Scientists dive into the genomes of whales, elephants, and other animal giants looking for new weapons in the fight against cancer.
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Mitochondrial VHL rewires cell metabolism in hypoxia
Online now: Li et al. report that under chronic hypoxia, VHL relocates to the mitochondria to rewire amino acid metabolism. Mitochondrial VHL enhances nucleotide and lipid production by blocking leucine breakdown, revealing an unexpected role for VHL in supporting hypoxic cell growth and regulating the progression of hypoxia-related diseases.
Teaching NeuroImage: Necrotizing Granulomatous Encephalitis in a Patient After a Pericallosal Aneurysm Stent-Assisted Coil
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The World’s Strangest Computer Is Alive and It Blurs the Line Between Brains and Machines
At first glance, the idea sounds implausible: a computer made not of silicon, but of living brain cells. It’s the kind of concept that seems better suited to science fiction than to a laboratory bench. And yet, in a few research labs around the world, scientists are already experimenting with computers that incorporate living human neurons. Such computers are now being trained to perform complex tasks such as play games and even drive robots.
These systems are built from brain organoids: tiny, lab-grown clusters of human neurons derived from stem cells. Though often nicknamed “mini-brains,” they are not thinking minds or conscious entities. Instead, they are simplified neural networks that can be interfaced with electronics, allowing researchers to study how living neurons process information when placed in a computational loop.
In fact, some researchers even claim that these tools are pushing the frontiers of medicine, along with those of computing. Dr. Ramon Velaquez, a neuroscientist from Arizona State University, is one such researcher.
High-resolution brain mapping using X-ray ptychography
“The brain is one of the most complex biological systems in the world,” says one of the senior authors. How neurons are wired together is what his group are trying to unravel – a field known as connectomics.
The author explains: “Take the liver: we know of about 40 cell types. We know how they are arranged. We know their functions. This is not true for the brain. And so, one could ask, what is the difference between the brain and the liver? If we look at a cell body in the brain and the liver, it’s not easy to distinguish the two. They both have a nucleus, an endoplasmic reticulum – they both have the same intercellular machinery, the same molecules, the same types of proteins. This is not the difference. What is really different is how the brain cells are organised and connected.”
Let’s talk numbers: in one cubic millimetre of brain tissue there are about 100 000 neurons, connected through about 700 million synapses and 4 kilometres of ‘cabling’
A Common Vitamin Could Help Protect Your Lungs From Air Pollution
Large doses of vitamin C may provide our lungs with a degree of protection from the harmful effects of fine particles in the air. Referred to as PM2.5, in reference to their micrometer-wide particle size, these pollutants have been linked to issues such as asthma and lung cancer.
Researchers led by a team from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) conducted a series of experiments on male mice and lab-grown human tissues to test the effects of vitamin C on tissues exposed to fine particulate matter, finding that the vitamin protected against some of the core damage to cells that air pollution typically does to the lungs.
In particular, vitamin C reduced the loss of the cells’ mitochondrial ‘power stations’, reduced harmful inflammation, and prevented cells from being damaged by the effects of oxidative stress – attacks caused by unstable, reactive molecules that then lead to numerous malfunctions.
Controlling exciton flow in moiré superlattices: New method leverages correlated electrons
Excitons are pairs of bound negatively charged electrons and positively charged holes that form in semiconductors, enabling the transport of energy in electronic devices. These pairs of charge carriers also emerge in transition metal dichalcogenides, thin semiconducting materials comprised of a transition metal and two chalcogen atoms.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, UC Riverside, and other institutes have introduced a new strategy to control the flow of energy in structures comprised of two transition metal dichalcogenide layers stacked with a small rotational mismatch, also known as moiré superlattices.
Their proposed approach, introduced in a paper published in Nature Communications, entails the active tuning of electronic states in moiré superlattices in ways that alter the transport of excitons.
New microchips mimic human nerves to boost speed and cut power waste
At the same time, estimates from the US indicate that power consumption from IT applications has doubled over the past eight years, with the rise of AI. Researchers from California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggest that more than half of the electricity used by data centers will be used solely for AI by 2028.
This puts the rapid advance of the digital revolution at risk as energy demand can no longer be met. Traditional silicon chips, which draw power even when idle, are becoming a critical limitation. As a result, researchers worldwide are exploring alternative microelectronic technologies that are far more energy-efficient.
To address the challenge, the team will begin developing superconducting circuits on January 1. These circuits, which were first envisioned by Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist John von Neumann in the 1950s, exploit quantum effects to transmit data using extremely short voltage pulses.