General

It’s easy to brush off the early signs of myositis, a muscle weakening autoimmune disease. That trip or fall while walking could be attributed to clumsiness. Difficulty climbing up stairs, rising from a chair or lifting something overhead could be from an abandoned regular exercise program or muscle breakdown from […]

Research by University at Buffalo biologists is providing new insights into alpha-synuclein, a small acidic protein associated with Parkinson’s disease. Alpha-synuclein is known to form abnormal clumps in the brains of patients with Parkinson’s, but scientists are still trying to understand how and why this happens. The new study explores […]

A recent study by a team of University at Buffalo researchers has found a link between fats in the blood and problems with the arteries in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). The purpose of the study, which was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Vascular Research, was to […]

New UC Riverside research shows soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression. Used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to livestock, soybean oil is by far the most widely produced and […]

Yale doctors have developed a way to create vascular grafts from stem cells that are as strong as the original blood vessels they would replace. The advance, demonstrated in an animal model, may lead to bioengineered grafts suitable for transplant into any human patient using universally compatible cell lines, said […]

Researchers at Linköping University have developed a method that can identify which eggs will become cockerels on the same day they are laid, before an embryo has developed. There are approximately 7.5 million laying hens in Sweden, according to the Swedish Board of Agriculture. Turnover in the population is more […]

Sperm are influenced by diet, and the effects arise rapidly. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers at Linköping University, in which healthy young men were fed a diet rich in sugar. The study, which has been published in PLOS Biology, gives new insight into the function of […]

By combining electron microscopy (EM) with the latest super-resolution microscopy (SR), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and UC Berkeley scientists have obtained exquisitely detailed views of the complex innards of cells, all in 3D. In a report in the issue of the journal Science, the researchers describe their technique, called […]

A University at Buffalo biomedical engineer is gaining recognition outside the United States for his work using high-tech devices to diagnose and ameliorate neurological conditions. Anirban Dutta, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been in India, participating in a collaborative project that pairs a virtual reality-based […]

From veins that deliver oxygen to tissues to xylem that send water into stems and leaves, vascular networks are a crucial component of life. In biology, there is a wide range of unique patterns, like the individualized structures found on leaves, along with many conserved structures, such as named arteries […]

A new study, published in PeerJ, shows how University of Liverpool researchers have used a newly developed eye movement test to improve the understanding of how parts of the brain work. Healthy, older adults are widely reported to experience cognitive decline, including impairments in inhibitory control (the ability to stop ourselves […]

Vanderbilt University neuroscientist James R. Booth is publicly releasing two large scale neuroimaging datasets on reading and language development to support other researchers across the world who are working to understand how academic skills development in childhood. “We have been able to follow our curiosity and answer some really interesting questions […]

Studies that started in zebrafish have now pointed to a role for collagen secretion in a wide variety of clinical symptoms — and in a newly identified genetic syndrome. Ela Knapik, MD, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and her colleagues discovered the syndrome caused by mutation […]

UK scientists have identified a new way to kill pancreatic cancer cells by ‘pulling the plug’ on the energy generator that fuels calcium pumps on their cell surface. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, reports how switching off the cancer’s energy supply causes the pancreatic cancer cells to […]

Epigenetic changes occur in the DNA of breast cancer cells that have developed a resistance to hormone therapy, an effective treatment for ER+ breast cancer, which accounts for 70% of all diagnoses. Reversing these changes, researchers say, has significant potential to help reduce breast cancer relapse. A team led by […]

A woman’s supply of eggs is finite, so it is crucial that the quality of their genetic material is ensured. New work from Carnegie’s Marla Tharp, Safia Malki, and Alex Bortvin elucidates a mechanism by which, even before birth, the body tries to eliminate egg cells of the poorest quality. […]

Genetic modification of babies in China one year ago was universally condemned. At the same time, CRISPR treatments are on their way into our clinics. Jacob Corn explains the difference. A huge outcry broke out a year ago when Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced at a conference that he had […]

Some plastic food and beverage containers still contain bisphenol A (BPA), which can mimic the hormone estrogen. Although experts say that small amounts of BPA detected in foods are unlikely to cause problems, some people worry that constant low-level exposures could have health effects, especially for developing fetuses, infants and […]

An organism's genome contains all of the information necessary for each of its cells and tissues to develop and function properly. Written in DNA, each individual gene encodes for something, whether it is a structural protein that helps define a tissue's shape, an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reactions of […]

A stem cell transplant — also called a bone marrow transplant — is a common treatment for blood cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Such treatment can cure blood cancers but also can lead to life-threatening complications, including heart problems and graft-versus-host disease, in which new immune cells from […]

A new Penn Medicine study puts researchers within closer reach of vaccines that can protect infants against infections by overcoming a mother’s antibodies, which are known to shut down immune defenses initiated by conventional vaccines. That hurdle largely explains why vaccinations for infectious diseases like influenza and measles not given until […]

1 in 6 Children Loses Priority Points Due to Flawed Score System, UCSF Study Shows. Children waiting for new livers who are much smaller than their peers have a heightened risk of dying. Despite this, 40 percent of these undersized waitlisted children may lose vital points required to expedite transplantation, […]

A study published in the  New England Journal of Medicine suggests that erythropoietin treatment may not provide neuroprotection for extremely premature babies. This multicenter study was led by Sandra E. Juul, professor of pediatrics  and head, Division of Neonatology, at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. The researchers randomized more […]

A new prospective cohort study published last week in the journal SLEEP suggests that sleeping for 7 or more hours every night might not be all that it’s cracked up to be after all – at least when it comes to cognitive ability, gray matter volume, and white matter microstructure. […]

How do a couple of universally expressed proteins in stem cells and developing embryos influence an individual cell’s ultimate fate — whether it ultimately becomes, for example, a retinal cell, a heart muscle cell, or a stomach lining cell? That’s the question that Rajesh C. Rao, M.D., and his colleagues at […]

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of ways to kill a cancer cell. Cut it out, poison it, blast it with radiation, shower it with killer immune cells—they all get the job done. But there is a shortage of good ways to kill cancer cells. One that knocks out all the bad cells in one swipe, […]

Lab-grown brain organoids developed from a patient’s own glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, may hold the answers on how to best treat it. A new study in Cell from researchers at Penn Medicine showed how glioblastoma organoids could serve as effective models to rapidly test personalized treatment […]

Bone loss that can lead to osteoporosis and fractures is a major problem for cancer patients who receive chemotherapy and radiation. Since the hormone estrogen plays an important role in maintaining bone health, bone loss is especially pronounced among postmenopausal women with breast cancer who are treated using therapies aimed […]

Working on C. elegans – a nematode worm commonly used in aging research due to its weeks-long lifespan and genetic similarities with humans – an international team of researchers from the U.S. and China have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity which can extend the host’s lifespan by as many […]

For the first time, researchers at Michigan Medicine have demonstrated that a cellular process is known to be involved in cancer and other diseases also play an important role in the growth of at least one type of normal mammalian cell. Macropinocytosis is an ancient process by which cells take […]