Category Health/Medical

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have found that two types of non-small cell lung cancer metabolize glucose — a type of sugar — differently. A glucose transporter called GLUT1, shown in green, is much more prevalent in lung squamous cell carcinoma cells (right) in comparison to lung adenocarcinoma cells (left). The findings, published in the online journal Nature Communications, may aid the development of new lung cancer therapies targeted at inhibiting GLUT1. Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

In a new study, The University of Texas at Dallas scientists have found that some types of cancers have more of a sweet tooth than others...

How bioelectricity strengthens the innate immune response (Credit: Jean-Francois Pare/Tufts University)

Drugs already approved for other uses in people help frogs survive deadly E. coli by changing their cells’ electrical charge. Changing the natural electrical signaling that exists in cells outside the nervous system can improve resistance to life-threatening bacterial infections, according to new research from Tufts University biologists. The researchers found that administering drugs, including those already used in humans for other purposes, to make the cell interior more negatively charged strengthens tadpoles’innate immune response to E. coli infection and injury...

Peptides derived from Ov-GRN-1 (orthologue of granulin) are leads for wound healing therapeutics, as they are likely less immunogenic than the full-length protein and more convenient to produce.

A molecule produced by a Thai liver parasite could be the solution to those non-healing wounds. Globally, every 30 seconds a diabetic has a limb amputated due to a non-healing wound. Scientists from the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM) are now able to produce a version of the molecule on a large enough scale to make it available for laboratory tests and eventually clinical trials. The molecule is granulin, one of a family of protein growth factors involved with cell proliferation.

“It’s produced by a parasitic liver fluke, Opisthorchis viverrini, which originally came to...

This is an artist’s impression of connected CRISPR-dCas9 NOR gates. Credit: University of Washington

Synthetic biology researchers have demonstrated a new method for digital information processing in living cells, analogous to the logic gates used in electric circuits. The circuits are the largest ever published to date in eurkaryotic cells and a key step in harnessing the potential of cells as living computers that can respond to disease, efficiently produce biofuels or develop plant-based chemicals.

Through billions of years of trial and error, evolution has arrived at a mode of information processing at the cellular level. In the microchips that run our computers, information processing capabilities reduce data to unambiguous 0s and 1s. In cells, it’s not that simple...