Category Biology/Biotechnology

A team of scientists in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have combined robotics with biology by equipping Ecoli bacteria with artificial components to construct biohybrid microrobots. First, the team attached several nanoliposomes to each bacterium. On their outer circle, these spherical-shaped carriers enclose a material (ICG, green particles) that melts when illuminated by near infrared light...

Aging and age-related disorders pose a complex challenge to the biomedical research community. To better understand how senescence is regulated is of high significance to promote healthy aging and treat age-associated disorders. In a research paper published today in Nature Cell Biology, Rugang Zhang, Ph.D., deputy director of the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, Christopher M. Davis Endowed Professor, and program leader of the Immunology, Microenvironment & Metastasis Program, at The Wistar Institute, and his team revealed a novel ADAR1-SIRT1-p16INK4a axis in regulating cellular senescence and its potential implications in tissue aging.

“Understanding the basic mechanism underlying tissue aging is challenging and cellular senescence offers an...

Researchers describe the biochemical pathway that results in the generation of oxidized mitochondrial DNA, how it is expelled by mitochondria and how it triggers the complex and destructive inflammatory response that follows.

Mitochondria are self-contained organelles (they possess their own mini-chromosome and DNA) residing within cells and are charged with the job of generating the chemical energy needed to fuel functions essential to life and well-being.

When stressed, damaged or dysfunctional, mitochondria expel their DNA (mtDNA), oxidized and cleaved, into the cyto...

Medicinal microrobots could help physicians better treat and prevent diseases. But most of these devices are made with synthetic materials that trigger immune responses in vivo. Now, for the first time, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have used lasers to precisely control neutrophils — a type of white blood cell — as a natural, biocompatible microrobot in living fish. The “neutrobots” performed multiple tasks, showing they could someday deliver drugs to precise locations in the body.

Microrobots currently in development for medical applications would require in...