News by Subject Biology

Researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University are working on an entirely new way to detect blood clots, especially in pediatric patients.

A new, hair-sprouting dollop of human skin created in the lab might one day help prevent hair loss. A paper published in Nature describes the hairy creation as the first hair-baring human skin organoid made with pluripotent stem cells, or the master cells present during early stages of embryonic development that later turn into specific cell types.

Bighorn sheep have maintained a distinctive population genetic structure in Wyoming, even with historical population losses and translocations.

Using a base editing technique, researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and the Broad Institute, have restored hearing in mice with a known recessive genetic mutation. Researchers repaired one single error in the Tmc1 gene known to cause a hereditary form of deafness. The one-time repair involved switching one incorrect DNA base in the gene with the correct version. This is the first time base editing has been used for a genetic sensory disorder.

The ocean is so sensitive to declining greenhouse gas emissions that it immediately responds by taking up less carbon dioxide, says a new study. The authors say we may soon see this play out due to the COVID-19 pandemic lessening global fuel consumption; they predict the ocean could take up less CO2 in 2020 than in 2019.