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Atlas of cells transforms understanding of human body

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Originally published by James Gallagher at bbc.com, on November 20, 2024 An ambitious plan to map all 37 trillion cells in the human body is transforming understanding of how our bodies work, scientists report . The received wisdom said we were built from around 200 types of cell – such as heart muscle or nerve cells . Instead the Human Cell Atlas project has revealed there are thousands of cell types , with some appearing to be culprits in diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis. In a flurry of announcements, the formation of the human skeleton and the early immune system have also been mapped out in detail. The novel insight is akin to moving from the maps of the 15th Century era of Joan of Arc and Richard III to what the phone in your pocket can load . The old maps of the body had the equivalent of major roads and significant geography but also areas cartographers labelled unknown or “ terra incognita ”. Read more  

Alzheimer's timeline shows changes start as trickle, become torrent

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Originally published by Jon Hamilton at npr.org, on November 11, 2024 A study of cells from 84 cadaver brains suggests that Alzheimer's has two distinct phases, and that one type of neuron is especially vulnerable. Scientists have found one type of neuron is affected early in Alzheimer's.koto_feja/Getty Images/E+ "There's an early phase where there's a very slow increase in the amount of pathology," says Ed Lein , a senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, " then a more exponential phase where suddenly things get really bad ." The study also found evidence that a small subset of neurons known as somatostatin inhibitory neurons begin to die off during the early phase of Alzheimer's , Lein and a team of nearly 100 other scientists report in the journal Nature Neuroscience . "That was quite a surprise," Lein says, because these neurons have received relatively little attention from Alzh