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Some of Princeton’s leading cancer researchers were startled to discover that what they thought was a straightforward investigation into how cancer spreads through the body — metastasis — turned up evidence of liquid-liquid phase separations: the new field of biology research that investigates how liquid blobs of living materials merge […]

Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have developed a tool to monitor communications within the brain in a way never before possible, and it has already offered an explanation for why Alzheimer’s drugs have limited effectiveness and why patients get much worse after going off of them. The […]

PNNL bioinformatics experts tease out link to DNA repair signaling Night shift work disrupts the natural 24-hour rhythms in the activity of certain cancer-related genes, making workers more vulnerable to damage to their DNA while at the same time causing the body’s DNA repair mechanisms to be mistimed to deal with […]

Being active and fit slows the impact of aging on the brain. A diverse set of mechanisms are involved, and, as is often the case in these matters, it is far from clear as to which of these mechanisms are the most important. Fitness helps to maintain the vascular system […]

For cancer cells to metastasize, they must first break free of a tumor’s own defenses. Most tumors are sheathed in a protective “basement” membrane — a thin, pliable film that holds cancer cells in place as they grow and divide. Before spreading to other parts of the body, the cells […]

Scientists at ETH Zurich are working to develop information-​processing switching systems in biological cells. Now, for the first time, they have developed an OR switch in human cells that reacts to different signals. Biological cells might one day be equipped with artificial genetic programs that work in much the same […]

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have implicated a type of immune cell in the development of chronic lung disease that sometimes is triggered following a respiratory viral infection. The evidence suggests that activation of this immune cell — a type of guardian cell called a […]

Managing single risk factors like blood pressure rather than looking at overall risk may be wasting scarce resources in countries where cardiovascular disease (CVD) is on the rise, according to a new study. Researchers looked at country-specific levels of cardiovascular risk, associations with socio-demographic factors and whether WHO guidelines on the […]

The ambitious project aims to preserve humankind – and animal-kind, plant-kind and fungi-kind – in the event of a global crisis. University of Arizona researcher Jekan Thanga is taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah's Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, his solar-powered […]

Melanoma is the most aggressive and deadliest form of skin cancer. Effective treatments are elusive because one type of this cancer develops resistance to available inhibitors, and in another type, no effective drug treatment has yet been found. But a promising pathway to effective drug treatment of both types of […]

Powerful new genetic engineering methods have given scientists the potential to revolutionize several sectors of global urgency. So-called gene drives, which leverage CRISPR technology to influence genetic inheritance, carry the promise of rapidly spreading specific genetic traits throughout populations of a given species. Gene-drive technologies applied in insects, for example, […]

COVID-19 has been with us for more than a year already. But do you remember how little we knew about it just one year ago? We didn’t know what this viral disease can do to children. It turned out, they are more immune to COVID-19 than adults are. But why? […]