Category Health/Medical

A research team from Chemnitz and Dresden has taken a major step forward in the development of sensitive electronic skin (e-skin) with integrated artificial hairs. E-skins are flexible electronic systems that try to mimic the sensitivity of their natural human skin counterparts. Applications range from skin replacement and medical sensors on the body to artificial skin for humanoid robots and androids. Tiny surface hairs can perceive and anticipate the slightest tactile sensation on human skin and even recognize the direction of touch...

A new study led by Imperial College London finds that drug-resistant mould is spreading from the environment and infecting susceptible people’s lungs.

The researchers found six cases of people infected with a drug-resistant form of a fungi called Aspergillus fumigatus that could be traced back to spores in the environment. Their findings use samples from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and are published in Nature Microbiology.

Aspergillus fumigatus is an environmental mould that can cause fungal lung disease. While people with healthy lungs clear inhaled spores, people with lung conditions or weakened immune systems sometimes cannot, meaning the spores may remain in the lungs causing an infection called aspergillosis. Aspergillosis affects 10-20 million people worldwide...

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 ...