The background
Most biochemistry labs that study DNA isolate it within a water-based solution that allows scientists to manipulate DNA without interacting with other molecules. They also tend to use heat to separate strands, heating the DNA to over 150 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature a cell would never naturally reach. By contrast, in a living cell DNA lives in a very crowded environment, and special proteins attach to DNA to mechanically unwind the double helix and then pry it apart.
A lung cancer patient at UCLH is the first to receive a novel cancer vaccine designed to prime the immune system to recognise and fight cancer cells.
UNSW and NeuRA researchers have created an effective therapy for chronic pain that reduces pain intensity by focusing on emotional regulation.
Landauer’s principle connects entropy and energy dissipation in non-equilibrium processes. An experiment now uses this principle to measure entropy production in a Bose gas to resolve contributions from correlations and dissipation.
We know dinosaurs were around 99 million years ago, but now new research has identified a kind of parasitic wasp that was flying around back then (and which has a strange way of catching its prey).
The species now called Sirenobethylus charybdis had a bizarre mechanism that worked like a Venus flytrap which caught the prey, and then the wasps impregnated them with their eggs, researchers noted in the journal BMC Biology.
The Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz model has long guided transport analysis in nanopores and ion channels. This paper (with a companion paper in Physical Review Letters) revisits the model, showing that its constant electric field assumption leads to inconsistencies. A new self-consistent theory, inspired by reverse electrodialysis, offers a unified framework for ion transport.#AdvancingField #BiophysicsSpotlight
How 6 small molecules made old human cells act young again. No gene editing, no stem cells. Just science.
With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico.
The team was able to sample the ocean right after the storm passed and found that the storms churn the ocean so powerfully and deeply—up to thousands of meters—that nutrient-rich, cold water is brought to the surface.
The resulting phytoplankton blooms—visible in satellite imagery taken from space—are a feast for bacteria, zooplankton, small fish, and filter-feeding animals such as shellfish and baleen whales.
Researchers publishing in Aging Cell have used single-cell transcriptomics to discover new insights into how neural stem cells (NSCs) change with aging.
Adults do generate neurons
The adult brain does generate new neurons [1], particularly in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory formation [2]. Neurogenesis is limited to very specific niches, however, and does not occur across the entire brain [3]. This is accomplished by NSCs, cells that can differentiate into neural progenitors (NPs), which can themselves differentiate into both neurons and astrocytes and have less ability to proliferate [4]. Astrocytes are helper cells that support neurons’ connections and metabolism [5].
As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, researchers are investigating whether emotional attachment to AI mirrors human interpersonal relationships.