Diabetes is a very prevalent disease that, unfortunately, still has no treatment. People with diabetes need to monitor their blood glucose levels (BGLs) regularly and administer insulin to keep them in check. In almost all cases, BGL measurements involve drawing blood from a fingertip through a finger prick. Since this procedure is painful, less invasive alternatives that leverage modern electronics are being actively researched worldwide.
A biophysical model sheds light on how the subtle interplay of fluid dynamics and bacterial growth controls the fluctuating population of microbes in the human gut.
The human body harbors large numbers of bacteria—about as many as human cells—most of which are located in the gut, mainly in the colon. Together, diverse microorganisms including multiple species and strains of bacteria constitute the gut microbiota, which is thought to play a central role in human health, affecting the immune response and the progression of different diseases. However, despite a vast body of microbiota studies based on gene sequencing and on experiments with animal models, the dynamics of microbial populations in the human gut remain poorly understood. Alinaghi Salari of the University of Toronto and James Cremer of Stanford University have now proposed a biophysical model of the gut environment that incorporates a broad set of features of the human large intestine [1].
The discovery of an unknown organelle inside our cells could open the door to new treatments for devastating inherited diseases.
The organelle, a type of specialized structure, has been dubbed a “hemifusome” by its discoverers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. This little organelle has a big job helping our cells sort, recycle and discard important cargo within themselves, the scientists say. The new discovery could help scientists better understand what goes wrong in genetic conditions that disrupt these essential housekeeping functions.
“This is like discovering a new recycling center inside the cell,” said researcher Seham Ebrahim, Ph.D., of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “We think the hemifusome helps manage how cells package and process material, and when this goes wrong, it may contribute to diseases that affect many systems in the body.”
In 2020, Yian Yin teamed up with economists at Northwestern University to look at the impact of researchers who had shifted their focus to study the COVID pandemic. He saw that these researchers faced a “pivot penalty”—their COVID-related work received less attention than previous contributions in their old field—and the greater the pivot, the worse the penalty.
As Yin and his colleagues continued their analyses, however, they discovered the pivot penalty wasn’t just a side effect of the pandemic. It occurred any time a scientist, inventor, or organization struck out in a new direction instead of staying in their lane.
“This is really a universal pattern that appears very widespread across science and technology—across different fields, research outcomes, career stages, and team sizes,” said Yin, who was then a research fellow at Northwestern, and is now an assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
Whether you feed bread to ducks at the local pond or hang a bird feeder on your back porch, the food you’re offering wild birds plays a role in their ability to tolerate infection. New research from the University of Arkansas has found that canaries fed a high-protein diet fared better when it came to immune function and tolerating infection than canaries fed a high-lipid (fatty) diet.
The findings included molecular analysis of blood draws, revealing how different diets trigger the expression of different immune-related genes, both before and after infection.
“Our results are exciting because of the importance of human-supplemented food in wildlife disease systems, especially wild birds, which are commonly provided with supplemental food via bird feeders,” said Erin Sauer, a first co-author of the study.
For over a decade, researchers have considered boson sampling—a quantum computing protocol involving light particles—as a key milestone toward demonstrating the advantages of quantum methods over classical computing. But while previous experiments showed that boson sampling is hard to simulate with classical computers, practical uses have remained out of reach.
Now, in Optica Quantum, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) present the first practical application of boson sampling for image recognition, a vital task across many fields, from forensic science to medical diagnostics. Their approach uses just three photons and a linear optical network, marking a significant step towards low energy quantum AI systems.
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have achieved a long-sought milestone in photonics: creating tiny optical devices that are both highly sensitive and durable—two qualities that have long been considered fundamentally incompatible.
This rare coexistence of sensitivity and durability could lead to a new generation of photonic devices that are not only precise and powerful but also much easier and cheaper to produce at scale. This could open the door to advanced sensors and technologies ranging from highly sensitive medical diagnostics and environmental sensors to more secure communication systems, all built into tiny, chip-scale devices.
Achieving both properties has been a challenge because devices that are sensitive enough to detect tiny changes in their environment are often fragile and prone to breaking down if even the smallest imperfections arise during manufacturing. This makes them expensive and difficult to produce at scale. Meanwhile, making such devices more rugged often means compromising their precision.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Capital Medical University utilized gene editing to create senescence-resistant human mesenchymal progenitor cells (SRCs). In a 44-week trial on aged macaques, biweekly intravenous SRC injections induced no adverse effects and spurred multi-system rejuvenation in 10 major physiological systems and 61 tissue types. Treated macaques displayed enhanced cognitive function and diminished age-related degeneration. The SRCs work by releasing exosomes that curb cellular senescence and inflammation. This study presents the first primate-level proof of cell therapy’s safety and efficacy in reversing aging, presenting a potential multi-system approach for human anti-aging research.
Caffeine has long been associated with health benefits, including a reduced risk of age-related diseases. However, the specifics of how caffeine interacts with cellular mechanisms and nutrient and stress-responsive gene networks have remained elusive — until now.
In this pioneering research, published in the journal Microbial Cell, scientists used fission yeast, a single-celled organism with surprising similarities to human cells, to delve deeper into caffeine’s impact.
The researchers discovered that caffeine influences aging by engaging an ancient cellular energy system.
A few years ago, the same team found that caffeine prolongs cell life by acting on a growth regulator known as TOR (Target of Rapamycin). TOR is a molecular switch that regulates cell growth based on available food and energy and has been part of the evolutionary landscape for over 500 million years.
However, their latest study unveiled a surprising new finding: caffeine does not directly act on the TOR switch. Instead, it activates AMPK, a cellular fuel gauge that is conserved through evolution in both yeast and humans.
“When your cells are low on energy, AMPK kicks in to help them cope,” senior author Charalampos (Babis) Rallis, a reader in genetics, genomics and fundamental cell biology at Queen Mary University of London, said in a news release. “And our results show that caffeine helps flip that switch.”
Intriguingly, AMPK is also the target of metformin, a common diabetes medication currently under scrutiny for its potential to extend human lifespan when used alongside rapamycin.