General

A new study from the University of Georgia has shown that exposure to a now-banned flame retardant can alter the genetic code in sperm, leading to major health defects in children of exposed parents. Published recently in Scientific Reports, the study is the first to investigate how polybrominated biphenyl-153 (PBB153), the […]

Octopuses, squids and other sea creatures can perform a disappearing act by using specialized tissues in their bodies to manipulate the transmission and reflection of light, and now researchers at the University of California, Irvine have engineered human cells to have similar transparent abilities. In a paper published in Nature […]

One promising strategy to treat cancer is stimulating the body’s own immune system to attack tumors. However, tumors are very good at suppressing the immune system, so these types of treatments don’t work for all patients. MIT engineers have now come up with a way to boost the effectiveness of […]

In a population-based cohort study from Sweden and Denmark of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) during 1969-2017 and matched reference individuals from the general population, Ola Olén, Jonas F Ludvigsson and colleagues found that IBD patients had an increased risk of small bowel cancer. The excess risks were especially […]

In most species, including our own, females live longer than males. Why this is the case is likely one of those simple questions that lacks a simple answer. At the root of it all are evolutionary pressures relating to sex-specific differences in mating strategy, but that says little about how and why an […]

One has to be cautious about studies in which metabolism is broken in some way, and symptoms of aging start to appear earlier as a result. Whether or not this has any relevance to normal aging is dependent on the fine details of the biochemistry involved, and can often be argued either […]

BCL-xL is a mitochondrial protein that acts to suppress the programmed cell death response of apoptosis, and is overexpressed in some cancers, as well as in senescent cells. Thus small molecules that bind to BCL-xL have been used as chemotherapeutics and more recently as senolytics that selectively destroy senescent cells. That removal of senescent cells is a legitimate rejuvenation therapy that quite literally turns back aging in animal […]

The anaesthetic drug ketamine has been shown, in low doses, to have a rapid effect on difficult-to-treat depression. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now report that they have identified a key target for the drug: specific serotonin receptors in the brain. Their findings, which are published in Translational Psychiatry, give hope […]

What is and is not possible for natural evolution may be explained using models and calculations from theoretical physics, say researchers in Japan. Theoretically, every component of every chemical in every cell of all living organisms could vary independently of all the others, a situation researchers refer to as high […]

Fibre laser microscopy to be used in clinical applications. When investigating how tumors grow, or how pharmaceuticals affect different types of cells, researchers have to understand how molecules within a cell react – and interact. This is possible with modern laser microscopy. Until now, however, molecules in cell specimens had […]

People with an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, may experience sensory hypersensitivity more often than people without ASD, according to the National Autism Association. Among other responses, this hypersensitivity can lead to “sensory overload,” when sensory systems like vision or hearing are “overwhelmed” by stimuli. Scientists do not fully understand […]

Researchers have found a way to design an antibody that can identify the toxic particles that destroy healthy brain cells – a potential advance in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Their method is able to recognise these toxic particles, known as amyloid-beta oligomers, which are the hallmark of the disease, […]