Search Content
-
News
This is how norovirus invades the body
How a nasty, contagious stomach virus lays claim to the digestive system just got a little less mysterious.
In mice, norovirus infects rare cells in the lining of the gut called tuft cells. Like beacons in a dark sea, these cells glowed with evidence of a norovirus infection in fluorescent microscopy images, researchers report in the April 13 Science.
If norovirus also targets...
-
News
Human brains make new nerve cells — and lots of them — well into old age
Your brain might make new nerve cells well into old age.
Healthy people in their 70s have just as many young nerve cells, or neurons, in a memory-related part of the brain as do teenagers and young adults, researchers report in the April 5 Cell Stem Cell. The discovery suggests that the hippocampus keeps generating new neurons throughout a person’s life.
The finding contradicts a...
-
News in Brief
A fake organ mimics what happens in the blink of an eye
AUSTIN, Texas — A new artificial organ gives a new meaning to the phrase “making eyes.”
For the first time, researchers used human cells to build a model of the surface of the eye that’s equipped with a fake eyelid that mimics blinking. This synthetic eye could be used to study and test treatments for eye diseases, researchers reported February 16 in a news conference at the annual...
-
Science Visualized
Here’s how cells rapidly stuff two meters of DNA into microscopic capsules
Frequent fliers, take note. Scientists have figured out how cells quickly pack long chromosomes into compact, organized bundles — a key step before cells divide. The new finding unifies two competing ideas about the process: whether it involves winding chromosomes into a spiral staircase or into a set of loops. It turns out cells use two different ring-shaped proteins called condensins to do...
-
50 years ago, synthetic DNA made its debut
Viable synthetic DNA
[Scientists] produced in a test tube a totally artificial copy of a type of DNA virus.… The particular type of viral DNA (called Phi X174) the researchers made is an extremely simple molecule of only five or six genes. Their achievement, however, lays the foundation for eventual synthesis of more complex DNAs. — Science News, December 30, 1967
UpdateAs...
-
News in Brief
Mini brains may wrinkle and fold just like ours
PHILADELPHIA — Flat brains growing on microscope slides may have revealed a new wrinkle in the story of how the brain folds.
Cells inside the brains contract, while cells on the outside grow and push outward, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, discovered from working with the lab-grown brains, or organoids. This push and pull results in folds in the...
-
News
Not all of a cell’s protein-making machines do the same job
PHILADELPHIA — Protein-manufacturing factories within cells are picky about which widgets they construct, new research suggests. These ribosomes may not build all kinds of proteins, instead opting to craft only specialty products.
Some of that specialization may influence the course of embryo development, developmental biologist and geneticist Maria Barna of Stanford University School of...
-
News in Brief
When tumors fuse with blood vessels, clumps of breast cancer cells can spread
PHILADELPHIA — If you want to beat them, join them. Some breast cancer tumors may follow that strategy to spread through the body.
Breast cancer tumors can fuse with blood vessel cells, allowing clumps of cancer cells to break away from the main tumor and ride the bloodstream to other locations in the body, suggests preliminary research. Cell biologist Vanesa Silvestri of Johns Hopkins...
-
News
Testosterone may be one reason why men don’t get asthma as much as women
Testosterone may tamp down asthma caused by inhaling pollen, dust or other airborne allergens. That’s partly why more women suffer from the lung disease than men, new research suggests.
The male sex hormone acts on a group of immune cells that are part of the first line of the body’s defense against invaders. These cells are thought to kick-start inflammation in the lungs, which causes...
-
Science Visualized
See these first-of-a-kind views of living human nerve cells
The human brain is teeming with diversity. By plucking out delicate, live tissue during neurosurgery and then studying the resident cells, researchers have revealed a partial cast of neural characters that give rise to our thoughts, dreams and memories.
So far, researchers with the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle have described the intricate shapes and electrical properties...