Vessels (248 18) Cross-section

Using Biomaterials To Make Transplantable Human Blood Vessel Systems

When severe injuries occur, there can often be damage to skin, tissues, and organs. Depending on the extent of that damage, replacements can often be required. It has only been in recent decades that medical technologies have advanced far enough for things like skin grafts and organ replacements to have become viable and at a […]

E15.5 mouse embryonic testes

Genetic Barcodes In Mice Allow CRISPR To Map Body Cell Development

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is how the saying goes. But does that have to be true? A hammer can actually be a quite versatile instrument and, with some insight and ingenuity, be put to tasks that would previously have been thought outside of its purview. A hammer […]

Mouse pancreatic islet

Insulin-Producing Synthetic Cells Designed To Respond To Caffeine

Personalized medicine has become radically different over the past decade. The speed and lowered cost of genome sequencing has made disease screening far more commonplace and as specific cell-based treatments have improved, some conditions that were once thought incurable are becoming very much not so. For immune system focuses, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)—T cells have […]

Adipogénesis

New Stem Cell State Made From Fat Cells Plays A Role In Obesity Onset

As food and agriculture have expanded through global cooperation and innovation, this has coincided with a greater ease in developing high-selling products such as sugar. The downside of this new capacity is that many food products have begun to use at least a small amount of sugar to improve taste of those same foods and […]

Early embryonic development of Encarsia pergandiella. Nature as art or vice versa?

Mapping Cell Lineages Using CRISPR Cas9-Based Genetic Scarring

There are a number of errors that can happen when an organism develops from an embryo to an adult. A single missing cell or a cell out of place can have catastrophic results for the matured individual. Even a slightly altered rate of cell division at such an early stage is more likely to cause […]

Neuronal explosion

Stem Cells Modified To Sensory Neurons May Help Treat Paralysis

Our nervous system directs most of our body’s mechanisms without us being away of it. Motor neurons are involved in moving parts of our body, sensory neurons give us each of our major secondary senses like our sense of pain or temperature, and interneurons connect all the other neurons together into a combined whole that […]

Closer Look (6145095297)

Deadly Fungus Threatens Worldwide Snake Populations

Humans are not the only group of organisms we as a species have to be concerned about. In addition to the impact our direct actions have on the environment around us, there is also the natural interplay between pathogens and wild species that may be exacerbated by the global nature of human travel. That is […]

Compact bone - ground cross section

Dead CRISPR-Cas9 Upgraded To Treat Genetic Disorders With No Gene Editing

Not every genetic modification has to involve a violent cleaving of nucleotides to insert or remove sections of the genome. The most common form this type of change takes involves what are termed double-strand breaks (DSBs) and they have long been something that scientists have wanted to avoid if possible. You may remember us discussing […]

Insect eye

Developmental Biology Causes Extra Beetle Eyes To Form

Developmental biology can be a wild field to study. Through looking into the fundamental genes controlling body structure and the formation of the body as a whole, strange and bizarre effects can be discovered from the smallest of changes. One of the most famous being the creation of fruit flies that grow a pair of […]

Proliferative response induced by a tumor promoter in the epidermis of a wild-type mouse - image.pbio.v11.i07.g001

Gene Therapy And Stem Cells Restore 80% of Child’s Skin

Sometimes doctors are able to accomplish the most miraculous of surgeries using top of the line technology. Treatments with an incredibly low chance of success and with a high risk of death. Successes that likely will not be possible to do again in the near future, even with other patients with the same condition. That […]