Latest News Releases 12 May

Dr. Melody Zeng, an assistant professor of immunology in pediatrics and a member of the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, has received a 2021 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award from The Hartwell Foundation. The award provides support for three years at $100,000 direct cost per year and designation as a Hartwell Investigator.

Research from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center could provide a new approach to treating an aggressive form of breast cancer. A study led by Duxin Sun, Ph.D., found that targeting the immune microenvironment in lymph nodes and tumors simultaneously led to long-term tumor remission in mice models of metastatic triple negative breast cancer.

A study of data from the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022 has confirmed it was the largest explosion in the atmosphere ever detected by modern geophysical equipment, and caused a pressure wave on par with Krakatoa in 1883.

Genetic studies have revealed many genes linked to both common and rare disease, but to understand how those genes bring about disease and use those insights to help develop therapies, scientists need to know where they are active in the body. Research on single cells can help achieve this goal, by surveying gene activity in specific cell types. Scientists need to profile all cell types and compare them across organs in the body to learn about the full range of human diseases, but this is difficult to do with existing methods. Now researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a robust experimental pipeline that can profile many more cell types from more tissues than can be studied with other techniques, as well as machine learning methods to put this data together and query the resulting map, or atlas.

The Hunga volcano ushered in 2022 with a bang, devastating the island nation of Tonga and sending aid agencies, and Earth scientists, into a flurry of activity. It had been nearly 140 years since an eruption of this scale shook the Earth.

Researchers from ETH Zurich, University Hospital of Bern and the University of Bern have equipped gut bacteria with data logger functionality as a way of monitoring which genes are active in the bacteria. These microorganisms could one day offer a noninvasive means of diagnosing disease or assessing the impact of a diet on health.

A dragonfly’s nimble righting reflex is a complex process involving signals from their visual system and dynamic muscular control of wing pitch, according to a new study, which offers insights into the neurological and physical mechanisms that enable the insect’s adept ariel acrobatics. The study’s novel approach could be used to evaluate natural flight mechanics across species and robotic flying systems. Dragonflies – one of the most ancient insects – are highly skilled fliers. Among their repertoire of complicated flight maneuvers, dragonflies have evolved sophisticated reflexes that enable them to right themselves when falling or after being flipped upside-down during flight. The maneuvers involve engaging in complex and rapid interactions of precise body movements and sensory information, all while obeying the laws of flight. Understanding how these creatures perform such feats could shed light on the evolution of flight control strategies, however, evaluating the dynamic flight kinematics of fast-moving insects presents unique challenges. Here, Z. Jane Wang and colleagues present a series of experimental and computational methods for analyzing flight maneuvers and use these tools to describe the righting reflex in dragonflies. First, Wang et al. performed a series of experiments in which dragonflies were released from a magnetic tether from different orientations; the authors tracked their movements using high-speed video. Then, using computational modeling and 3D insect flight simulations based on their observations, Wang et al. determined that dragonflies use wing pitch asymmetry between the left and right wings to drive upright recovery. Next, to determine whether these wing movements are elicited through upstream sensory signals, the authors performed behavioral experiments – blocking the insects’ visual systems while observing their ability to perform the movements required to flip over. According to the findings, the loss of visual sensory information impaired the insect’s ability to perform mid-air righting, implying a connection between visual signals and motor reflexes.