Category Health/Medical

Cell (stock image). The use of iPSCs to generate tissues would revolutionize transplantation, facilitating the growth of artificial organs, say authors. Credit: © dedigrigoroiu / Fotolia

Houston Methodist researchers have identified an immune pathway that promotes the formation of a cell that can develop into new tissues and organs. In a new study published in the journal Stem Cells, a team led by John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D, described how activation of innate immunity enhances nuclear reprogramming, one of the first steps in tissue regeneration, or the formation of new tissues and organs from a single cell in the body.

“We found that activating the innate immune system opens up the DNA,” said Cooke, the study’s senior author...

1. Schematic diagram of the bacterial flagellar basal body with name and size of each part.
2. Molecular models of the flagellar rod (purple) and hook (blue green) and their comparison. (a) The model of the rod and hook complex including their direct connection in a section along their tubular axis. The structures of their corresponding domains are nearly identical. (b) Structural comparison of the rod and hook subunits by superposition. Domain D1 of the hook protein is more tilted than that of the rod protein by 7°, producing a gap between subunits in the axial neighbors to make the entire hook flexible in bending. (c) The C-terminal helix (blue) of the hook is shorter than that of the rod, making an axial gap between subunits in the hook structure but not in the rod.

Scientists have imag...

This is a Brain Music EEG headset. Credit: Osaka University

Music, more than any art, is a beautiful mix of science and emotion. It follows a set of patterns almost mathematically to extract feelings from its audience. Machines that make music focus on these patterns, but give little consideration to the emotional response of their audience. An international research team led by Osaka University together with Tokyo Metropolitan University, imec in Belgium and Crimson Technology has released a new machine-learning device that detects the emotional state of its listeners to produce new songs that elicit new feelings.

“Most machine songs depend on an automatic composition system,” says Masayuki Numao, professor at Osaka University...

Defining RNA–Small Molecule Affinity Landscapes Enables Design of a Small Molecule Inhibitor of an Oncogenic Noncoding RNA

TSRI Scientists have designed 2 new drug candidates to target prostate and triple negative breast cancers. The new research, published recently as 2 separate studies in ACS Central Science and Journal of the American Chemical Society, demonstrates that a new class of drugs, small molecule RNA inhibitors can target and kill specific types of cancer. RNA defects can lead to cancers, ALS, myotonic dystrophy and many other diseases. In their ACS Central Science study, Prof. Disney and his colleagues used DNA sequencing to evaluate thousands of small molecules as potential drug candidates...