News by Subject Biology

From energy materials to disease diagnostics, new microscopy techniques can provide more nuanced insight. Researchers first need to understand the effects of radiation on samples, which is possible with a new device developed for holding tightly sealed liquid cell samples for transmission electron microscopy.

Using new technologies to track how vision guides foot placement, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin come one step closer in determining what is going on in the brain while we walk, paving the way for better treatment for mobility impairments -- strokes, aging and Parkinson's -- and technology development -- prosthetics and robots.

A team led by Columbia University Biomedical Engineering Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic has designed a creative new approach to help injured hearts regenerate by applying extracellular vesicles secreted by cardiomyocytes rather than implanting the cells. The study shows that the cardiomyocytes derived from human pluripotent stem cells (derived in turn from a small sample of blood) could be a powerful, untapped source of therapeutic microvesicles that could lead to safe and effective treatments of damaged hearts.

Europe's ash dieback epidemic could well have been caused by just one or two mushroom-like fruiting bodies of a fungal pathogen from Asia, according to a comprehensive genome sequencing effort published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. This leaves even the most resistant ash trees at threat from the introduction of just one more spore from East Asia.

A team of Russian scientists together with foreign colleagues found out that the venom of crab spider Heriaeus melloteei may be used as a basis for developing treatment against hypokalemic periodic paralysis.