Category Biology/Biotechnology

Research on novel nanoelectronics devices has enabled brain neurons and artificial neurons to communicate with each other over the Internet. Brain functions are made possible by circuits of spiking neurons, connected together by microscopic, but highly complex links called synapses. In this new study, published in the scientific journal Nature Scientific Reports, the scientists created a hybrid neural network where biological and artificial neurons in different parts of the world were able to communicate with each other over the internet through a hub of artificial synapses made using cutting-edge nanotechnology. This is the first time the three components have come together in a unified network.

During the study, researchers based at the University of Padova in Italy cultivate...

About 1 million people in the United States have ulcerative colitis, a serious disease of the colon that has no cure and whose cause is obscure. Now, a study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators has tied the condition to a missing microbe.

The microbe makes metabolites that help keep the gut healthy. “This study helps us to better understand the disease,” said Aida Habtezion, MD, associate professor of gastroenterology and hepatology. “We hope it also leads to our being able to treat it with a naturally produced metabolite that’s already present in high amounts in a healthy gut.”

When the researchers compared two groups of patients – one group with ulcerative colitis, the other group with a rare noninflammatory condition – who had un...

Different types of food are linked to risks of different types of stroke, according to the largest study to investigate this, published in the European Heart Journal today (Monday).

Until now, most studies have looked at the association between food and total stroke (all types of stroke combined), or focused on ischaemic stroke o...

Cell atlas of human thymus could help engineer improved therapeutic T cells. A first cell atlas of the human thymus gland could lead to new immune therapies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Newcastle University and Ghent University, Belgium, mapped thymus tissue through the human lifespan to understand how it develops and makes vital immune cells called T cells. In the future, this information could help researchers to generate an artificial thymus and engineer improved therapeutic T cells.

Published today (20 February) in Science, this human thymus atlas has revealed new cell types and identified signals that tell immature immune cells how to develop into T cells...