Category Biology/Biotechnology

Manhattan plot of the results from the GWAS meta-analysis of ADHD.

A major international collaboration headed by researchers from the Danish iPSYCH project, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, SUNY Upstate Medical University, and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium has for the first time identified genetic variants which increase the risk of ADHD. The new findings provide a completely new insight into the biology behind ADHD.

Our genes are very important for the development of mental disorders – including ADHD, where genetic factors capture up to 75% of the risk. Until now, the search for these genes had yet to deliver clear results...

Six days after treatment with IGF-1 carried by dendrimer nanoparticles (blue), the particles have penetrated through the cartilage of the knee joint.
Credit: Brett Geiger and Jeff Wyckoff

Injectable material made of nanoscale particles can deliver arthritis drugs throughout cartilage. In an advance that could improve the treatment options available for osteoarthritis, engineers have designed a new material that can administer drugs directly to the cartilage. The material can penetrate deep into the cartilage, delivering drugs that could potentially heal damaged tissue.

“This is a way to get directly to the cells that are experiencing the damage, and introduce different kinds of therapeutics that might change their behavior,” says Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineeri...

Forget MRSA and E. coli. There’s another bacterium that is becoming increasingly dangerous due to antibiotic resistance – and it’s present on the skin of every person on the planet. A close relative of MRSA, Staphylococcus epidermidis, is a major cause of life-threatening infections after surgery, but it is often overlooked by clinicians and scientists because it is so abundant.

Researchers from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath warn that the threat posed by this organism should be taken more seriously and use extra precautions for those at higher risk of infection who are due to undergo surgery.

They have identified a set of 61 genes that allow this normally harmless skin bacterium to cause life-threatening illness...

This is a composite view of recording sites used for identifying neural correlates of mood state in the epilepsy monitoring unit patients; a subset of these were also used in the stimulation studies.
Credit: Ben Speidel, Chang Lab, UCSF

Researchers have found an effective target in the brain for electrical stimulation to improve mood in people suffering from depression. As reported in the journal Current Biology on November 29, stimulation of a brain region called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) reliably produced acute improvement in mood in patients who suffered from depression at the start of the study.

Those effects were not seen in patients without mood symptoms, suggesting that the brain stimulation works to normalize activity in mood-related neural circuitry, the researchers sa...