General

All parents want their children to be not only healthy but also better than them in many ways. Can genetic engineering help them achieve that? Scientific and Moral Aspects of Genetic Modification Gene manipulation has made colossal strides over the last decades. Scientists claim that genetic engineering of children has […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered the underlying cause of a hereditary muscle disease first characterised in a Swedish family in 1980. It proves to be the first identified disease caused by defective myoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen in muscle cells. The study is published in Nature Communications. Sarcoplasmic body […]

Pregnant women who use cannabis may slightly increase the risk their unborn child will develop psychosis later in life, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis. “Our research shows that prenatal marijuana exposure after maternal knowledge of pregnancy is associated with a small increase in psychosis proneness during […]

Scientists at the University of Virginia and elsewhere have mapped out how the body transports testosterone, and their surprising findings may explain low testosterone levels seen in men with diabetes or patients on certain medications. The discovery allows scientists to understand exactly how testosterone, the male sex hormone, binds to a […]

An adhesive gel packed with light-activated chemicals can seal cuts or ulcers on the cornea, the clear surface of the eye, and then encourage the regeneration of corneal tissue, according to a preclinical study by Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear published online in Science Advances. The new […]

A new UW Carbone Cancer Center study, published online in EBioMedicine, has developed a model that mimics the tumor’s blood supply on a three-dimensional  platform designed in the laboratory of Dr. David Beebe, professor of biomedical engineering and pathology. The authors of the study, led by Drs. Jose “Tony” Jimenez-Torres and Maria […]

In one of the longest follow-up studies of its kind, researchers found that their specially bioengineered blood vessels evolved into living tissue after human implantation. Researchers from Yale and the North Carolina-based company Humacyte published results in Science Translational Medicine on the progress of their bioengineered human vessels (HAVs). The results show […]

Brain stem cells in people with the most severe form of multiple sclerosis look much older than they really are, according to a study led by UConn Health and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The prematurely old cells act differently in the brain than normal ones, […]

A healthy adult makes about 2 million blood cells every second, and 99 percent of them are oxygen-carrying red blood cells. The other one percent are platelets and the various white blood cells of the immune system. How all the different kinds of mature blood cells are derived from the […]

A new study in mice suggests that consuming the chemical compounds found in thermally abused cooking oil may trigger genetic changes that promote the progression of late-stage breast cancer. Thermally abused frying oil – cooking oil that has been repeatedly reheated to high temperatures – may act as a toxicological […]

Your baby delights you but he’s causing you concern. Why is it so hard to get him to look at you? Why doesn’t he gesture as much as other babies you know? Your relatives say you worry too much. They blame your parenting for the child’s frequent tantrums. Still, you […]

The human brain is one of the most complex organs. Its complexity challenges our ability to study its structure and function. As a result, many brain-related diseases are not fully understood and adequate treatments are often lacking. Scientists from Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry were able to model a developmental […]

High BMI and mental ill-health go increasingly hand-in-hand to present a combined health risk for children from mid-childhood, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Liverpool and University College London analysed data on more than 17,000 children born across the UK in 2000-01, who are taking part […]

A frontline chemotherapy drug given to patients with pancreatic cancer is made less effective because similar compounds released by tumor-associated immune cells block the drug’s action, research led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center found.The chemotherapy drug gemcitabine is an anti-metabolite. It’s similar to normal metabolites taken up by the […]

Researchers identified two novel genes that affect bone-formation cells relevant to fractures and osteoporosis; understanding these genes could lead to more effective treatments. Examining a person’s DNA can help scientists understand if the individual is at risk for osteoporosis, the chronic bone-weakening condition that affects millions of Americans. In a […]

Physical exercise is good for you. You already know that and if you are not exercising is just because you are too lazy. However, it is still quite strange that exercising is not only good for your body, but for your brain as well. How? An international team from The […]

Everyone does it. You may not think about it, but old people do that too. And for them sex is an extremely important part of a healthy life. However, due to the sensitive nature of this subject, not many health professionals and scientists are willing to look into it. Now […]

Border Collies are considered to be one of the smartest breeds of dogs on Earth. They are fun, playful and easy to train. However, some of them suffer from various health conditions. For example, a condition called goniodysgenesis or gonio causes sudden blindness. Now scientists from the University of Edinburgh […]

In a discovery that could have broad applications from the development of targeted antibiotics to the production of biofuels in industry, University of Alberta biologists discovered evidence of bacteria causing apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in algae. “It sounds odd, but programmed cell death is important to all large organisms. […]

More than 16,000 women die from ovarian cancer each year in the United States. Ovarian cancer is often called the “silent killer” because the symptoms are so vague that women are often not diagnosed with ovarian cancer until the disease has progressed to advanced stages. Currently, no blood test exists […]

Can music therapy slow the progression of degenerative brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia while promoting well-being? A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will fund a new lab at Rice University that will explore this possible new inroad in the fight against such disorders. […]

A team of engineers at the UC Berkeley and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges combined CRISPR with electronic transistors made from graphene to create a new hand-held device that can detect specific genetic mutations in a matter of minutes. The device, dubbed CRISPR-Chip, could be used […]

University of Tokyo researchers and their collaborators have demonstrated that a special structure that forms when DNA is damaged helps to restore it. Human cells have a mechanism for recognizing this structure, consisting of DNA and RNA, which promotes accurate repair of damaged DNA. The study’s findings point to a […]

A machine-learning model from MIT researchers computationally breaks down how segments of amino acid chains determine a protein’s function, which could help researchers design and test new proteins for drug development or biological research. Proteins are linear chains of amino acids, connected by peptide bonds, that fold into exceedingly complex […]

Scientists have long known that tumors have many pockets of high acidity, usually found deep within the tumor where little oxygen is available. However, a new study from MIT researchers has found that tumor surfaces are also highly acidic, and that this acidity helps tumors to become more invasive and […]

New research, which appeared in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds light on how the damage in the brain caused by a stroke can lead to permanent vision impairment for approximately 265,000 Americans each year. The findings could provide researchers with a blueprint to better identify which areas […]

A new way of making scaffolding for biological cultures could make it possible to grow cells that are highly uniform in shape and size, and potentially with certain functions. The new approach uses an extremely fine-scale form of 3-D printing, using an electric field to draw fibers one-tenth the width […]

Women who shared their mother’s womb with a male twin are less likely to graduate from high school or college, have earned less by their early 30s and have lower fertility and marriage rates when compared with twins who are both female, according to new Northwestern University research. In the […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Mayzent (siponimod) tablets to treat adults with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS), to include clinically isolated syndrome, relapsing-remitting disease, and active secondary progressive disease. Billy Dunn, M.D., director of the Division of Neurology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation […]

Life can depend upon the interaction of two proteins that come together along a metabolic pathway. There, they enable growth by creating fatty acids essential for ensuring that cell membranes form in a protective, fluid environment. While scientists have understood the basic enzymes involved in this fatty-acid biosynthesis, they have […]