Category Health/Medical

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...

The Clostridium botulinum bacterium (shown here in colonies) can cause foodborne illnesses and potentially deadly effects due to the neurotoxin it produces. Credit: CDC

Botulinum neurotoxin is probably best known to Americans as BOTOX rather than as a cause of potentially dangerous foodborne illnesses. Lesser known is that Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes the neurointoxication, produces one of the most potent toxins on earth and is classified as a potential bioterrorism threat. While no cure exists a serendipitous discovery by TSRI scientists may provide a new therapy that can stop the neurotoxin even in its more severe, advanced stages of action.

Kim Janda, the Ely R. Callaway, Jr...

UT Southwestern researchers have developed a DNA vaccine that helps the body protect against toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These images show amyloid plaque in the mouse brain using plasma containing anti-amyloid antibody from large mammals immunized with the vaccine. Credit: UT Southwestern

A new DNA vaccine when delivered to the skin prompts an immune response that produces antibodies to protect against toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease – without triggering severe brain swelling that earlier antibody treatments caused in some patients. Two studies from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute demonstrate in animals how a vaccine containing DNA of the toxic beta-amyloid protein elicits a different immune response that may be safe for humans...

A study carried out in mice may help explain why dieting can be an inefficient way to lose weight: key brain cells act as a trigger to prevent us burning calories when food is scarce.

A study carried out in mice may help explain why dieting can be an inefficient way to lose weight: key brain cells act as a trigger to prevent us burning calories when food is scarce. “Weight loss strategies are often inefficient because the body works like a thermostat and couples the amount of calories we burn to the amount of calories we eat,” says Dr Clémence Blouet from the Metabolic Research Laboratories at University of Cambridge. “When we eat less, our body compensates and burns fewer calories, which makes losing weight harder...