve ever had,” Taylor said.

Elephant trunk-inspired robots bend, grip, and team up for tough tasks

Researchers at Colorado State University have developed flexible robots inspired by elephant trunks that can bend, grip objects, and connect with other machines. The robots use a structural design called tensegrity, in which rigid rods are held together by tensioned cables rather than fixed joints.

The construction allows them to collapse, bend, and change shape while using gripping claws at both ends of their tube-like bodies to manipulate objects or attach to other robots.

A Cellular Trio Drives Pancreatic Cancer-Associated Cachexia

In previous work, Li and his colleagues had shown that pancreatic cancer cells induce muscle loss and require macrophages in the tumor microenvironment to trigger cachexia.4,5 While the crosstalk between macrophages, CAFs, and cancer cells is essential in cancer-associated cachexia, Li explained that these cell populations consist of a mixture of subpopulations that may or may not contribute to the wasting syndrome.

In the new study, Li’s team sought to uncover the identities of these cell subgroups and how they affected the progression of the syndrome. The researchers combined high-throughput sequencing methods, including single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, to analyze tumor, muscle, and blood samples from 43 patients with pancreatic cancer. “This [sample collection] is demanding, and it is the appropriate design for a condition that progresses and is systemic rather than local,” Janowitz said, praising the study authors’ effort. The patients were classified as non-cachectic, pre-cachectic, and cachectic based on their body-weight loss preceding their cancer diagnosis and their level of appetite.

Li noted that, when the project started nearly two years ago, not all the necessary samples were available for the study. “I made a lot of phone calls, and, fortunately, [lots] of good, supportive colleagues were willing to help us,” said Li, adding that having access to these additional samples was key to providing enough statistical power for their group comparisons.