Category Biology/Biotechnology

Researchers looking to synthesize a brighter and more stable nanoparticle for optical applications found that their creation instead exhibited a more surprising property: bursts of superfluorescence that occurred at both room temperature and regular intervals. The work could lead to the development of faster microchips, neurosensors, or materials for use in quantum computing applications, as well as a number of biological studies.

Superfluorescence occurs when atoms within a material synchronize and simultaneously emit a short but intense burst of light...

New research has revealed how the tau protein, a critical element in the formation of Alzheimer’s disease, is also involved in normal learning processes in the healthy brain — potentially providing a focal point for future drug therapies.

In the study, published in The EMBO Journal, Flinders University researchers have provided new insights into the tau protein, whose role has long been enigmatic, finding it may help molecular processes of memory formation.

Employing a sensitive method named proximity labelling, th...

Wataru Kimura and colleagues at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have discovered how the hearts of newborn marsupials retain the ability to regenerate for several weeks. Using this knowledge, the team was able to repair mouse hearts that were damaged a week after birth. The findings, published in the journal Circulation, are expected to contribute to the development of regenerative heart medicines.

Heart disease is a leading cause of human death and is associated with numerous other secondary illnesses. For humans and other mammals, damaged heart muscle—such as occurs after a heart attack—cannot be naturally repaired because matured heart-muscle cells do not regenerate...

In the aftermath of a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI), a group of amino acids that typically support brain function contribute significantly to the brain destruction that can follow both these injuries, scientists report.

The new study provides for the first time the surprising evidence that four common nonexcitatory amino acids that usually make proteins which are essential to brain function, instead cause irreversible, destructive swelling of both the astrocytes that support neurons and the neurons themselves, says Dr. Sergei Kirov, neuroscientist in the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia.

“There are many ways to kill neurons...