Category Health/Medical

Scientists have made many advances using traditional CRISPR technology, especially in medicine, but they are now seeking ways to create genuinely new gene-editing enzymes with properties that have not already evolved naturally. A new study, published in Science, describes a new AI-designed synthetic TnpB enzyme, called SynTnpBs, that has outperformed the natural reference enzyme.

Creating new gene editors
CRISPR tools use a programmable guide RNA to direct an enzyme to a specific target in the genome to edit (cut, insert or correct) DNA. The TnpB enzyme is a compact ancestor of certain CRISPR enzymes, called CRISPR-Cas12 enzymes...

We may age at different rates, but none of us escapes aging. A study in mice and human cells by Stanford Medicine researchers pins much of the blame on a particular type of immune cell’s increasing inability, with advancing age, to gobble up another immune cell type.

So-called tissue-resident macrophages appear to be central coordinators of age-related organ decline. Blocking a single receptor on these cells preserved the youthfulness of multiple organs in mice, including the brain, heart, skeletal and heart muscle, liver, spleen, bone marrow, kidney and colon. The receptor binds specifically to a hormone known to cause inflammation and pain in humans as well as mice.

In mice, selectively disabling this receptor exclusively on tissue-resident ma...

High-frequency waves classified as terahertz occupy a relatively underused region of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared light and microwaves. Researchers have long recognized their unique potential for applications including ultrafast wireless communication, security screening, remote sensing and medical imaging.

As technologies push toward higher operating frequencies and data rates, photonics-based terahertz systems, which use light at high speed to generate and process terahertz signals, have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional electronic technologies because of their superior bandwidth and p...

Open lines of communication between the body’s organs are important to health and often falter with age. A new study in mice by researchers at WashU Medicine shows how signals that travel from skeletal muscle to the brain and then activate brown fat and control core body temperature are weakened in elderly mice. The research suggests that finding ways to restore these signals could offer new opportunities to support healthy aging.

The study—led by S...