Category Biology/Biotechnology

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...

A collection of photos of genetically unrelated lookalikes, along with DNA analysis, revealed that strong facial similarity is associated with shared genetic variants. The work appears August 23rd in the journal Cell Reports.

“Our study provides a rare insight into human likeness by showing that people with extreme lookalike faces share common genotypes, whereas they are discordant at the epigenome and microbiome levels,” says senior a...

When fat accumulates in the liver, the immune system may assault the organ. A new study from Weill Cornell Medicine researchers identifies the molecule that trips these defenses, a discovery that helps to explain the dynamics underlying liver damage that can accompany type 2 diabetes and obesity.

In a study published Aug. 19 in Science Immunology, researchers mimicked these human metabolic diseases by genetically altering mice or feeding them a high-fat, high-sugar diet. They then examined changes within the arm of the rodent’s immune system that mounts defenses tailored to specific threats...