New research suggests a widely used antibiotic could help prevent schizophrenia. A study in the American Journal of Psychiatry reports that adolescents in psychiatric care who took doxycycline had lower rates of the illness later in life.
Category: biotech/medical
The fate of pyruvate dictates cell growth by modulating cellular redox potential
This ‘fundamental’ study uncovers how directing pyruvate into mitochondria can shrink cells by shifting their metabolism away from building amino acids and proteins.
This fundamental work demonstrates that compartmentalized cellular metabolism is a dominant input into cell size control in a variety of mammalian cell types and in Drosophila. The authors show that increased pyruvate import into the mitochondria in liver-like cells and in primary hepatocytes drives gluconeogenesis but reduces cellular amino acid production, suppressing protein synthesis. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with a variety of genetic and pharmacologic assays rigorously testing each step of the proposed mechanism. This work will be of interest to cell biologists, physiologists, and researchers interested in cell metabolism, and is significant because stem cells and many cancers exhibit metabolic rewiring of pyruvate metabolism.
Programmable metamaterial can morph into more configurations than there are atoms in the universe
The Wave Engineering for eXtreme and Intelligent maTErials (We-Xite) lab, led by engineering assistant professor Osama R. Bilal, has developed a reconfigurable metamaterial that can control sound waves—bending them, dampening them, or focusing them—while encoding real-time tuning with almost infinite possible shapes.
Their work is now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Metamaterials are artificial materials that can achieve extraordinary properties not easily found in nature,” explains Ph.D. candidate Melanie Keogh ‘22 (ENG), the first author of the study. In this case, the research team wanted to develop a material that could control sound waves, while being adjustable in both frequency and function, with potential applications ranging from medical imaging to soundproofing.
Study reveals unexpected link between dopamine and serotonin in the brain
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Columbia University and the University of San Francisco, have uncovered a previously unknown mechanism by which dopamine, a key brain chemical vital for movement and motivation, can affect brain activity indirectly by boosting serotonin. The study was published in Science Advances.
Dopamine is a key chemical messenger that supports many essential brain functions, including motivation, movement, and learning. Although dopamine acts throughout the brain, it plays an especially central role in the basal ganglia, a network of interconnected regions responsible for selecting which behaviors we express.
The basal ganglia and dopamine are deeply involved in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, and many widely used medications target this network.
Particle accelerator waste could help produce cancer-fighting materials
Energy that would normally go to waste inside powerful particle accelerators could be used to create valuable medical isotopes, scientists have found.
Researchers at the University of York have shown that intense radiation captured in particle accelerator “beam dumps” could be repurposed to produce materials used in cancer therapy. The study is published in the journal Physical Review C.
Scientists have now found a way to make those leftover photons do a second job, without affecting the main physics experiments.