Category Biology/Biotechnology

Heart failure is a leading cause of death worldwide and is especially deadly for people who don’t have access to medical facilities. A team of researchers aims to bring heart failure screening from the lab to the home with a point-of-care electrochemical biosensor prototype that measures levels of two biomarkers for heart failure in as little as 15 minutes from just a drop of saliva.

Trey Pittman, a graduate student at Colorado State University, will present his team’s research at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

“Our device would be ideal for people who are at high risk for heart failure but have limited access to a ...

Overlap in genes suggests a potential new class of inborn errors of immunometabolism. Inherited diseases of metabolism and immunity have more in common than previously recognized, according to a new study published in the journal Science Immunology. The findings point to a new set of metabolic genes that are important for the function of immune system T cells, and they offer insights that could improve care for patients with these disorders.

The study examined genes that cause inborn errors of metabolism (disorders of the processes that cells use to convert food to energy) and inborn errors of immunity (disorders that...

While everyone knows that a good night’s sleep restores energy, a new Cornell University study finds it resets another vital function: memory.

Learning or experiencing new things activates neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain vital for memory. Later, while we sleep, those same neurons repeat the same pattern of activity, which is how the brain consolidates those memories that are then stored in a large area called the cortex. But how is it that we can keep learning new things for a lifetime without using up all of our neurons?

A study, “A Hippocampal Circuit Mechanism to Balance Memory Reactivation During Sleep,” published in Science, finds at certain times during deep sleep, certain parts of the hippocampus go silent, allowing those...

A WEHI study could help solve a long-standing mystery into why a key immune organ in our bodies shrinks and loses its function as we get older.

The thymus is an organ essential for good health due to its ability to produce special immune cells that are responsible for fighting infections and cancer.

In a world-first, researchers have uncovered new cells that drive this ageing process in the thymus — significant findings that could unlock a way to restore function in the thymus and prevent our immunity from waning as we age.

At a glance

The thymus is an organ essential for our immune defence but it shrinks and weakens as we get older. The reason for this loss remains a long-standing mystery.

A new study has been able to visualise, for the first time, how two cell types d...