News by Subject Biology

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have created an easy-to-make, low-cost injectable hydrogel that could help wounds heal faster, especially for patients with compromised health issues.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered a mechanism by which harmful tau protein aggregates are transmitted between neurons. Alongside amyloid plaques, tau aggregates in the brain are a significant factor in the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

About three per cent of the world's population is affected by valvular heart diseases. It is also the most common cause of heart surgery, as no drug-based treatment is available. Recent research has shed light on the molecular mechanism on valvular disease that is caused by a genetic mutation in Filamin gene. The result of the research will help to further investigate the mechanism by which the medical condition progress and to develop new treatments.

A study led by Dr. Ravi Muddashetty at InStem, Bangalore identified distinct markers to distinguish ribosomes that are specialized for producing specific sets of proteins and hinted that this specialization could be important for the development of the nervous system.

A team headed by ICREA researchers Salvador Aznar Benitah and Fran Supek concludes that care should be taken with drugs that inhibit epigenetic factors. Published in Nature Cell Biology, the study is a collaboration between a biomedical lab and a computational lab at IRB Barcelona.

New research published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics demonstrates that 'good' bacteria in the live probiotic SymproveTM can successfully reach and colonise the gut, where they go on to change the existing gut flora. They are also capable of modifying immune response.

Melanoma skin cancer tumors grow larger and are more likely to metastasize due to interactions between a pair of molecules, according to experiments in mice and human cells. The results may restore the potential for a type of cancer therapy previously abandoned in clinical trials. The results also implicate one molecule already connected to obesity and dementia as a potential cause of metastasis, or spread of cancer cells to other areas of the body.

Scientists are studying a guppy-sized, blind, translucent fish that lives in the cave systems of northern Mexico to figure out why some animals can regenerate their hearts, while others just scar. Their research appears Nov. 20 in the journal Cell Reports.