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Magazine
In the Sept. 29 SN: Tomorrow’s burger, inside three big physics experiments, enterovirus outbreak patterns, Jupiter’s wacky magnetism, crop pests like it warm, firefly flashing methods and more.
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This ‘junk’ gene may be important in embryo development
07/03/2018 - 07:00 Development, Cells, GeneticsA once-maligned genetic parasite may actually be essential for survival.
Mouse embryos need that genetic freeloader — a type of jumping gene, or transposon, called LINE-1 — to continue developing past the two-cell stage, researchers report in the July 7 Cell.
Many scientists “charge that these are nasty, selfish genetic elements” that jump around the genome, making mutations and...
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News in Brief
Here’s how drinking coffee could protect your heart
06/21/2018 - 14:00 Cells, PhysiologyCoffee revs up cell’s energy factories and helps hearts recover from heart attacks, a study of mice suggests.
In the study, researchers gave mice the equivalent of four cups of coffee a day for 10 days before inducing heart attacks in the rodents. Cells in mice that got caffeine repaired the heart attack damage better than cells in mice that didn’t get caffeine, researchers report June...
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News
It may take a village (of proteins) to turn on genes
06/21/2018 - 14:00 CellsTurning on genes may work like forming a flash mob.
Inside a cell’s nucleus, fast-moving groups of floppy proteins crowd together around gene control switches and coalesce into droplets to turn on genes, Ibrahim Cissé of MIT and colleagues report June 21 in two papers in Science.
Researchers have previously demonstrated that proteins form such droplets in the cytoplasm, the cell’s...
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Soapbox
At-home telomere testing is not a reliable marker of aging, researcher says
06/07/2018 - 10:00 Health, Genetics, CellsStay younger, longer. Great idea. But direct-to-consumer test kits that promise to gauge a person’s biological age by analyzing a drop of blood are not worth the $100 or so investment, says oncologist Mary Armanios. The tests measure the length of telomeres, the bits of DNA that cap and protect the ends of chromosomes. But the consumer tests are unreliable and can be misinterpreted, Armanios...
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News
Your blood type might make you more likely to get traveler’s diarrhea
05/17/2018 - 12:00 Microbiology, Health, CellsE. coli has a type and it isn’t pretty. The bacterium is more likely to cause severe diarrhea in people with type A blood.
An illness-causing strain of E. coli secretes a protein that gloms onto the sugar molecules that decorate type A blood cells, but not type B or O cells. These sugar molecules also decorate cells lining the intestines of people with type A blood and appear to provide...
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50 years ago, starving tumors of oxygen proposed as weapon in cancer fight
05/04/2018 - 11:00 Cancer, Biomedicine, CellsStarve the tumor, not the cell
Animal experiments demonstrate for the first time that transplanted tumors release a chemical into the host’s bloodstream that causes the host to produce blood vessels to supply the tumor.… If such a factor can be identified in human cancers … it might be possible to prevent the vascularization of tumors. Since tumors above a certain small size require...
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News
An enzyme involved in cancer and aging gets a close-up
05/04/2018 - 10:00 Health, Cells, CancerLike a genetic handyman, an elusive enzyme deep inside certain cells repairs the tips of chromosomes, which fray as cells divide. It’s prized by rapidly dividing cells – like stem cells and tumor cells – and by scientists on the hunt for cancer and other disease therapies.
Now researchers have the best picture yet of this enzyme, called telomerase. Using cryo-electron microscopy,...
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News
This is how norovirus invades the body
04/13/2018 - 10:23 Health, CellsHow 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...
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News
Human brains make new nerve cells — and lots of them — well into old age
04/05/2018 - 14:50 Neuroscience, Human Development, CellsYour 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...
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News in Brief
A fake organ mimics what happens in the blink of an eye
02/20/2018 - 17:15 Biophysics, Technology, CellsAUSTIN, 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...