Category Health/Medical

An artistic rendering of the mechanism responsible for relocalization of heterochromatic repair sites during homologous recombination. A nuclear myosin walks along a dynamic nuclear actin filament, carrying broken DNA for repair. Credit: Yekaterina Kadyshevskaya, USC

‘Walking molecules’ haul away damaged DNA to the cell’s emergency room. Amid the rise of CRISPR and genome editing, scientists are still learning more about DNA repair and its significance in aging and diseases such as cancer. The cell has its own paramedic team and emergency room to aid and repair damaged DNA, a new USC Dornsife study reveals.

The findings are timely, as scientists are delving into the potential of genome editing with the DNA-cutting enzyme, CRISPR-Cas9, to treat diseases or to advance scientific knowledge ab...

Two different aspects of fat: left, mature human fat cells grown in a Petri dish (green: lipid droplets); right, a section of mouse fat tissue with in the middle, a blood vessel (red circle) surrounded by Aregs (arrows), newly discovered cells capable of suppressing adipogenesis. Credit: Bart Deplancke/EPFL

A study has revealed a new cell type that resides in the body’s fat depots where it can actively suppress fat cell formation. This discovery was made using single-cell transcriptomics and opens entirely new avenues to combat obesity and related diseases such as diabetes.

Adipogenesis – the formation of mature fat cells from their precursor cells – has been linked to obesity and related health problems such as cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes...

A magenta-stained cell shows how the molecule STING (green) is positioned next to the bacteria Listeria (blue) to start an immune response. Credit: Washington State University

Discovery opens door to efficient research model. Washington State University researchers have seen how both humans and fruit flies deploy a protein that plays a critical role in their immune responses to invading bacteria. The discovery gives scientists a model organism with which to explore ways to boost the human immune system and create infection-fighting medicines.

Naturally, there are enormous differences between humans and fruit flies, whose common ancestor goes back 800 million years...

Extracellular vesicle-like metal-organic framework nanoparticles are developed for the intracellular delivery of biofunctional proteins. The biomimetic nanoplatform can protect the protein cargo and overcome various biological barriers to achieve systemic delivery and autonomous release. Credit: Zheng Lab/Penn State

A biomimetic nanosystem can deliver therapeutic proteins to selectively target cancerous tumors, according to a team of Penn State researchers. Using a protein toxin called gelonin from a plant found in the Himalayan mountains, the researchers caged the proteins in self-assembled metal-organic framework (MOF) nanoparticles to protect them from the body’s immune system...