{"id":57765,"date":"2017-05-29T05:22:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-29T12:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-fight-dangerous-infection"},"modified":"2017-06-02T14:01:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T21:01:08","slug":"bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-fight-dangerous-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-fight-dangerous-infection","title":{"rendered":"Bioelectricity is a new weapon to fight dangerous infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-fight-dangerous-infection.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By Kim Thurler, Tufts University<\/p>\n<p>(MEDFORD\/SOMERVILLE, Mass.) \u2014 Changing the natural electrical signaling that exists in cells outside the nervous system can improve resistance to life-threatening bacterial infections, according to new research from Tufts University biologists. The researchers found that administering drugs, including those already used in humans for other purposes, to make the cell interior more negatively charged strengthens tadpoles\u2019 innate immune response to <em>E. coli<\/em> infection and injury. This reveals a novel aspect of the immune system \u2013 regulation by non-neural bioelectricity \u2013 and suggests a new approach for clinical applications in human medicine. The study is published online May 26, 2017, in <em>npj Regenerative Medicine, <\/em>a Nature Research journal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll cells, not just nerve cells, naturally generate and receive electrical signals. Being able to regulate such non-neural bioelectricity with the many ion channel and neurotransmitter drugs that are already human-approved gives us an amazing new toolkit to augment the immune system\u2019s ability to resist infections,\u201d said the paper\u2019s corresponding author <a href=\"https:\/\/wyss.harvard.edu\/team\/associate-faculty\/michael-levin-ph-d\/\">Michael Levin<\/a>, Ph.D., Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology and Director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/allencenter.tufts.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Allen Discovery Center<\/a> at Tufts and the <a href=\"http:\/\/ase.tufts.edu\/biology\/labs\/tcrdb\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology<\/a> in the School of Arts and Sciences. Levin is also an Associate Faculty member of the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/wyss.harvard.edu\/bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-fight-dangerous-infection\/\">https:\/\/wyss.harvard.edu\/bioelectricity-is-a-new-weapon-to-f...infection\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kim Thurler, Tufts University (MEDFORD\/SOMERVILLE, Mass.) \u2014 Changing the natural electrical signaling that exists in cells outside the nervous system can improve resistance to life-threatening bacterial infections, according to new research from Tufts University biologists. The researchers found that administering drugs, including those already used in humans for other purposes, to make the cell [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-engineering","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57938,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57765\/revisions\/57938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}