Category Biology/Biotechnology

CD24 expressed by cells of hematopoietic origin and not cells in stromal compartments is required for extramedullary stress erythropoiesis following in vivo CD24 engagement

This could represent a significant step forward in the battle against anemia, benefitting people with diabetes, kidney disease or cancer, and older people for whom anemia can become a chronic problem. While more work needs to be done before the method could be used in people, the possibilities are tantalizing.

Eg it could allow doctors to turn on red blood cell production whenever necessary;
~be used on the battlefield to triage wounded soldiers until they could receive a blood transfusion; and
~be used to treat people who cannot receive blood transfusions because of religious beliefs.

Note: Anemia is the most common bl...

Schematic representation of this research.

These cells – capable of generating all cell types in the body – could be used as the ‘Lego bricks’ to build tissue constructs, larger structures of tissues, and potentially even micro-organs. “It was really exciting to see that we could grow embryoid body in such a controlled manner,” explains Wei Sun. “The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous, and serves as a much better starting point for further tissue growth.”

The researchers, based at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, used extrusion-based 3D printing to produce a grid-like 3D structure to grow embryoid body with cell viability and rapid self-renewal for 7 days while maintaining high pluripotentcy.

Images of the printed cellular model with...

QUT researchers Dr Julia Bally and Professor Peter Waterhouse have discovered a plant with huge genome properties that can have the potential to be the ‘laboratory rat’ of the molecular plant world. This could open the door for such things as space-based food production Credit: Erika Fish

Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at QUT, discovered the gene in the ancient Australian native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana, known as Pitjuri to Aboriginals.

Prof Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant, which for decades has been used by geneticists as a model plant upon which to test viruses and vaccines. “This plant is the ‘laboratory rat’ of the molecular plant world,” he said, “we think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties.

“We now ...

Broca’s area , wernicke’s area, and other language-processing areas in the brain

Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that loss of speech from a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain can be recovered on the back, right side of the brain. This contradicts recent notions that the right hemisphere interferes with recovery. While the findings will likely not put an immediate end to the debate, they suggest a new direction in treatment.

This is the first to look at brain structure and grey matter volume when trying to understand how speech is recovered after a stroke...