Category Biology/Biotechnology

A new era of mitochondrial genome editing has begun. Scientists successfully achieve A to G base conversion, the final missing piece of the puzzle in gene-editing technology.

Researchers from the Center for Genome Engineering within the Institute for Basic Science developed a new gene-editing platform called transcription activator-like effector-linked deaminases, or TALED. TALEDs are base editors capable of performing A-to-G base conversion in mitochondria. This discovery was a culmination of a decades-long journey to cure human genetic diseases, and TALED can be considered to be the final missing piece of the puzzle in gene-editing technology.

From the identification of the first restriction enzyme in 1968, the invention of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in 1985, and the demo...

Potential new therapeutic target for pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Now, Salk scientists report in the journal Gastroenterology on April 21, 2022, that a protein known as estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERR ɣ) is critical for preventing pancreatic auto-digestion in mice. Moreover, they discovered that people with pancreatitis have lower levels of ERR ɣ in cells affected by this inflammation.

These findings suggest that new therapies aimed at regulating ERR ɣ activity could help prevent or treat pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.

“Our finding provides new insight into both the ...

To this day, cavities and damage to enamel are repaired by dentists with the help of synthetic white filling materials. There is no natural alternative to this. But a new 3D model with human dental stem cells could change this in the future. The results of the research led by KU Leuven Professor Hugo Vankelecom and Professor Annelies Bronckaers from UHasselt have been published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences.

Our teeth are very important in everyday activities such as eating and speaking, as well as for our self-esteem and psychological well-being. There is relatively little known about human teeth. An important reason is that certain human dental stem cells, unlike those of rodents, are difficult to grow in the lab...

Many people have experienced the struggles of dealing with low back pain. A common cause of this pain is degeneration of intervertebral disks (IVDs), which are located between the vertebrae and help give the spinal column its flexibility. Thus, IVD degeneration can lead to more serious conditions such as spinal deformity. In a recent article published in Biomaterials, a team led by researchers at Osaka University and Kyoto University demonstrated that using cartilage tissue derived from human stem cells could help prevent the loss of functionality from IVD degeneration.

It is believed that IVD degeneration originates in the nucleus pulposus (NP), which is composed of NP cells that produce the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM)...